You do absolutely nothing because affirmative action is just fine as it is.

Excuse me?

That's like saying credentials don't mean sh*t anymore as long as you have black skin or a small bank account.

You have got to be kidding me.

No you don't have to black. You can be white. But just make sure you're hispanic.

Anyway. Affirmative action:

How are your SAT IIs? I know one kid from my entire county that was admitted to Yale this year -- and he had SIX perfect SAT IIs, and a 1600. Do you really show a LOVE for learning? Over 80% of Ivy League students nowadays have attended university-level summer programs at least one year (I've attended for three). That's the most important thing to most colleges -- they want to see that you are passionate about what you do. Teacher recommendations, etc.

Affirmative action is rapidly losing public support ... by showing that non-affirmative action people graduate at the TOP of their college classes, while affirmative action people graduate at the bottom (or drop out), it becomes obvious that affirmative action hurts those its supposed to help.

It's better to be Valedictorian at Penn State than ranked in the bottom 10% at Yale.

And affirmative action is good because...?



Quite true, and good point.

Because it ensures that there is diversity in schools.

A homogenous school is a boring one.

No, it ensures that credentials are less considered next to race, social status, sexual preference, etc.

In a nutshell, it screws over the people that deserve to be there, and helps those that don't. No matter what race, gender, sexual preference you claim, as long as you're worthy to be attending Harvard Law, I applaud you.

But if you weaseled your way into a prestigious school with something so petty as sexual preference as your ticket, you disgust me.

talking about the homeless... Homeless to Harvard is on.. its an okay movie but eh, ill watch it... after that...

some homeless may have a good life.. some dont. it happens.

And an overly diverse school is a politically correct and censored one, where it becomes VERY difficult for people to actually discuss ideas.

Brown is the most diverse of the Ivies. They have the strongest affirmative action program. Once, a student published an editorial in the school daily newspaper that was against slave reparations. So severla minority groups decided to steal many copies of hte paper and throw them into Providence Bay. In that case, having too much diversity hurt the school by silencing dissenting opinion.

The REAL goal of diversity is to bring a diversity of ideas to campus. Being a different race DOES NOT MEAN you have different ideas, or will contribute more to diversity. After all, what is a "black" opinion on the Fundamental Theroem of Calculus as opposed to a "white" opinion?

Because teh goal is to have many different ideas floating around, this goal is COMPLETELY destroyed by political correctness and campus speech codes -- which are lobbyied for mostly be affirmative action students, many of whom have a hard time tolerating other people disagreeing with them (the student at Brown who wrote the anti-slave reparations article was officially labelled a racist by many student organizations, even though very few sane people outside of Brown support slave reparations [and even if there were reparations, they would come out to less than $100 per person, as I have demonstrated mathematically in another thread]). You also have to remember that students admitted on affirmative action tend NOT to have as many intellectual experiences as their colleagues (if they did, they wouldn't need affirmative action).

Finally, going out of your way to create racial diversity creates a non-issue -- race -- which begins to take precedence over REAL issues and REAL discussion. This is the idea behind uniforms at high schools -- By having a uniform dress code, you actually PROMOTE diversity, because instead of focusing on clothes, people focus on ideas (I've attended a public high school w/ no dress code, and a private high school with a dress code -- I will say for a fact that I felt my private high school was more diverse and I felt more comfortable speaking out there).

Thus, affirmative action REDUCES the amount of different ideas circulating across a campus. It makes colleges more multicolored, but less diverse.

Trust me, you'll learn a lot more about life by going to a racially diverse school as opposed to a homogenous one.

And no it does not reduce the amount of ideas reduced. I go to a very diverse high school, and everybody there gains from that whether they like it or not.

If someone doesn't like something, then how did he gain from it?

Race is social fiat ... It's a non-issue that peopel use to avoid discussing the real issues. All I'd learn is that there are people who use non-issues to cloud real issues, and that society somehow sends them to good universities through AA.

You haven't addressed my argument except with an allegory... but let's say you're right. Let's say I do learn more at a racially diverse school.

Even if that's true, I'd rather GET IN to a homogenous school than get rejected at a racially diverse one. Wouldn't you?

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Ah and one more thing: Back in the 1970s, when there was no affirmative action in the Ivies, and the Ivies were primarily white, a higher percentage of Ivy League graduates went on to top medical and law fields (Harvard's Class of 1980 had 27% entering law school... compared to only 15% in the Class of 2003).

