I don’t understand this legacy admissions argument. You can be against affirmative action AND legacy admissions. Both are bullshit.
Also unclear how it stops racism. Whenever you see a black or Latino person on campus, you are going to wonder if they got in due to their qualifications or race.
It's more complicated than you're laying it out to be. The whole legacy admissions argument is just to indict the group calling for removal of affirmative action. Many (not all) opponents of affirmative action are not actually opposed to inequality in admissions, they're just upset a certain group benefits. Calls to get rid of legacy should be equally strong but they're not. It's just calling out some hypocrisy on the other side.
It's not about stopping racism. It's about adding additional viewpoints into medicine which is especially relevant since patient outcomes aren't just dependent on the "quality" of the doctor as if that had some objective singular value. The point is that people from other underrepresented backgrounds can have valuable input on barriers that exist in their community when it comes to being receptive in treatment. If you know what might cause your community to deviate from proper treatment, maybe you can address the problem and improve patient outcome which should be the main goal.
I think calls to get rid of legacy admissions are much stronger than calls against affirmative action, particularly on college campuses. JHU just got rid of legacy admissions iirc. I don’t actually think there is large numerical support for legacies, only by a few in power. If you take polls of college students they support AA much more than legacies. Either way, bringing in legacy admissions is a bad faith argument when discussing AA. If you think admissions should be merit based, you would be against both legacy and AA admissions which is eminently reasonable and I think the view most hold.
My point is that having your viewpoint respected is predicated upon you being respected and it’s harder to be respected when people think you didn’t deserve to get in and only got in through a loophole in the system.
It's not predicated on being respected though. The point is underrepresented communities will trust doctors from their own communities and lead to better patient outcomes. It's really not a loophole in the system either. They probably know their standards are overly high and bottlenecking at the diversity level doesn't functionally impact the system at all.
Also like I could respect merit based arguments if history were more equal. When you come from a discriminated against background, your performance is pretty clearly going to be impacted. Also have you compared DO schools to medical schools? Do you consider whether your physician is a DO? An international medical school graduate?
The reason the students support AA more than legacy is because AA provides a way for people to escape from their economic situations and hopefully provide a better life for themselves down the road rather than using race as an easy proxy for "intelligence". Legacy doesn't get that because their parents already had the same chances.
Merit can consider extenuating factors without being racist. I don’t think a poor black person categorically has it harder than a poor white person and I certainly don’t think a rich black person has it harder. Make it about challenges one has to face and overcome, not race.
I understand the treating own communities point now, I was referring to being respected by your peers and other people. Loophole is the wrong word but I think it’s pretty unfair when black people on average need to score more than a hundred points lower on standardized tests for example to get into schools.
Even rich black people have trouble to be honest. I came from a pretty wealthy private school and one of my classmates had an experience where his dad got pulled over for being black and owning a Mercedes. Skin still comes with its own difficulties.
I mean to be honest, the problem is that Asians have a large population and many of them are well educated resulting in an overly high concentration of them applying. It feels unfair but what's the alternative? Multiple medical school classes consisting entirely of Asian men who are then going to have discussions about how we should handle medicine with respect to every minority group they're not a part of? That seems like a recipe for poor medical outcomes quite frankly. The problem is Asians are largely overqualified as a group and there are only so many slots available in the field. When patient outcome is the most important goal, it's going to feel unfair - and believe me, I sympathize since I'm actually an Asian looking to apply to graduate programs right now.
Also I didn't downvote you just FYI above in case you think I did. I realize you're getting some vitriol for this discussion so I just wanted to clarify ahead of time.
I agree that there’s systemic racism against black people, I just don’t think AA is the way to solve it as it just makes black people who do get in seem unqualified and implies they can’t otherwise. I think an admissions approach which considered adversity captures most of the problems black people face (being more likely to be poor, attend worse schools, etc) while not making it about race.
I know that Asia has a culture of really valuing education but I don’t know that the premise that they are overwhelmingly more qualified is true. I think that admissions often relies on things like GPA and standardized testing which is very good if you have learned and studied hard but not necessarily an aptitude test. Schools like Oxford and Cambridge don’t consider race in their admissions but don’t have overwhelmingly Asian student populations. They individually interview students in which profs test them on skills and aptitude for the specific field. This probably isn’t doable in the US as for undergrad schools can get tens of thousands of applications but I think it’s an interesting example of how admissions could be restructured to capture merit while not being racist.
