Affirmative Action

[madmax]

Originally posted by Cloud9
You're an idiot.

Good point. Now how about answering the question.





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Originally posted by sugar and spice

Like I said earlier in this thread, I did fairly well in high school, but I'm not going to pretend that it was all due to my "hard work." I had a lot of advantages that many of my classmates didn't have (parents that read to me and bought me books as a kid, parents who enrolled me in "enrichment programs" and extracurricular activities and extra classes when I was as young as 4, AP and honors and advanced classes, I was raised in an environment that made higher education pretty much a necessity and not a choice, my parents could afford to pay for me to take the SAT as many times as I wanted or run track or apply to ten different colleges had I wanted to, I had enough time that I could participate in lots of extracurricular activities . . . and the list goes on). If you'd given my classmates all the same advantages that I'd had, I have no doubt that all of them, no matter what race, could have done just as well or better than I did.

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Originally posted by enlightenment06
I think that wouldn't really solve the problem. Far too many students of color face a disadvantage just based on the cultural structure of our country. We have made great strides as a nation in the past few decades, but you can't erase centuries of a system of mental genocide with 40 years of progressive legislation (see Spike Lee's "Bamboolzed". I don't feel I can fully express my point here, to do so would be far too long a post. However I hope you can kind of see where I'm coming from.
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[madmax]

Originally posted by sugar and spice
And now let's play the "How many GC threads can we get locked today?" game!

Are you going to answer the question? You pointed out what an important role your parents played in your education. If a kid grows up in a home where the parents do not stress eduaction then whose fault is that?

[sugar and spice]

Originally posted by madmax
Are you going to answer the question? You pointed out what an important role your parents played in your education. If a kid grows up in a home where the parents do not stress eduaction then whose fault is that?

Well, it's not the kid's.

[MattUMASSD]

Its the parents fault if they dont stress education. But my definition of parental support is when the parents take an active role in their child's education. For example meeting with their teachers, going to pta meetings, reinforcing what they are learning in school by going to museums, art galleries, enrolling their child extra curricular activities. A lot of this stuff requires a good amount of money, which a lot of families in my middle schol didnt have. Just a lil example my mom is sending my sister to this specialyt camp at george washingotn university for 700 bucks a week! i think thats a lot of money.

[FeeFee]

Originally posted by DeltAlum
With all due respect...

If a study were done today, it might show the same results...or it might show the exact opposite.

A lot has changed in the world, society and education over the past 26 years.

I'm certainly no expert on this, but I'd want more recent reserch. I suspect that one of the reasons for the initial study was to identify that kind of prejudice and work to reverse those feelings. Or, at least, I would hope so.

You forgot the part which stated that it still happens today. And yes, the intial study was to identify such problems and finding ways to reverse those feelings. Unfortunately, those problems have not gone away yet.

[KappaKittyCat]

I took a class last term called "School & Society." Wanna guess what it was about? Anyway, we talked about cultural capital and the role that it plays in education.

Reinforcing what they are learning in school by going to museums, art galleries, enrolling their child extra curricular activities.

This is cultural capital. As MattUMASSD noted, it's often quite expensive.

In my Social Psychology class, we discussed what happens when a person is not good at something. I'll use the rather inocuous example of sports. My parents are not very good at sports. They're more of an academic/musical type. I wasn't necessarily encouraged to play soccer or softball, but I was given piano lessons from an early age. It didn't matter if I got poor grades in gym class because that was all sports. The important thing was that I did well in academics. Consequently, I never improved at sports, so I just hated gym class more and found it more worthless as I got older. Eventually, the phrase "I'm not an athlete" became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Today, I do not care that I'm not talented in those areas, because they don't matter to me or my family.

So the principle holds that if someone is not talented at something, he will devalue it and disassociate from it, focusing his energies elsewhere and never improving in the devalued area.

So think about the effect that this has on low-income/minority students, for example, a child growing up in the South Side of Chicago, West Harlem, Long Beach, or any of the other "ghetto" areas. His parents and his peers' parents may or may not even have high school diplomas and definitely do not have the cultural capital to reinforce what he and his friends are learning at school. For these reasons and from a young age, he does not do as well in school as your average suburban, middle-class, white child. The same goes for his friends. Therefore, they will devalue education and disassociate from school. They won't work as hard because it doesn't matter to them, so they won't improve academically as much as the suburban, middle-class, white child, whose parents and peer group value education. And that's how we lose entire inner cities to poverty, drugs, and violence.

Even if the low-income/minority child above does come from a family that values education, the family is still low-income and does not possess the cultural capital to give the child the same advantages that a suburban, middle-class, white child would have. That's why programs like Head Start have come into play.

A big topic in education is "early intervention," meaning things like Head Start and scholarships for summer camp and grants for inner-city elementary schools. The idea is that if we can start with young children and head them off at the pass, then we can eliminate the need for Affirmative Action at higher levels.

I guess my take on the subject of Affirmative Action is that it's useful, but must be applied carefully. The more important thing is to start from the beginning, with things like Head Start, and even the playing field so that all students approach things like college applications from an equal level.

[madmax]

Originally posted by MattUMASSD
Its the parents fault if they dont stress education. But my definition of parental support is when the parents take an active role in their child's education. For example meeting with their teachers, going to pta meetings, reinforcing what they are learning in school by going to museums, art galleries, enrolling their child extra curricular activities. A lot of this stuff requires a good amount of money, which a lot of families in my middle schol didnt have. Just a lil example my mom is sending my sister to this specialyt camp at george washingotn university for 700 bucks a week! i think thats a lot of money.

