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Topic	Justice Department to take on affirmative action in college applications
legendary_zell 08/02/17 3:18:00 AM #90:	Transcendentia posted... legendary_zell posted... People can overcome all of this, but it's rare and relatively difficult because things are NOT equal and it is NOT a meritocracy out there. I personally was lucky enough to switch to a more "competitive high school, and get good test scores, but I could have done significantly better if my parents had more money. There would be no change in my actual intelligence, but I would appear to have more "merit". But because of their income, no reliable car, crappy middle school and high school, no prep classes, no extracurricular that required money, etc. AA based on race and class accounts for this. I see your anecdote and raise mine - I went to a crappy Chicago Public School on the south side of Chicago. Only white kid there. My parents never had a lot of money while I was growing up because they immigrated to America. No reliable car, crappy middle school, no prep classes, no extracurriculars. I turned out okay. Finished college, happily employed. Took a lot of hard work though. And discipline. Rather than a defeatist victim attitude. legendary_zell posted... Blindly taking the so called "best applicant" ignores all of this and the factors that contribute to these inequalities. It perpetuates those inequalities and justifies them further and further with each acceptance and rejection letter. Haha what? Yep, we've definitely had this exact conversation before. My core message is that a non-defeatist attitude is no substitute for a fair system. Yes, you were able to make it out, but the gate was incredibly narrow for you to do so, unnecessarily so. You had to run a gauntlet. A lot had to go right for you to make it considering your circumstances. If your parents lost their jobs or got sick, you're probably not here. You could have been shot or put into juvi for defending yourself in a fight. On the other hand, even though you're happy with your success and you should be, an alternate you with more resources, maybe your success would have been multiplied even though you're still in possession of the same brain. Again, I'm not opposed to hard work. I'd tell everyone to work hard and say that hard work is generally necessary for success, but focusing on that or not having a "victim attitude" and ignoring the systemic issues that overwhelmingly decide who succeeds and fails is unhelpful and short sighted. It turns the highly contextualized lives of high school students into a context less series of outputs (GPA, SAT, ACT) and a morality play about whether they "worked hard enough". Meanwhile, a student living in a housing project with lead in the paint, mud, and water and attending a dangerous, crappy, and de-facto segregated school, in a de-facto segregated neighborhood is told to just work harder and get better grades if he wants to go to a good college. Maybe he could, but that's not the real issue. That's his chance to get out and there's obstacles in his way that must be acknowledged under any fair system. You get what I'm saying? --- http://i.imgur.com/0Bi86cp.gif <cite>legendary_zell posted [p:884033949] in Justice De... [t:75628558]...</cite> <quote><cite>Transcendentia posted...</cite> <quote><cite>legendary_zell posted...</cite> <quote>People can overcome all of this, but it's rare and relatively difficult because things are NOT equal and it is NOT a meritocracy out there. I personally was lucky enough to switch to a more "competitive high school, and get good test scores, but I could have done significantly better if my parents had more money. There would be no change in my actual intelligence, but I would appear to have more "merit". But because of their income, no reliable car, crappy middle school and high school, no prep classes, no extracurricular that required money, etc. AA based on race and class accounts for this.</quote> I see your anecdote and raise mine - I went to a crappy Chicago Public School on the south side of Chicago. Only white kid there. My parents never had a lot of money while I was growing up because they immigrated to America. No reliable car, crappy middle school, no prep classes, no extracurriculars. I turned out okay. Finished college, happily employed. Took a lot of hard work though. And discipline. Rather than a defeatist victim attitude. <cite>legendary_zell posted...</cite> <quote>Blindly taking the so called "best applicant" ignores all of this and the factors that contribute to these inequalities. It perpetuates those inequalities and justifies them further and further with each acceptance and rejection letter.</quote> Haha what?</quote> Yep, we've definitely had this exact conversation before. My core message is that a non-defeatist attitude is no substitute for a fair system. Yes, you were able to make it out, but the gate was incredibly narrow for you to do so, unnecessarily so. You had to run a gauntlet. A lot had to go right for you to make it considering your circumstances. If your parents lost their jobs or got sick, you're probably not here. You could have been shot or put into juvi for defending yourself in a fight. On the other hand, even though you're happy with your success and you should be, an alternate you with more resources, maybe your success would have been multiplied even though you're still in possession of the same brain. Again, I'm not opposed to hard work. I'd tell everyone to work hard and say that hard work is generally necessary for success, but focusing on that or not having a "victim attitude" and ignoring the systemic issues that overwhelmingly decide who succeeds and fails is unhelpful and short sighted. It turns the highly contextualized lives of high school students into a context less series of outputs (GPA, SAT, ACT) and a morality play about whether they "worked hard enough". Meanwhile, a student living in a housing project with lead in the paint, mud, and water and attending a dangerous, crappy, and de-facto segregated school, in a de-facto segregated neighborhood is told to just work harder and get better grades if he wants to go to a good college. Maybe he could, but that's not the real issue. That's his chance to get out and there's obstacles in his way that must be acknowledged under any fair system. You get what I'm saying? --- http://i.imgur.com/0Bi86cp.gif</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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