Today, now that we DO have racial diversity at the Ivies, FEWER members of their graduating classes end up at top graduate fields. The Ivies haev the MOST affirmative action of any school (Harvard's acceptance rate for white students is 11%, and its acceptance rate for black students is 35%). If racial diversity REALLY helped a school, you'd expect MORE of the students to be successful, not less.

In 1960s before the Ivy League affirmative action craze, the schools where students made the most money in their first jobs were Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Today those schools are MIT, CalTech, and U-Cal Berkeley. At none of those schools is there a strong affirmative action program, whereas the affirmative action programs are very strong at the Ivy League schools.

The percentage of black people at Dartmouth is 9% ... compared to 0.7% for all of New Hampshire (i.e. there are THIRTEEN times more black students at Dartmouth than there should be, if the school accurately reflected the society). If the goal of affirmative action was to represent a cross section of society in its schools ... white students should get affirmative action. Likewise, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, and Brown all have higher percentages of black people than the cities they are in. The only Ivies where blacks are underrepresented compared to the local city are Yale, Columbia, and Penn, and even then it is close at Yale and Penn.

Here's detailed statistics, proving that African-Americans are in fact OVERREPRESENTED at the Ivy League schools --> College numbers are from the colleges themselves, state numbers from the US Census Bureau:

*Remember that plus or minus 25% is within statistical margin of error

African-Americans at Dartmouth: 9%
African-Americans in New Hampshire: 0.7%
Status: African-Americans overrepresented by 1186% (Whites should get AA alot)

African-Americans at Brown: 6%
African-Americans in Rhode Island: 4%
Status: African-Americans overrepresented by 67% (Whites should get AA)

African-Americans at Harvard: 8%
African-Americans in Massachusetts: 5%
Status: African-Americans overrepresented by 60% (Whites should get AA)

African-Americans at Cornell: 5%
African-Americans in Upstate New York: 5%
Status: African-Americans representation ideal (Nobody should get AA)

African-Americans at Yale: 8%
African-Americans in Connecticut: 10%
Status: African-Americans underrepresented by 20% (Nobody should get AA)

African-Americans at Columbia: 9%
African-Americans in New York: 15%
Status: African-Americans underrepresented by 40% (Blacks should get AA)

African-Americans at Penn: 6%
African-Americans in Pennsylvania: 10%
Status: African-Americans underrepresented by 40% (Blacks should get AA)

African-Americans at Princeton: 8%
African-Americans in New Jersey: 14%
Status: African-Americans underrepresented by 42% (Blacks should get AA)

African-Americans are actually OVERREPRESNETED at half of the IVies ... certainly not disadvantaged.

Well racists for one won't enjoy the diversity, but they may learn some tolerance by the time they're done with school.

And by having diversity doesn't mean you have to discuss race. The point of diversity is to bring more diversity to a campus. What better way then to learn about a person and his or her background than by living with them? Someone who had a different experience growing up will have different ideas and provide a different side to an argument -- and the issue being argued doesn't have to be race, gender, sexuality, or religion. Different upbringings and different cultures cause people to have different ideas in everything -- in the food they eat, the way they dress, the music they listen to, and the things they value in life. You can learn A LOT from things like these. And I am not talking about learning more about astrophysics or other classroom ****, I mean things about life that many people miss out on.

Obviously the percentage of people who "succeed" in college will be lower today than 20 years ago. Just look around you. The frenzy over the college process that exists today did not exist 20 years ago. More people from more places, from both genders, and from more ethnic and financial backgrounds are applying to college today.

Well I can go to Downtown to learn about life for free. If I'm paying $40,000 a year to go to a top school, I expect to be with top people.

If MORE better people are applying to college there hsould be free market competition, thus the percentage of people who succeed after college should be HIGHER -- but it's not. Because of AA.

No, you can't. Where do live by the way? In a metropolitan area?

take this AA debate somewhere else please.

homeless people, yeah, i see them a lot in NYC. But one guy wanted money because he had a bubble machine and was blowing bubbles at people on the side walk. needless to say, I gave him nothing.

