One of my friends visited Scripps College and photographed all of these fliers for us. I think they are very revealing about the kind of culture that many people want to instill on our 5-College campuses. In this case, they want to change the culture of Scripps College to be more racially and ethnically diverse. Notice how they use the nebulous phrase "bias-related incident" -- a phrase we've discovered means whatever its users want it to mean. It's newspeak for the P.C. police among us.
We've seen this kind of thinking at other colleges. Many people believe that ethnic diversity is the only form of diversity that is important. Janet Alexander has already examined this issue at Pitzer College where she recorded some of the more racial engineering schemes that Pitzer President Trombley is advocating.
What many on this side of the issue fail to understand is that when we make racial factors the overwhelming factor for admission, we rob individuals of their autonomy. We say that "Diversity" is an entirely subjective goal, while academic factors have some bearing in fact.
The notion that colleges should be representative or proportional to the races of the wider community is weak on its face. Do we force the college to make sure that it the racial composition is proportional to Los Angeles county, California, the U.S, North America, or the world?
Racial diversity, we know, is more important than political diversity. This group from Scripps College would never criticize the lack of conservative or libertarian thinkers at its campus and so we must presume that racial diversity is more important.
Notice the judgments made in the fliers. Somehow there is "inadequate" representation and there is presumably too much representation of "Korean," "Japanese," and "Chinese" students. Who decides what is adequate? If we admit a Korean student instead of a Malay student, are we making a political statement or are we simply assessing the applicants as individuals?
The implicit suggestion is that diversity is a numbers game and that we need to increase those numbers because a certain number of black or brown faces makes the community richer. As colleges are a zero-sum game and there are a finite number of seats when we decide to admit a group of students, when we make a decision over an arbitrary factor like race we hurt those students who worked hard in high school to pursue their dreams of attending Scripps College.
I reject that rationale for diversity for the same reason that I reject the rationales that Jews be kept out of our colleges of higher learning and that Asians ought to be denied entrance to many of our schools because of their overrepresented ethnicities.
I reject the racist view present on those fliers that what matters most is racial diversity and not the content of an individual's experiences and mind.
Scripps College deserves better.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
"Bias-Related" Incident Fliers Show Their True Colors
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17 comments:
You just couldn't resist, could you Charles. No more blog posts my ass.
"Diversity" as an academic end does not pass the laugh test.
Yet the posters might have a point if they mean to indicate that the small percentages would be much smaller if the school didn't discriminate racially.
Charles may have blogged before finals, but this one needed to be posted. there's obviously no context to these flyers (only 5 african americans scripps graduates in 2008? out of how many total? what if african american girls simply dont think the claremont colleges, or women's colleges? is that a "bias related incident?). As Charles points out, these flyers are silly with their vague "bias-related incident" headings - whose bias? how can you prove it? they flyers' authors cannot, so they stick a big headline on their so youre not allowed to question their conclusions. they need to be laughed off the tables they are put on - just like if i wrote "i am male and scripps didnt accept me based simply on that ground. Bias related incident" when it clearly was not. finally, charles makes the ultimate point when none of the flyers bemoans the diversity of thought on campuses, just people's skin color.
Maybe my joke wasn't too clear. I mean to suggest that if there is a definition of "bias-related incident," affirmative action is it.
Not that I have any problem w/ a private college being all male or female, but how can Scripps talk about diversity when they are a women's-only college? How is diversity in race nobler than diversity in gender or as Charles mentioned, political thought?
Also, is there an IPR infringement in the poster? They used the Scripps logo (and maybe even a SC letterhead) Does that constitute an official statement from the administration?
Ugh. You guys aren't even trying anymore, are you?
Oh well. Far be it from me to ignore low-hanging fruit.
It's not a helpful to simply wildly misstate the intended goal of the posters (or, for that matter, affirmative action). The posters never state that undeserving candidates should be given preferential treatment based on race. Now, I'm going to make this nice and bold, so it's easy to digest:
At many institutions of higher learning, and at many posts within those institutions, minorities are underrepresented. This underrepresentation is not due to an inherent inability of the groups to succeed, but rather institutional and social policy which impedes success. Therefore, traditional admissions metrics should be reexamined in light of disparate backgrounds and abilities to succeed.
You see? The issue isn't ignoring merit. It's being able to more effectively address underlying issues that might distort merit.
Unless a true meritocracy isn't what you want?
That being said, I do agree that the posters support an unnecessarily broad view of what constitutes an "incident", a view which does little to enhance their case and much to allow for semantical bantering.
Sorry Citizen X,
I'm just not with you on this one. You conclude based upon a lack of certain demographics that they must be underrepresented, but never tell us how. The very word underrepresented suggests that some groups are overrepresented. Would you care to list those groups for us?
Just because a certain group cannot hack a test doesn't mean that that test is discriminatory. It may just mean that that group cannot hack it.
I assume that you are referring to the SATs as one such traditional metric. Did you know that the SATs actually overpredicts how well African American students do?
Sure thing Chuck (can I call you Chuck? I'm just going to call you Chuck).
Caucasians have traditionally been overrepresented in the ranks of many colleges.