I agree 100%.

Now what happens to the kids that don't have parents that stress education? Do you think they can slack off from grades K-12 and then suddenly turn on the switch and compete academically which will result in a higher standard of living. I don't think so, which is why I don't think affirmative action works.
If it was that easy your mom would not be spending $700 a week to send you sister to specialty camp.

[MattUMASSD]

Originally posted by madmax
I agree 100%.

Now what happens to the kids that don't have parents that stress education? Do you think they can slack off from grades K-12 and then suddenly turn on the switch and compete academically which will result in a higher standard of living. I don't think so, which is why I don't think affirmative action works.
If it was that easy your mom would not be spending $700 a week to send you sister to specialty camp.

No they cant do that. I think the people that want to go to college have put an effort to get their grades they should be. I think if anyone feels that they can slack off for 12 years and expect to be accepted into any university is mistaken.

[Honeykiss1974]

Just to put another spin on the topic, but some folks need to quit ASSUMING that every black person (or any other minority) comes from a poor, disadvantaged, broken home in the ghetto and therefore affirmative action is the only way for them to succeed. This kind of thought process is one-sided and narrow.

There are policies/mindsets/good ol' boy networks/etc. in place solely for the purpose to keep minorities out....not just disadvantaged/poor minorities, but minorities out PERIOD!! I can have all the degrees, experience, credientials, but if someone does not want a minority within their midst or in charge(or whatever), then guess what...I won't be there.

"They" don't care where or what your background. All "they" know is that "your kind" (minority) is not wanted at their company, for whatever the dumb, racist, stereotypical reason maybe.

And another thing....some folks need to quit ASSUMING that those people who may have benefitted from afirmative action (and let's be honest, what HR person would tell you this information anyway) are token idoits (with no intelligence, GPA, etc.). Again, that's being narrow-minded.

[sugar and spice]

Originally posted by madmax
I agree 100%.

Now what happens to the kids that don't have parents that stress education? Do you think they can slack off from grades K-12 and then suddenly turn on the switch and compete academically which will result in a higher standard of living. I don't think so, which is why I don't think affirmative action works.
If it was that easy your mom would not be spending $700 a week to send you sister to specialty camp.

I don't think anybody's recommending sending a minority kid with a 2.0 who scored 1000 on the SATs to an Ivy League school simply for the sake that he's not white. That's why I'm saying that schools need to be careful in deciding how much influence race should have in the admissions process -- if the kid is too overwhelmed by college because he's not used to the work load and drops out, you've wasted a spot that could have gone to somebody else and the kid who got the spot via affirmative action is no better off. But if you think the kid can handle it, there's no reason why he shouldn't be in the school.

The point is that all of the advantages that white kids have -- each one gives them a subtle nudge in their favor. You might have kids of color who are at the same level as the priviledged white kids because they had the same advantages, you'd have kids of color who are at a level or two just below (and could handle college once they got there) because they got some advantages but not others, and you'll have kids of color who didn't get ANY advantages and are therefore way behind the privileged white kids. Any responsible affirmative action policy would recommend that the people of color in the first two groups should be accepted. I'm not saying that EVERYBODY should automatically be accepted into college.

The problem is that until we get more people of color into college, those people of color who aren't going to college will stay economically repressed. If they go to college, they'll have the skills to acquire better jobs, set their families up, and hopefully be able to afford "cultural currency" and better educational options for their kids -- which brings us to the point where we don't need affirmative action anymore.

[MattUMASSD]

Well done!

[MattUMASSD]

I feel like everyone is talking in circles. I think sugar and psice must have made this point about 5 times now lol.

[sugar and spice]

Originally posted by Honeykiss1974
Just to put another spin on the topic, but some folks need to quit ASSUMING that every black person (or any other minority) comes from a poor, disadvantaged, broken home in the ghetto and therefore affirmative action is the only way for them to succeed. This kind of thought process is one-sided and narrow.

Again, I don't think anybody is saying that all people of color are poor -- they're just playing off the fact that people of color are less likely to be upper-middle/upper class than whites. The wealthy people of color have a better "support system" (they can afford college, they can afford museums, they can afford books, they can afford violin lessons, etc.) in place than poor people of color, and for the time being I think we were concentrating on how to change the support system of poor people more than the middle class or wealthy.

[Honeykiss1974]

Originally posted by sugar and spice
Again, I don't think anybody is saying that all people of color are poor -- they're just playing off the fact that people of color are less likely to be upper-middle/upper class than whites. The wealthy people of color have a better "support system" (they can afford college, they can afford museums, they can afford books, they can afford violin lessons, etc.) in place than poor people of color, and for the time being I think we were concentrating on how to change the support system of poor people more than the middle class or wealthy.

S&S,
I 'm just saying in general. It just seems like whenever this topic comes up, the first thing assumed is that we need affirmative action because minorities are poor, when that is not the REAL reason.

[LeslieAGD]

Originally posted by sugar and spice
I don't think anybody's recommending sending a minority kid with a 2.0 who scored 1000 on the SATs to an Ivy League school simply for the sake that he's not white. That's why I'm saying that schools need to be careful in deciding how much influence race should have in the admissions process

Exactly...this goes back to my statement about qualified individuals.