Mary-Frances Winters, president of The Winters Group and author of ONLY WET BABIES WANT TO CHANGE: WORKPLACE WISDOM FOR BABY BOOMERS, announces in her USA Today OpEd that
I’m a proud “affirmative-action baby.” Without it, I would not have gained entry in 1969 to the University of Rochester in New York. My grades were OK, but my SAT scores were well below the university’s average. Many of the SAT questions were simply irrelevant for me as an African-American, and my parents couldn’t afford to send me to classes to help boost my score. Thanks to affirmative action, I now not only call the university my alma mater, but I became its first African-American female trustee in 1987.
Not only did affirmative action pave my own way to a high-quality education that enables me to contribute to society in important ways, but it also allowed me to support my children in achieving their own potential. (Both, needless to say, went to the kind of SAT classes I couldn’t take; my son now is working on his doctorate, and my daughter has degrees in computer science and electrical engineering.)
She does not say whether or not her son and daughter were admitted to their programs because of affirmative action.
The fact — undisputed so far as I know — that the beneficiaries of racial preferences benefit from racial preferences hardly seems to be a strong argument in their favor. In fact, it’s not an argument at all.
Are racial preferences fair? Ms. Winters benefited.
Did Ms. Winters deserve to benefit more that the person whose place she took? Ms. Winters benefited.
Is it legal to distribute benefits and burdens on the basis of race? Ms. Winters benefited.
Here’s the closest thing to an argument in the piece:
If we lived in a perfect world, affirmative action might not be necessary, but today inclusion still rarely happens naturally. If after screening candidates, there is no racial and/or ethnic diversity among those selected — be it by a college or business — something’s amiss, and we should ask why. If 20% of the pool is diverse, then the acceptance rate should approach 20%. Is that a quota? I think not. Just the law of averages.
I like that comment, “If 20% of the pool is diverse….” If that pool were all black, would it be diverse?
Question of the moment: will the Bush Administration call upon the Supreme Court to enforce the “law of averages,” or the law?
Oh, please! What questions in 1969 were so strange to her? I grew up on a ranch in Montana, got great scores and went to an Ivy League school–and I sure didn’t take an enrichment classes–were there such things in the early 70s? But I read books–and went to the local library a great deal. She’s a fake!
“If 20% of the pool is diverse [meaning non-white], then the acceptance rate should approach 20%. Is that a quota? I think not. Just the law of averages.”
This is a common argument, but it is wrong even mathematically. It would make sense only if people were random events, which they are not. Anyone who seriously believed this would insist that 80% of every basketball team should be non-diverse (white).
The answer seems to be hidden in the previous sentence:
Note that she says “something’s” amiss, but doesn’t identify what that “something” is. Maybe the applicant pool is skewed by affirmative action itself, which strongly encourages unqualified and underqualified minorities – but not their white or Asian counterparts – to apply in the first place.
Those math questions always discriminate against minorities. Pie’R’Squared don’t mean nothin’ in the ‘hood.
“the SAT questions were simply irrelevant for me as an African-American”
This is crap. The example I heard when I took SAT’s related to an analogy referencing canoes. The explanation was that blacks had less interaction with canoes than whites and therefore the question was culturally biased.
However, I (white) had never seen a canoe and managed to get the questions correct. How did I manage such an amazing feat? I read the assigned literature! If we decide that reading is culturally biased, we might as well go all the way and pronounce education culturally biased as well.
While I suspect there are many reasons for a racial achievement gap, I believe the one least discussed is motivation. An entire generation of black students has grown up listening to political leaders like Al Sharpton tell them it’s ok not to try.
A huge part of education is learning about things you’ve never directly experienced. It’s called broadening your horizons. I happen to know a certain amount of things about Antarctica but like, I’ve never been there.
Why did the college accept an underqualified student any way ? Are those liberal democrats pushing them to do so ? If so why are they trying to bring downfall to my future ? age 16