Are White People an oppressed minority?

OscarB63 said:

The main point being. A truely qualified applicant will be accepted/hired/promoted regardless of race. If you are "minimally qualified" you stand a better chance at getting hired/admitted/promoted if you are a minority due to affirmative action policies.

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Did you read at least the abstract/conclusion of the paper i posted?

Goldenboy219 said:

In acceptance competitive schools, essays and interviews are the norm.

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I applied to a fairly competitive set of schools for UG, and the only ones I remember even offering personal interviews were Harvard and Yale. Regardless of whether interviews are offered at the most competitive schools, my point is that they're neither universal nor are they weighted anywhere near as heavily as other factors. Essays are universal, but I'm saying that I've never heard a single admissions officer or admissions consultant say that they were anywhere near as important as grades/test scores.

Law school isn't a perfect analogue to UG, but lawschoolnumbers has a set of charts plotting individual student gpas/lsats and whether they were accepted or rejected to various schools. Using just those two numbers (and your race), you can predict to a strong degree of certainty whether or not you will be admitted. For example, look at georgetown last year:

LSN :: Georgetown University - Admissions Graph

There are a few outliers, but you can plainly see the trend lines. If you're in the rightmost band, you're pretty much set, as not one person above 172/3.0 was outright rejected. If you're in the middle band, you're most likely going to be waitlisted. If you're in the left band, you're almost certainly getting rejected unless you're a URM, which is what those green dots are.

Even without considering UG quality, UG major, socioeconomic factors, alumni relationships, extracurriculars, work experiece, or essays, you can already pretty much tell whether someone is going to be accepted or rejected to a particular law school.

I agree that the point system was flawed, as your article states, the law school "admitted virtually every minimally qualified underrepresented minority applicant."

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I'm not posting that so much to argue that the point system was flawed as to show how a major university weighted those factors. Even without the formal point system, I'm sure that the relative weighting is the same.

Gray_Fox_86 said:

To be fair they make exceptions so as to add to diversity. I was accepted to a university and i was not anywhere near the ACT/SAT level they normally ADMITTED to.

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How fair is that to the kids who worked their butts off. Got great grades, played sports, got great SAT scores but an adult says sorry we have too many of your type already. Can't you see that the people adversely impacted by that decision will feel that they were discriminated against.

washunut said:

How fair is that to the kids who worked their butts off. Got great grades, played sports, got great SAT scores but an adult says sorry we have too many of your type already. Can't you see that the people adversely impacted by that decision will feel that they were discriminated against.

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Well luckily for them they will never know the real reason why. They can assume why, but will never know why.

RightinNYC said:

I applied to a fairly competitive set of schools for UG, and the only ones I even remember offering personal interviews were Harvard and Yale. Regardless of whether interviews are offered at the most competitive schools, my point is that they're neither universal nor are they weighted anywhere near as heavily as other factors. Essays are universal, but I'm saying that I've never heard a single admissions officer or admissions consultant say that they were anywhere near as important as grades/test scores.

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You have to take into consideration the context of my statement. If both test scores and grades were the same, there are other means of evaluating potential students; e.g. placement testing, interviews, essays, work experience, community involvement, etc.... Of course grades are important; but to believe that schools simply look at race when grades/test scores are equal ignores the recruiting process.

Even without considering UG quality, UG major, socioeconomic factors, alumni relationships, extracurricular, work experience, or essays, you can already pretty much tell whether someone is going to be accepted or rejected to a particular law school.

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LSAT's, GRE's, MCAT's, etc... are necessary for grad schools as a means of measuring the quality of an UG education. At the UG level, standardized testing is becoming less and less important.

I'm not posting that so much to argue that the point system was flawed as to show how a major university weighted those factors. Even without the formal point system, I'm sure that the relative weighting is the same.

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While weighting is an issue, to totally dissolve such a system would have a negative impact on diversity. International recruitment for UG would probably increase as a result (IMO).

Goldenboy219 said:

While weighting is an issue, to totally dissolve such a system would have a negative impact on diversity.

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diversity just for the sake of diversity in worthless crappola.

