I'm a URM and I'm opposed to racial AA. How about we replace it with class AA?

[luboman411]

I am no Ward Connelly (sp?), God forbid, but I do think that the racial AA status quo is just too unfair at this point.  I am a URM from an impoverished background who feels that, nowadays, the greatest barrier in this country is not race, per se, but class.  It seems like it's much harder for your average poor white kid from West Virginia to advance than for a black kid with lawyer/banker parents who lives in NYC.  I went to an elite liberal arts college in New England and found a greater number of the latter and far fewer of the former.  That struck me as patently unjust, especially since the former a) definitely represents a much larger percentage of the U.S. population as a whole and b) the latter most likely had gotten a leg up due to traditional race-based AA.  Point being, I would rather law school (or any graduate or undegrad) admissions committees emphasize far more strongly the class background of applicants and ditch, on a large scale, the racial categories that are central to their idea of "diversity".  Considering that class inequality is at its worst in this country since 1929, and that a smaller and smaller share of the student bodies at the most highly selective colleges come from middle- and lower-class backgrounds, I would love to see fewer privileged black and hispanic students and more obviously poor white and asian students at these places.  Doing this would not likely dent the number of poor hispanics and blacks at these schools because being of these races almost always means being poor in certain sections of the country.  This measure would at least preclude people who obviously don't need the help from getting it.  And I would know these colleges are doing at least something to mitigate the growing class disparity that will destabilize the U.S. sooner or later.  I also hate the whole informal AA system that legacies enjoy (i.e. I know of this white straight guy who got into Yale Law without neither winning academic honors of any kind nor having even graduated at the top 25% of my class, whereas some people didn't even get in with Phi Beta Kappas, summa cum laudes and top 5% ranks), but that's a topic for a future rant. 

 

[shana2077]

I don't think that class AA would be sufficient. If you had a white student and a black student who grew up in the same class....the black student would still have a tougher experience trying to advance.Why?? Because he is black. I think racism has been so detrimental to minorities that having class AA would be pointless. Racism is the root cause of all the issues that affect minorities today, so therefore race AA is needed. Hopefully, we can get to a point one day when it is not need at all

[j23]

How about getting rid of AA altogether? The middle class seems to lose either way. I believe that people should get in based on academic ability, not hardships one has faced.

[shana2077]

Pardon Johnny, what's funny is that I never even read your post. I was just responding to the OP. Ooops your bad! But nice to know we think alike.

[shana2077]

How about getting rid of AA altogether? The middle class seems to lose either way. I believe that people should get in based on academic ability, not hardships one has faced.

Do you consider racism a hardship?

[Matthies]

Being black is physiological.

Being poor is a choice.

If your family is white and you have been in this county for more than 2-3 generations and you’re still poor – you’re doing it wrong.    Why should we reward the spawn of folks who obviously can’t achieve the American Dream with no outside pressure keeping them downtrodden by giving them a preference in education? Seems like we are valuing the wrong work ethic that way.

We don’t have a caste system in the US. If your born white you have no systematic history of racism keeping you from achieving whatever you want. Your are not forced from the outside to remain poor. Baring catastrophic illness being poor and raising poor children is a CHOICE. People choose to take low paying jobs, forgo education, have children before they can afford them, not work two jobs – whatever that therefore results in them having less money that a similar person who made different choices. No one puts a gun to your head as says your born poor therefore you must stay poor forever. Sam Walton, Warren Buffet and many other rich Americans were born poor. In fact in the US most people were originally poor and built their wealth through generations of families putting their own rewards aside so their children could have better lives -  not because the government gave them a handout.

We don’t have a landed arostoricry here. Other people, many times immigrants and minorities, choose to work two or more jobs or start their own 7-11 or whatever so their children can have it better than they do. Giving someone’s kids a leg up because they failed to make the choices in life that would allow their children to have more than they did is the not the American way. In this country we have always valued those that brought themselves up by their own bootstraps changing the system to favor those who don’t do so is un-American. While you may not favor race based AA, race is at least a universal factor that is not the result of one’s choices in life.