I should state now, for the record, that I think a strictly race-based approach to affirmative action is ineffective and unlikely to level the playing field. I think simply by examining extenuating circumstance, many of the racial imbalances will be righted without a need for quotas or points systems. It's also not some sort of panacea that will automatically fix the inequalities that necessitate it.
It's funny that you should mention the SAT. As both a Black person and somebody who makes a healthy part of his employment from the SAT, I have mixed views on its validity, especially since it can so easily be hacked.
However, that's not really what I was talking about. Ultimately, the SAT doesn't have nearly the significance that other factors do, the very biggest of which being the competitiveness of the high school you went to. Trust me when I say, the difference between a shitty NYC public school guidance counselor and the college advisors in private schools is immense.
Furthermore, things like "extra-curricular activities", "teacher evaluations" and even "grades" are extremely culturally dependent, and can vary wildly in quality from school to school.
Again, I'm not (and I don't think the poster is, explicitly) suggesting any sort overarching preference for people of any color. Just an admission that it's a very different experience for many underprivileged people, of which a disproportionate amount are colored.
I mean, of color. Isn't it funny how saying "people of color" is ok, but "colored people" is backwards?
Language, eh?
P.S. The same sort of cultural biases that are present on the SAT are reflected in the current racial breakdown of colleges. Affirmative action purports to solve the latter issue and, once again, give minority students an opportunity to learn in a conducive environment.
I'm glad we agree that affirmative action isn't the answer. Might we also agree that affirmative action is what guilty white liberals have set up so that they can excuse the national sin of failing school systems?
I've long maintained that the best way to educate America's (really anywhere's) students is through the use of school vouchers which would enable many of the poor people in those schools to leave and get the education they richly deserve. After all, poor people are taxpayers, too.
I don't think we're going to agree on the intent of the posters, though.
Those posters are making a clear indication that students and faculty with certain skin color and cultural background are more desired (by them at least) at Scripps College.
They aren't arguing, for instance, that x percentage of Scrippsies are on financial aid or have student loans. They are making their appeal based on skin color and making decisions as to what racial composition would be best for Scripps College.
As for your P.S., how do you explain how colleges that have eliminated SATs and just use SAT IIs or ACTs still have the same percentage of minority students?
As for the whole "people of color" comment, I take the position the George Carlin position. People of color are the kinds of people he sees when he's tripping on 'shrooms.
Affirmative Action isn't the answer, but I'm still in favor of a version of it. Until we can correctly ascertain the real solution, affirmative action has real, tangible benefit to minority populations and can help staunch the gaping wounds caused by our failing school systems. So while I don't think that adding an arbitrary number of colored people to each class is going to fix anything, I don't see what the problem with considering the very real cultural bias that led to disparate attendance in the first place.
The posters don't suggest a particular composition would be ideal, they simply suggest that the current composition is nonideal. There's a difference, which you're continually ignoring.
I think the posters are grossly simplifying a complicated issue. But you're in turn simplifying the posters, which is kind of ridiculous.
Nobody is suggesting that any current students should be kicked out. But for admittance policies in the future, a reflection of cultural background (of which race is a big part) would be helpful in having a representative student body.
Re: vouchers -- they sound good in theory, but what ends up happening is that the best students end up congregating in a small number of schools, which creates the same problem of stratification as before. You would have really really good schools and really really bad schools, which is basically the problem we have now, only more integrated economically.
I should clarify my P.S. : I didn't mean that the SAT caused a bias against any group in admittance rates, but rather that the same factors that cause some students to do poorly on the SAT cause them to do poorly in college, and that minority students could do better if colleges had a more representative student population.
Dear Citizen X,
We disagree about affirmative action, I guess.
There've been numerous studies that have shown that affirmative action ends up hurting some of our poorest and hardest working citizens who come predominantly from East Asian backgrounds. I think that's unacceptable so long as colleges continue to receive any form of federal aid.
You keep writing of cultural bias, but haven't yet said what a cultural bias is. Would you care to elaborate?
I'll concede that their current assumption is that the composition is nonideal. I assume they want to rectify it by adding more minorities to the mix. Of course, those minorities will only be the ones that they want to add, not the working poor.
You see college admissions is a zero-sum game. When you give a student a spot based upon a criteria other than merit, you rob another student of her placement.
You haven't explained to me what representative is yet, so how do we know we want something that is representative? We don't admit students that are mentally handicapped because we're an academic consortium. By your logic, we should. After all, you want the colleges to be representative.
Further, you're right that no one is suggesting we kick current students out. You're only suggesting that we keep future students out because they don't fit into the mold. They did that to the Jews in the '30s and I have no doubt that they'll look upon our current policies towards Asians in the future with the same kind of critical gaze.
As for your argument about vouchers, it happens to be one of the most common myths. Fortunately, it's easily refuted.
As Paul Peterson, Ph.D., who has
conducted a number of voucher evaluations, indicated in an interview with PBS’s Frontline program: We’ve looked for skimming in Cleveland. We've looked for it in San Antonio and we've looked at it in Washington and Dayton. And we
haven't found much evidence of
skimming. I call [it], maybe a little bit, instead of creaming, you get 2% milking—just a slight difference between those who take the voucher and those that don't—but, it's such a small difference that it should not be a major factor in whether or not you go ahead.