Goldenboy219 said:

You have to take into consideration the context of my statement. If both test scores and grades were the same, there are other means of evaluating potential students; e.g. placement testing, interviews, essays, work experience, community involvement, etc.... Of course grades are important; but to believe that schools simply look at race when grades/test scores are equal ignores the recruiting process.

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I'm not saying that race is the only other factor that's considered or arguing that it shouldn't be considered. I was mostly noting that 1) in terms of winning admission, grades/test scores are weighted more heavily than essays/interviews, and 2) race does have a substantial impact on whether a student is accepted or rejected.

LSAT's, GRE's, MCAT's, etc... are necessary for grad schools as a means of measuring the quality of an UG education. At the UG level, standardized testing is becoming less and less important.

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I'm not saying that's not the case, but that seems backwards to me. There are thousands of high schools but only a few hundred colleges - if admissions officers needed to use standardized testing as a proxy for the quality of lower level education, it seems like it would be far more important at the UG level than at the graduate level.

While weighting is an issue, to totally dissolve such a system would have a negative impact on diversity. International recruitment for UG would probably increase as a result (IMO).

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The system wasn't actually dissolved, it was just made informal. Almost all schools engaged in the same practices as UM, they just didn't make it as explicit.

OscarB63 said:

diversity just for the sake of diversity in worthless crappola.

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Of course it is.

Helping the competitively disadvantaged become more productive citizens is not.

Goldenboy219 said:

Of course it is.

Helping the competitively disadvantaged become more productive citizens is not.

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and how do you help them??? why by giving them some sort of ADVANTAGE...which is what I have been saying all along.

RightinNYC said:

I'm not saying that race is the only other factor that's considered or arguing that it shouldn't be considered. I was mostly noting that 1) in terms of winning admission, grades/test scores are weighted more heavily than essays/interviews, and 2) race does have a substantial impact on whether a student is accepted or rejected.

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And race does have a substantial impact on lifetime earnings, life expectancy, etc.... To state that white people are oppressed makes me (blond hair blue eyes) want to vomit.

I'm not saying that's not the case, but that seems backwards to me. There are thousands of high schools but only a few hundred colleges - if admissions officers needed to use standardized testing as a proxy for the quality of lower level education, it seems like it would be far more important at the UG level than at the graduate level.

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The problem is teachers will begin focusing on test prep as opposed to educational enrichment. Such a scenario is non-existent on the university level. Also, there are some students who forge their schedules based on easy professors, which can create discrepancies with GPA. Hence, a standardized approach is more effective in gauging applicants in specialized professions such as law, dental school, etc....

The system wasn't actually dissolved, it was just made informal. Almost all schools engaged in the same practices as UM, they just didn't make it as explicit.

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Is such a point system based on low minority applicants (it would seem so)?

OscarB63 said:

and how do you help them??? why by giving them some sort of ADVANTAGE...which is what I have been saying all along.

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Allowing them opportunnities they would have had if they happened to be born white. Remember, you do not have a choice in what race you will be when born. I am not saying we should set the bar low.

Yeah, the whole premise of this thread is crappola, but we really haven't been discussing "white oppression" have we. though I would argue that "culture" has more of an impact on lifetime earnings and life expectancy than "race". Unfortunately it seems that in many cases race and culture go hand in hand. (I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard black students razzing another black kid for "trying to be white" simply because he actually paid attention in class and got good grades.)

soccerboy22 said:

Well luckily for them they will never know the real reason why. They can assume why, but will never know why.

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I think it hurts everyone when the deck is stacked. Some great people may say, what the heck why achieve when sucess is a lottery not based on skills. Could be one of the reasons the U.S. is less able to compete globally.

OscarB63 said:

Yeah, the whole premise of this thread is crappola, but we really haven't been discussing "white oppression" have we. though I would argue that "culture" has more of an impact on lifetime earnings and life expectancy than "race". Unfortunately it seems that in many cases race and culture go hand in hand. (I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard black students razzing another black kid for "trying to be white" simply because he actually paid attention in class and got good grades.)