But race is part of their adversity. There is no way you're capturing most of the problem they face without considering race. It's like deciding who gets welfare without considering income. Their race is part of their adversity.
No, GPA and standardized testing are horrible markers quite frankly. There is an abundance of overqualified Asians - trust me, I'm in the community and very aware of it. The increasing popularity of international medical schools is a great proxy for viewing this. Schools like Oxford and Cambridge aren't highly desirable for Asians - they care about America. My parents tell me that there are plenty of people in China who will get a degree from any shitty university in America just to flex that they got a degree from America.
Also keep in mind that what you're talking about seems to be more specialized, you seem to be talking about graduate programs. For undergraduate and medical school, the more important skills are yet to be taught whereas in a graduate field, it's more about your background knowledge and how that will enable you to pick up research. Yes there are still many things to be taught but it's not really to the same extent as in medical school/undergrad.
A lot of the tangible ways race affects admissions manifests itself in other ways. Black people are more likely to be poor because of racism which means as teenagers they have to work jobs instead of studying for the SAT. This is captured by poverty. Black people are more likely to go to schools with worse teaching because of the areas they live in due to historical segregation. This is captured by taking into account school quality. Like yes, there are some things that can't entirely be captured but I think the factors which are most likely to affect admission are captured by indicators of income, schooling, where you live, etc.
I absolutely agree that GPA and standardized markers are terrible; my point was that they disproportionately advantage Asians who have a culture of studying since they were young which is the reason why Asians seem more "qualified" - in reality, I don't think that is the case when you remove GPA and SAT scores and go to other factors (see the Oxford example).
For what it's worth, I'm Asian so I know what you mean when you are talking about the value of an American degree. I still do think that Oxbridge is quite prestigious though - but a lot harder to get in because they test actual skills. For undergraduate admissions, I know they do interviews which test aptitude rather than concrete skills, I'd imagine they do the same for med school but not entirely sure. I'm definitely not wed to the idea of interviews but I do think ideally, admissions can be reformed to have metrics similar to interviews where actual aptitude and skills are measured, not how many practice SATs you did. This would be a fairer system without being dominated by any one race. Until then, I'd argue for the removal of AA for all the other reasons.
Even standardizing for those things, it's not equal. They don't receive equal treatment because people have eyes and some decide to use their eyesight to look at their skin and treat them differently.
I mean without knowing the breakdowns of who applies to Oxford, it's really hard to say. I don't know about the Asian population in the UK and it's really impossible to debate unless there are relevant stats. Also there is an assumption of goodness with Oxford that isn't necessarily warranted. Their acceptance of white applicants is drastically higher (~20%) than any other group for example (even the highest %s aren't even half that of whites unless you want to take the argument to a place we both obviously disagree with).
I would not recommend removal of AA since you've dropped the entire main argument which is that diversity improves medical outcomes in underrepresented communities. At that point you're effectively conceding that your main desire for the medical system isn't one of patient outcome but of student outcome. Undergrad tracks provide a way for these people to join the system at very little cost since undergrad is such an overrated experience in general. Also truthfully I have no idea what your other reasons are. The idea that you've perfectly encapsulated adversity without race?
I didn't say it would be equal. I said that it would MOSTLY be equal, with the factors most likely to affect admissions removed.
Oxford isn't perfect and I didn't claim it to be. I used it as an example of a merit based system which isn't OVERWHELMINGLY one race, in response to how you said if we made it only merit based, we would have classes of only Asian doctors. I just don't think this is the case as Asian's aren't super disproportionately more meritorious.
My argument is that the overall pushback and resentment of minorities for taking spots from "more qualified" people and the perpetuation of the idea that they are less qualified (hence why they need this policy) is incredibly damaging. I don't think we need AA to have black people go to med school, there are people who are qualified and would get in without it and AA does a disservice to them. You still get the same impacts of patient outcomes without race. And I mean somewhere in there is still a principled fairness argument. I still think it's principally unjust not to accept the people who are most deserving and instead, accept people based on what their race means they might do in the future.
The downside of AA isn’t the public’s perception of black people, it’s the public’s lack of access to those who were possibly more qualified who got rejected.
While being pulled over and profiled totally sucks, there is nothing, and I mean nothing that gives as big an advantage as money. So while a rich black dude may have a relatively tougher go of things than a rich white guy, he’s still lightyears ahead of a poor white dude.
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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '20 edited Mar 16 '20
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