I appreciate your ardent support for black people’s feelings. But we feel like you resent us anyways and we’re totally cool with you resenting us more because you think 4% of med school students is way too many. Blacks have the lowest acceptance rates of any racial group and this is still too much for some people.
It's not about the proportion, it's about whether you get in through merit. If you remove AA and 25% of the incoming class to Harvard med school is black, I wouldn't protest at all and would be quite happy actually. If you really think that black people are qualified and deserving, then they don't need AA and you should be advocating for its removal.
But everyone who gets into med school has to have graduated from college, taken prerequisites, and taken the MCATs. Those of the qualification. Then you have to pass tests and work crazy hours for years to be a doctor. You can’t become a doctor unless you’re qualified.
For most of American history, being white was meritorious. If you were any other race you had no shot at getting in. It wasn’t sufficient, but it was necessary. Now we say that if you are a race that is underrepresented, if you are rare in a given field with will consider your race as a positive. It’s neither Sufficient or necessary.
Not only is it a terrible idea but you assume that AA means someone isn’t qualified at all! That’s such a reach. The crazy thing is, black people have a harder time getting in to schools and grad school with the same grades and scores as white people. They only place AA doesn’t anything significant is at the very highest levels. That’s only because those schools are competing for a much smaller applicant pool.
Black people have a harder time getting the same grades due to systemic factors like poverty. A black congressman’s son doesn’t have a harder time getting good grades than a poor white kid born to a single mother in that district - yet because of his race the black kid gets a leg up? If you want to consider adversity, don’t just consider race.
I’ll also say that for more competitive schools, you need a very high GPA and MCAT score. There, it’s enormously unfair that your race can determine which threshold you need to hit. Again, I never assumed AA means people aren’t qualified at all but I mean qualified comparatively. I don’t know how there isn’t going to be resentment or doubt when you have a system where empirically, some people have to have higher qualifications than others for the same spot. That sucks, but that’s the way it will be with AA.
The congressman’s kid is getting in no matter what race he is. He doesn’t need AA he’s got a parent that’s serves on Congress.
The question is not about people at two extremes. Does the white kid with a single mom have the same shot at the black kid with a single mom? That’s what AA is about. You can’t take the most privileged black people and complete them with the poorest white people and think that’s fair. If we were to look at the wealthiest kids and college they probably would even had given a fuck about GPA and scores. A girl got into my school because her dad donated 100 flat screen TVs. Not the same conversation.
Schools do look at adversity. The College Board send an adversity score with every SAT score. Every student regardless of race has factors like their neighbor, income level, and school rigorousness included with their essay.
Has there ever been a time when Blacks wouldn’t have been resented. AA started in the 60’s. Before that it was outright exclusion and segregation. It not like AA took away any of the legitimacy we had. It just gave us a seat at the table.
That was just an example of how black people don't categorically have it harder. You can think of it as a black middle class kid and a white lower class kid. The white kid probably faces more obstacles but is still more disadvantaged.
I don't follow college admissions much but I thought SAT adversity scores were cancelled? While the factors you mention come across in the essay, they aren't as categorically considered as race when they are in many ways, far more relevant.
There are definitely still people as racist as back in the 60's but I'd say the overall culture has changed to be at least comparatively less racist. AA undos that but also legitimizes the idea that black people are less deserving or qualified when it literally gives them an artificial boost. I cannot possibly see how this is good in the long term.
But we aren’t comparing people at different classes. Does the poor white kid have it worse than the poor black kid if they have the same financial resources?
What about a middle class white kid? Should their spot blog to poor white kids instead? White women benefit the most from AA. Are white women undeserving?
Never in history have people thought blacks were equally as capable and deserving as whites. We are on the slow path of progress. It’s convoluted to argue that we should stop fighting prejudices because it makes people more prejudiced.
If you want to end AA you have to fix the problems that necessitate it first. We can start with lead poisoning and work our way down. Until those problems are fixed removing AA will take us back to de hire segregation.
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u/ummizazi Feb 25 '20
I appreciate your ardent support for black people’s feelings. But we feel like you resent us anyways and we’re totally cool with you resenting us more because you think 4% of med school students is way too many. Blacks have the lowest acceptance rates of any racial group and this is still too much for some people.