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The bold is a reason why diversity is critical for university education. When you are in HS, you are more or less forced into a particular culture, and then allowed to be in a sub culture (jocks, druggies, nerds, etc...). Going away to school allows you to formulate yourself as an individual without being completely tied to the culture you were brought up in.

washunut said:

I think it hurts everyone when the deck is stacked. Some great people may say, what the heck why achieve when sucess is a lottery not based on skills. Could be one of the reasons the U.S. is less able to compete globally.

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Getting an education is not a zero sum game.

Goldenboy219 said:

Getting an education is not a zero sum game.

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It certainly is a zero sum game if we are talking about the best schools. There are only so many seats available. Do you think the schools add enrollment to hit their diversity goals. Again let's try to be intellectually honest in these discussions.

Goldenboy219 said:

And race does have a substantial impact on lifetime earnings, life expectancy, etc.... To state that white people are oppressed makes me (blond hair blue eyes) want to vomit.

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Race may be correlated with disparate earnings, but that doesn't mean it's the cause of all or even a substantial part of the gap. I also don't think that most people are really arguing that whites are "oppressed" so much as they're arguing that certain groups of non-URM people tend to get unfairly shafted by affirmative action policies. FWIW, Asians get it much worse than whites.

Consistent with other studies, though in much greater detail, Espenshade and Radford show the substantial admissions boost, particularly at the private colleges in their study, which Hispanic students get over whites, and the enormous advantage over whites given to blacks. They also show how Asians must do substantially better than whites in order to reap the same probabilities of acceptance to these same highly competitive private colleges. On an "other things equal basis," where adjustments are made for a variety of background factors, being Hispanic conferred an admissions boost over being white (for those who applied in 1997) equivalent to 130 SAT points (out of 1600), while being black rather than white conferred a 310 SAT point advantage. Asians, however, suffered an admissions penalty compared to whites equivalent to 140 SAT points.

The box students checked off on the racial question on their application was thus shown to have an extraordinary effect on a student's chances of gaining admission to the highly competitive private schools in the NSCE database. To have the same chances of gaining admission as a black student with an SAT score of 1100, an Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have a 1230, a white student a 1410, and an Asian student a 1550.

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Given that there's certainly no supreme Asian power structure here in the US, it seems like schools are less concerned with righting historic wrongs and more concerned with enrolling a student body that has the right proportions.

washunut said:

How fair is that to the kids who worked their butts off. Got great grades, played sports, got great SAT scores but an adult says sorry we have too many of your type already. Can't you see that the people adversely impacted by that decision will feel that they were discriminated against.

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Well life is not remotely fair. Also lots of the kids in my classes never have played sports, they all have hemoroids the sizes of Chuck Norrises head growing in their ass. Plus, one of the main reason I am certain I got in was that it was not a fall semester and that it is a field most people would not be eager to take especially Americans. Even the ones who work their asses off to get good grades/a good ACT/SAT score. And frankly most of the kids at my classes do not come from impoverished backgrounds and the ones who did may not have gotten the same ACT/SAT score as the ones who came from middleclass or above. But have qualified for being a minority with a decent GPA and ACT/SAT score and the chances of them now becoming something goes way up higher. Sadly, like many white Americans' the "minorities" rarely are that big unless you count Asian's as a minority. But really they make up like 2-3billion of the world's people.

OscarB63 said:

that's due in part because if you are an american chances are 9 out of 10 times you are white. blacks make up about 12% of the ****ing population, in a "fair" world they should statistically hold about 12% of the positions of power. Anyone with loads of spare time out there want to take a look at congress and calculate the % of black congressmen/women?

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Race and ethnicity in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

White Americans (non-Hispanic/Latino and Hispanic/Latino) are the racial majority, with an 80% share of the U.S. population, per official estimates from the Population Estimates Program (PEP),[4] or 75% per the American Community Survey (ACS).[6] Hispanic and Latino Americans compose 15% of the population.[5] Black Americans are the largest racial minority, composing nearly 13% of the population.[4][6] The White, not-Hispanic or Latino population comprises 66% of the nation's total.[5]

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Goldenboy219 said:

You are holding the funding needs constant; a flaw in your "statistical analysis" . The needs of inner city schools are different than suburban schools on the basis of literacy ages, after school demand, etc.... Therefore, i stand behind my statement of underfunding because of the differentials between child development, parent involvement, crowding, etc....

