The USA now has a large concentration of hispanics (14%) and asians (4%) who seem to be performing quite differently in society as a whole. Remember, most asians and hispanics come from immigrant families who came here more recently than blacks.

An admission dean at a good lawschool told me scores of asians in the LSAT were quite superior to whites and they had to limit the amount of asians who were admitted to diversity the student body.

I would love to see a full analysis of the different groups, not only white v. blacks. I have heard a lot of static and noise on this topic, I have rarely seen real data.

I am a firm believer in AA but I must admit I have a very low tolerance level to a fifth generation kid who complains and wants favors when another kid here as a second generation is working hard and getting good grades.

The Future of Racial Quotas: The Coming Diversity Crack-Up http://www.isteve.com/American_Conservative_Diversity_Crack-Up.htm

Quotable:

La Griffe Du Lions estimates of the monetary cost of AA to whites at $1,900 , by using IQ to estimate the hypothetical pre-tax income of people in an AA free world.
“Affirmative Action: The Robin Hood Effect”
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/robinhood.htm

But… he doesn’t

That is true, in one sense, that there are probably hundreds or thousands of white applicants who are more qualified than the black applicant who got in through affirmative action (i.e. as opposed to those who would have got in in a race-blind system).

Of course, in the fact of the matter is that not all of those more-qualified students would have been able to get in at the same time, so in reality it is not hundreds or thousands of whites who are exvluded.

In essence, Lind is saying that hundreds or thousands of whites who are rejected have test scores, etc. that would have got them in if they were black, and he is implying that they all would have gotten in if not for affirmative action. The statement is true, the implication is not.

That’s fine, as long as by “meaningful number” you mean “any”. If just one white student, or black student, or any other student, is denied access to anything because of race, then an act of racism has been committed.

“I have very little sympathy for someone, who in my Colorado context, would not go to college at all if they could not get into the University of Colorado, but could get into Metropolitan State College, but chose not to go because Metro State was less prestigious.”

Well then, I guess its a good thing that it is an education, rather than your sympathy that they seek.

“Community colleges in the state are even more liberal in their admissions policies.”

This comment would be funny if I didn’t think you were serious. It’s bad enough that your post suggests that white students victimized by AA should just accept admission to a lower-tier school. Now you bolster your argument by noting that community college is even easier to get into? Wow. Let me ask you, would you give this same advice to black students if they were forced to settle as a result of racism?

As far as I am aware, that the victim of a moral wrong can remediate some of the harm with work does not mitigate the moral wrong itself.

Almost every student with any meaningful chance of being admitted to a selective college, is capable of gaining admission rather easily, to a minimally selective four year degree granting institution.

In most states, there is at least one community college in the state which will admit any high school graduate, and from which four year colleges routinely accept transfer students who have completed two years of college level course work satisfactorily. Many states have at least one open admissions four year college (in Colorado, that would be Metro State).

Affirmative action in higher education is overwhelmingly an issue of institutional prestige and not access to education. White students impacted by affirmative action may end up at a school slightly less prestigious. Minority students who benefit from affirmative action typically end up at a school much more prestigious than they might otherwise have been admitted to. Access to education is really only implicated at the very bottom of the system.

It is not at all clear that affirmative action is preventing any meaningful number of white students from access to education at that lowest threshold.

I have very little sympathy for someone, who in my Colorado context, would not go to college at all if they could not get into the University of Colorado, but could get into Metropolitan State College, but chose not to go because Metro State was less prestigious.

Metro State admits anyone who has earned a GED, anyone who has graduated from high school and is twenty years of age or older, and anyone under twenty years old who has graduated from high school and has certain test scores or grade/test score combinations.

The test scores for those under age 20 who graduated from high school are an ACT English subscore of 18 or above and a reading subscore of 17 or above (or an SAT verbal score of 440 or above). The ACT scores are roughly at the 10th percentile.

The combined index for someone under age 20 who graduated from high school at Metro State allows consideration on an individual basis of someone with a 2.0 high school GPA and combined SATs of 930 (almost everyone guaranteed admission based on a combined index already qualifies on test scores alone).

Community colleges in the state are even more liberal in their admissions policies.

The only people potentially shut out of a four year college admission by affirmative action in Colorado are those who graduated from high school are in the bottom 10th of English language ability on standardized tests, who are also in roughly the bottom 10-20 percent of their graduating high school class and have non-verbal test scores that aren’t extraordinarily better than their English/verbal test scores. Sending these individuals to a four year college at a state expenses is questionable. Requiring them to spend a couple of years learning how limited their prospects are in the real world isn’t unreasonable.

“I just asked over at Alas If he had the figures for black admissions if there was no AA. I suspect it’s the the high SAT (and probably RICH) black ones who benefit.”

Curious about that myself….

Other parts are legacy AA’s (as Amp correctly points out, many of these are Anti-Semitic by origin and favored Whites), urban vs. rural AA, and all sorts of myriad factors (been a boy scout etc.) that affect admission in addition to pure test scores that “highly selective” colleges employ.

Whites do benefit from many selective measures, but given Amp opposes legacy AA, and AA for Whites* in general while supporting AA for Blacks, this claim:

it seems to me, is that it offers a really substantial benefit to blacks at a tiny cost to whites.

Is not supported by this data, and is dishonest to boot for him to claim that. Elimination of all AA would benefit of Asian-Americans and Jews most. Whites, as the data shows, not really that much. Which would be perfectly fine by me, btw.

* Like he admitted here in comment #15.

Ummmm…OK, so what I get from the above data is that it’s only the POOR white kids getting totally screwed.

Well, low SAT score kids, but yeah, that’ll mostly be the poor ones. I noticed that too.

I just asked over at Alas If he had the figures for black admissions if there was no AA. I suspect it’s the the high SAT (and probably RICH) black ones who benefit.

Sort of a reverse Robin Hood effect.

Also, looking at the numbers, we’re still left with a much higher admission rate for minorities than for whites. Still the very definition of institutionalized racism.

Ampersand: “Given the extremely modest nature of AA, my guess is that anyone who finds AA to be too extreme, would find any substantial program that helps blacks too much to ask for.”

Nice pre-emptive assumption. Forgive any typos I might be making, it’s just so damn hard to type with this white sheet on! Your guess is false, and silly. I’m all for AA – for poor PEOPLE. Besides, if, as so many pro-AA folks are prone to whimper, whites really are SOOOO rich and blacks are SOOOOO poor, then wouldn’t AA based on income (or, more accurately, regional per capita income) be somewhat of a de facto race-based program?