(You can read more of the most common myths about school vouchers here and here.)
On the SAT issue, I'd love to see where you got your numbers. I happen to favor getting rid of the SATs, but not the SAT IIs based upon research that I read in this article. They also found that the SATs actually overpredict for black students. Your facts just aren't right on whether or not the SAT IIs are good predictors of college work.
What are you talking about? I made no comment about whether SAT IIs were good predictors of college work. The argument goes (and I'm not entirely sure I buy this, but it has some interest): The SAT is culturally biased, but could lead to overprediction because colleges are even more culturally biased. That's it. Nothing about the SAT IIs, and you can see that the argument neatly explains the overprediction issue.
I don't think that they simply want to toss minorities in. The poster-ers simply want a greater fairness in the admissions standards, which would naturally lead to more minorities. Or so the logic goes. Again, let's be clear on how simplistic I think the posters are.
Ugh. Do we really have to go over this again? Affirmative action isn't about giving students places based on things other than merit. It's looking more holistically at a student's performance to determine how much merit they actually have. Unless you believe that blacks, poor people, Native Americans, or other underrepresented groups have less merit, inherently?
I agree that there are some lazy affirmative action systems that do more harm than good, but I see no reason to ignore cultural biases in college admissions. Like what you ask? Good question:
--Worse schooling. It's inarguable that majority groups have access to better schools with better materials.
--Worse college counseling.
--Less parental involvement. Fewer involved teachers and administrators; the best teachers flock to the best neighborhoods (with good reason), which puts the poor at a disadvantage.
--Women are still taught differently.
--If you don't think racism still exists, and still exerts pressure on all types of minority groups, you're willfully blind.
Do I really have to prove that it's more difficult to excel academically as a minority than it is as part of a majority group?
The voucher issue suffers from a lack of quantifiable research; A relatively small percentage of parents took advantage of them, and thus they didn't actually offer up a solution to the education problem.
A greater fairness in admissions standards? Who gets to decide that? How will that naturally lead to more minority students? When you say fairness, I hear quotas.
The whole "holistic" argument is the very same that was used to keep the "greasy grinds" of Jews out of college. You're just rehabilitating the argument to help various desirable minority groups.
Further, I see no evidence that only minority groups have access to those good attributes of schooling. There are, as you know, more poor whites in this country than their are blacks.
You are attacking a symptom of a cause rather than the cause itself and had you read the documents (or listened to the video I liked up), you would know that many blacks are actually changing sides in the school choice debate and the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of the school choicers. You've parrotted a lot of the more common myths, so I definitely recommend you check it out.
In D.C., for instance, we spend the most money per student and those students tend to be mostly black and yet their test scores have decreased with time, not increased.
As for your argument that its harder to do well if you are a minority, many different groups would disagree. African immigrants, Asian immigrants, Jews, and Cubans all do well despite the fact that they face huge obstacles coming to a new country and yet their children have higher rates of high school graduation.
What you've said about vouchers, by the way, just isn't true. There has been reams of evidence on the issue.
Charles, c'mon now. Simply because some groups do well doesn't mean it isn't harder. Racism isn't even a question. Can you ignore the very real legacy of slavery?
I'm not quite sure why you're ignoring my entire argument, but I suppose it has something to do with a lack of reading comprehension skills. Allow me to work some Control + C magic:
Affirmative Action isn't the answer, but I'm still in favor of a version of it. Until we can correctly ascertain the real solution, affirmative action has real, tangible benefit to minority populations and can help staunch the gaping wounds caused by our failing school systems.
No more straw men buddy. I've never said I was in favor of quotas. And the people that decide would be the same people that are deciding now.
How would it lead to greater diversity? Allow me to elucidate, my easily confused friend:
I happen to believe that no ethnic or economic group is inherently better than another. You might disagree. If institutions of higher learning were completely fair in their assessment of applicants, their numbers would be roughly representative of the population as a whole. See? No quotas needed. I'm not suggesting that there has to be a given number of any group. I wouldn't care if a school was completely white, if the admissions process was sufficiently thorough.
I do wish you would stop ascribing me beliefs I don't espouse. When did I ever suggest that we should just throw money at the issue?
I read the article. It was unpersuasive. And, praytell, why should it matter whether Blacks are changing sides in the debate? I don't base my personal policies on the weekly "Things Black People Like" newsletter.
I can sum up your cognitive dissonance in your own phrase:
When you say fairness, I hear quotas.
I.e. you don't listen .
Just to be clear, those weren't official or anything. And none of the crap listed there qualifies for the school's definition of a bias-related incident. (Basically, something that would legally classify as a hate crime, except for the caveat that no crime actually occurred. Writings on whiteboards are great examples of this. Not really vandalism, but if it had been in permanent marker on a wall -- the crime -- and would have been a hate crime, then it's a bias-related incident.
Fliers like this piss me off because they detract from the bias related incidents that do happen, just because someone thought it was a catchy phrase.
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