Update II (11/29): Hard truth #101 (free reg. req.): “To ensure diversity among new associates, the study found, elite law firms hire minority lawyers with, on average, much lower grades than white ones. That may, the study says, set them up to fail.”
Regardless of what anyone reading this blog thinks about me or why I write about preferences, “diversity” is code for “lowering the bar to admit and hire black people.”
There just aren’t enough blacks competitive with whites to go around, so in order to meet some elusive skin color goal, businesses and government must lower hiring and admissions standards for blacks. (Lowering standards for all would be impractical, not to mention detrimental.) This is fact, not opinion. Black affirmative action proponents know this, and they also know that race-neutral policies will not work to their benefit, at least not in the short run. It has nothing to do with white people “oppressing” or “discriminating” against them.
What’s the solution? It may sound simplistic, but I believe reversing the trend of fatherlessness in the black community, focusing on education (and enduring the attendant sacrifices to make it a top priority in practice, not just in theory), and quashing all tendencies to blame white people for anything would be ideal places to begin.
Later…Commenter and blogger Thomas Nguyen writes in the comment section:
It’s clear just from the tenor of this debate that multiculturalism is as divisive as ever. The assimilation model that America had before all these “isms” worked wonderfully for all Americans.
America is an idea sown together by a common language and a common reverence for two revolutionary documents – The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. All who immigrate and live in America are free to have these ideas imbued in their hearts and minds.
Multiculturalism and their concomitant ideologies say that differences are more important than what we all hold in common. It is the poison of this age that insists on being different, when to be fully human is to acknowledge and take delight in finding commonality, that is, having affinity and empathy for you fellow man.
Update: Blogger Ed, who says he’s half Korean, writes:
“Frankly I think the black community is overly fixated on race as an issue instead of actually concentrating on fixing problems. And I think the whole race issue tends to lead blacks towards infantilism where failure isn’t really their fault, it’s the ‘Man’ who did it…I know a black guy who works as a supervisor for a large railroad. Makes over $80k a year, great benefits, fully paid pension, etc. And yet this guy looks me in the face and sobs out that he feels oppressed. Oppressed?!”
I think I know that guy. 
Education blogger Joanne Jacobs writes: “Apparently, academic excellence makes students of Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Korean and Hmong ancestry un-diverse.”
——————————————————————–
(Is it safe to assume that people of Asian descent read this blog? If so, I’d love to have your feedback on this post.)
I read the following line in this article, and almost laughed myself brain dead:
Diversity in the classroom has a tremendous impact on helping with students’ critical thinking and social skills…
I know for a fact that statement is BS. In the classrooms I’ve sat in, the worship of so-called diversity tended to stifle the debate, not enhance it. It’s difficult to develop critical thinking skills if you can’t discuss all sides of an issue. It wasn’t so much that different races couldn’t or didn’t get along, but too-sensitive people basically ran the classroom.
The emphasis on skin color for its own sake and the annoying and mind-numbing politically correct tip-toeing got on my nerves even when I was a liberal. I can’t imagine what it’s like these days as a conservative in college, where you can’t say a darn thing that’s negative about any race other than white without being called a racist.
Let’s define “critical thinking.” It is the cognitive process of “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.” Now use your critical thinking skills to conceptualize, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate this: Discussing negative aspects of “diversity” in general or racial groups in particular is taboo, unless the racial group is white, so how does one develop critical thinking skills if one can’t discuss and evaluate topics that may be offensive to some? How does one “reach an answer or conclusion” with incomplete and “undebated” information? It’s difficult to develop critical thinking skills when discussions with even a hint of negativity about race are taboo.
At this point you may be asking, “La Shawn, why would people need to discuss negative aspects of racial groups? Why is it relevant, and what does it have to do with developing critical thinking skills?”
Skin color diversity-obsessed folks talk incessantly about race and promote it every chance they get. But if you’re going to promote skin color and “cultural” distinctions among students yet discourage them from talking about all aspects of race and culture, for example, what’s the point?
There isn’t supposed to be a point. That’s the point. Critical thinking, as defined by liberals, is what they want you to think; hence, thought control through speech codes. Critical thinking is acknowledging the sins of white people in particular and America in general. Period.
Back on Topic!
You know what? Asians as a non-preferred minority was the original topic of this post (check out the title), but I got sidetracked by that asinine “critical thinking skills” line.
Ten years ago this month, the people of California voted out government racial preferences. Since considering the race of applicants is now illegal, colleges have had to rely on race-neutral factors like grades and test scores. But once again we read about Asians excelling and blacks and hispanics getting left behind. The question asked is will Asian-Americans one day make up a majority of students at the University of California? Thanks to race-neutral admissions, YES. An excerpt:
Asian-Americans – 14.1 percent of California’s 2005 high school graduating class – make up 41.8 percent of the freshman class at UC campuses, up from 36 percent a decade ago.
Meanwhile, blacks at 3 percent and whites at 32.2 percent make up smaller shares of UC’s freshman class than they did previously. Latinos account for 16.3 percent of UC freshmen, up from 13 percent a decade ago, but still less than half their 36.5 percentage of state high school graduates.
Whites also make up a lesser percentage of students at UC than they did 10 years ago, but they’re not a minority (or are they???), so they don’t count.
Relying on the all-too-typical method of increasing “minority” enrollment — lowered standards — an academic in the UC system says that the school should consider the hysterically inane “leadership” factor, euphemism for “lower grades and test scores.”
Hope Springs Ephemeral!
It is my HOPE that one day, black Americans as a group will excel academically the way non-preferred minorities do. The first thing blacks will need to do as a community is push marriage back to the top of the must-do list. While unstable families don’t cause academic failure, the two are highly correlated. I believe people who get married before they have children have a somewhat different value system than people who don’t, and an emphasis on education — the need to give their child a good start in life, cultivate a love for learning, etc. — is one of those values. People who don’t comprehend the need for two parents in a household and/or strive to achieve it don’t put much stock in academic excellence. Well, perhaps they do in theory, but not in practice.
I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent, but I’d still like to hear from Asian readers on the large percentage of Asian students at schools like UC.
Addendum: An Asian student files suit against Princeton for alleged discrimination. From the article:
The complaint, which was filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on Oct. 25, alleges that the University’s admissions procedures are biased because they advantage other minority groups, namely African-Americans and Hispanics, legacy applicants and athletes at the expense of Asian-American applicants.
And this is especially important:
Li cites a recent study conducted by two Princeton professors as evidence for his case. The study, published in June 2005, concluded that removing consideration of race would have little effect on white students, but that Asian students would fill nearly four out of every five places in admitted classes that are currently taken by African-American or Hispanic students.
Is Reconstruction nearing an end?
(Photo credit: SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune)