PS. Yes I am a classist basterd.

[shana2077]

Being black is physiological.

Being poor is a choice.

If your family is white and you have been in this county for more than 2-3 generations and you’re still poor – you’re doing it wrong.    Why should we reward the spawn of folks who obviously can’t achieve the American Dream with no outside pressure keeping them downtrodden by giving them a preference in education? Seems like we are valuing the wrong work ethic that way.

We don’t have a caste system in the US. If your born white you have no systematic history of racism keeping you from achieving whatever you want. Your are not forced from the outside to remain poor. Baring catastrophic illness being poor and raising poor children is a CHOICE. People choose to take low paying jobs, forgo education, have children before they can afford them, not work two jobs – whatever that therefore results in them having less money that a similar person who made different choices. No one puts a gun to your head as says your born poor therefore you must stay poor forever. Sam Walton, Warren Buffet and many other rich Americans were born poor. In fact in the US most people were originally poor and built their wealth through generations of families putting their own rewards aside so their children could have better lives -  not because the government gave them a handout.

We don’t have a landed arostoricry here. Other people, many times immigrants and minorities, choose to work two or more jobs or start their own 7-11 or whatever so their children can have it better than they do. Giving someone’s kids a leg up because they failed to make the choices in life that would allow their children to have more than they did is the not the American way. In this country we have always valued those that brought themselves up by their own bootstraps changing the system to favor those who don’t do so is un-American. While you may not favor race based AA, race is at least a universal factor that is not the result of one’s choices in life.

PS. Yes I am a classist basterd.

I concur

[j23]

I do not think that people can defeat racism with racism. Also, how can a school determine whether a person has been the object of racism? If you are black, does that mean you have faced discrimination? If you are white, does that mean you have not faced discrimination? I think it is absurd that some people believe that everything that is wrong in the black community is a result of racism. If AA is necessary, how long will it take before it will become unnecessary? In my opinion, AA is reverse racism. I do not think it helps to alleviate racism, but further promote it. An example of this is Clarence Thomas. Many people think that the only reason he got into Yale was because of AA, not because of his brilliance and hard work. With AA in place, many people assume that their black classmates are there as a result of AA, not a result of their talent. This needs to stop. We do not need to constantly class people by their physical characteristics. We do not need one race believing that another race owes them something, or one race thinking another has an unfair advantage just because of the color of their skin. I was born in 1986, do not hold me accountable for something SOME WHITE people subjected SOME BLACK people to long before I was born.

[shana2077]

I do not think that people can defeat racism with racism. Also, how can a school determine whether a person has been the object of racism? If you are black, does that mean you have faced discrimination? If you are white, does that mean you have not faced discrimination? I think it is absurd that some people believe that everything that is wrong in the black community is a result of racism. If AA is necessary, how long will it take before it will become unnecessary? In my opinion, AA is reverse racism. I do not think it helps to alleviate racism, but further promote it. An example of this is Clarence Thomas. Many people think that the only reason he got into Yale was because of AA, not because of his brilliance and hard work. With AA in place, many people assume that their black classmates are there as a result of AA, not a result of their talent. This needs to stop. We do not need to constantly class people by their physical characteristics. We do not need one race believing that another race owes them something, or one race thinking another has an unfair advantage just because of the color of their skin. I was born in 1986, do not hold me accountable for something SOME WHITE people subjected SOME BLACK people to long before I was born.

That something that SOME white people subjected SOME Black people to was RACISM and it is still prevalent today. Don't try to down play how detrimental racism was not only to Black people, but to this nation as a whole. I wish that AA was not necessary, but the fact remains it is necessary. Try walking in a minorities shoes for a day and you'll see what it feels like to be denied something not because you were not intelligent enough, but because of the color of your skin.

[MauveAvenger]

Trying being denied something not because of intelligence, but by color of your skin. Hmm... white person with a 3.4/160 and black person with a 3.4/160 both apply, white person is denied and black person is let in. White person is denied because their skin color isn't dark enough. Yeah... that system makes COMPLETE sense.