I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania... We have the third highest African-American percentage in the Northeast, next to Washington DC and New York City.

ok well, yesterdai me n mah momz went to a 711 n there wuz a homeless guy outsyde the store, n he wuz sittin there, all lonley, dirrty, n hungri prob. n actualli, yea i felt bad b/c i mean, he had no home, no muni, no food... i mean, wut if that wuz u sittin there? Cold, n lonely... no famili or frndz? how would u b?? i kno sumtymz it could b their own fault, but styll.. us wit the homez n the food n the famili that luvz n carez for us, we r all veri lucki to have wut we have.. if that wur u or me or sum1 we kno out there lyk that, how would u feel?? It would b sad, n upsettin, m i ryt? there should b a place for them homeless ppl to go to! I kno sumtymz u onli c older men that r homeless, but thynk about it, sumwhere out there, there iz also 5 year oldz, 1 monthz, n evn new bornz that r homeless.. crawlin rownd the cold grownd, in the dark dangerous streetz, surchin thru trashcanz for food n water... so yes, i feel bad for them...

Ashlyn

xanga XaNgA XANGA

I don't have a whole lot of muni either. Isn't that Latin for worlds?

huh wut? IDK!!!!!!!

ashlyn

i can voucher. Pittsburgh has an abundence of african americans.

i do feel bad for homeless people, kind of, but its also kind of is their own fault theyire homeless. all i know is i'm avoidong becomong homeless.

man i live in dc and its insane the amount of homeless we have is steadily increasing and its pretty high now. i remember in middle school the school next to us after school one certain days would serve food to the homeless ..we did that for countless school project and the sad thing was my school was near like 8 shelters each that serve their own clientel of homeless meaning that nobody in one shelter went to another..d.c is really bad and in the winter its heart renching. so many times have i walked down the street in a real cold winter and seen homeless people that look or are dead like in a park bench etc

I feel bad for SOME of them. Cuz some of them are really mean and stuff. There's a lotta homeless people in san francisco, cali where i live.

DC has issues...

wait its there fault? how can u sya that ? alot suffer from mental illnesses and drugs and alcohol i mean they may not have made the right choices but u cant just walk by them and go i would help u but its your fault. regardless of the circumstances you should feel sorry for all

the ones with mental disabilities are protected by liberal govt.. if it's because of drugs and alcohol they really had it coming to them, and i do help homeless people, foo. after stillbornfest i went to the O original hot dog shop and got a pizza and gave a piece to this homeless guy: Wayne. that is very different from saying "i would help but it's your fault."

Yes, my city (DC) has tons of homeless. A lot live around me (one county south of DC) and camp out in the woods, the homeless shelters are always full.

I try to donate often.. they're in a horrible situation..
Some homeless people have no chance of surviving, they have dropped out of high school and can't get a job, not even a bad one because the bad economy around here.

Even if you have made ALL the wrong choices, the fact that the average person in poverty recieves $30,000 in government aid makes there no excuse to be homeless. Even if they don't have a job (mostly because of the minimum wage), they still have PLENTY of money -- unless they spend it all on drugs.

I have no sympathy for anyone who lives off money stolen from working Americans -- and neither should you.

why dont they just go out and get jobs .. THEN you wont feel bad

At times I do... But recently, in downtown of my city.... they cut down a tree because homeless people were dealing drugs around it... [shrugs] and they're always under the bridge.... What if they were sleeping under the bridge one day... and just kind of rolled into the water.... and a shark ate them? THEN WHAT? then they'll die and i don't have to see those bloody signs and i don't have to see them on the streetlights asking for MY money, I'm already POOR ENOUGH!! AND I don't have to see them strolling down the sidewalks with shopping carts and bags of random things= empty coke cans they can redeem for 5 cents... clothes from Goodwill, waterfront mission, salvation army... I personally believe... that they are just making the city look ugly why can't they just go live in a cave somewhere?

It's not that simple. When you go into a job interview, do they judge you on your appearance, posture, hygeine? They do, and a homeless person doesn't have the facilities, clothes, etc needed to look at least halfway acceptable. When you get a job, you also have to fill out papers - What are you going to do when you have to fill in the address?

for the address part.. you just write at what bridge u live under... lmfao im jk

but yeah... dont they have those places where they hang out and ppl come in looking for workers?

Well.. McDonald's is ALWAYS hiring... and they assign you a uniform... or they can be one of those people who stand on street corners with a sign for some stupid furniture store or something and wave at cars that go by...