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So you are saying that black children are inherently more expensive to educate than white children? Interesting.

No Way! The white folks are still holding non-lily white skinned peeps down:3oops:

Hatuey said:

Race and ethnicity in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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White Americans (non-Hispanic/Latino and Hispanic/Latino) are the racial majority, with an 80% share of the U.S. population

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thanks for backing up what I said. so I was a tad off. 8 out of 10 times you are white if you are an american and 13% of the pop is black instead of 12%...sue me.
The basic premise is still valid. Since blacks make up only 13% of the US population why should they make up more than 13% of the power positions?

digsbe said:

Are blacks paid less based on race? No.

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BW Online | July 14, 2003 | For Blacks, Progress without Parity

But the gains for blacks turned out to be more fragile than anyone realized. Since the stock market bubble burst in March, 2000, black unemployment has soared to nearly 11%, double that of whites. And it's not just less skilled blacks who got hurt. In 2002, the number of employed black managers and professionals fell, with much of the decline coming in financial services, where McKenna used to work. Meanwhile, the number of employed white managers and professionals continued to rise, including in financial services. "Blacks have been disproportionately hit," says Harvard Business School professor David Thomas.

Taking the last 10 years as a whole, the data reveal a surprising -- and distressing -- fact: Despite the biggest economic boom in 30 years, black Americans closed little, if any, of the gap with whites on important measures of economic success. Average black household income gained slightly, going from 63.4% of white household income in 1991 to 64.9% in 2001, the last year available. Black men earned 73.9% of what white men earned in 2002, measured by median full-time wages and salaries. That's barely up from 73.4% a decade ago. Black female earnings actually lost a bit of ground over the same period, compared with those of white women.

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I could make a counter example and point out all the black athletes that make millions.

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You could and you'd have at most about 60-80 total.

There is a disproportionate amount of black people on sports teams (especially the NFL and NBA).

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And this is attributed to biological factors which make blacks able to play sports better. How do you explain paying a white guy more for the same job a black guy does?

Blacks in Sports: The Darwinian Race, Page 2 of 4 - Associated Content - associatedcontent.com

Even in major league baseball, a sport that is of little interest to young, black, urban, youth, still contains a 10% Black population, and a 31% Latino decent population, and Latinos can be considered to be of African descent. There is also a study performed by the Journal of National Cancer Institute that says Blacks contain anywhere from 3 to 19 percent more testosterone that Whites, which may explain the propensity for Blacks to be apparently more athletic. But what can account for this increase in testosterone, and overall athletic ability?

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How many black people have run for president? Just one.

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That is false. Alan Keyes, Jesse Jackson, Sharpton, the list goes on.

If we really want to scrutinize, we could say blacks have a 100% success rate when it comes to presidential elections. How can an oppressed minority group be elected by the populace to the most powerful position in our country?

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No. We can't. Not a single black politician before Obama regardless of race had ever even been considered for a party nomination. Seriously, pick up a history book. I'll make you look foolish.

Are Asians a privileged majority?

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They are only a majority in Asia. So I have no clue what it is you're talking about.

They make more than whites (and everyone else).

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In Asia? Yes. So what? Learn what sociological advantages are before you get back into this conversation. It's ridiculous that you even think that Obama is the first black person to run for president or that comparing sports, which make up a negligible percentage of the U.S. workforce are even relevant to this conversation.

OscarB63 said:

thanks for backing up what I said. so I was a tad off. 8 out of 10 times you are white if you are an american and 13% of the pop is black instead of 12%...sue me.
The basic premise is still valid. Since blacks make up only 13% of the US population why should they make up more than 13% of the power positions?

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No. It's not. White-Hispanic =/= White. Your reading comprehension is lacking.

Catz Part Deux said:

So you are saying that black children are inherently more expensive to educate than white children? Interesting.

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No, i am saying poor children are.