Thursday, October 21, 2010

Diversity Thursday

We know the game that goes on at Annapolis with different standards depending on what DNA block you check, and we also know how happy the USCG Academy is that they no longer have to treat everyone equally regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin. Yes, in academia - they love to discriminate. They love to punish achievement.

Sad thing is - it doesn't just impact those who claim non-Iberian European DNA. No - with a pedigree that goes back to the Jewish Quotas - the cancerous policy of active discrimination impacts any group that - for whatever reason - seems to be doing better in the classroom than "approved" DNA groupings.

You see - only in the minds of the racialist could a Vietnamese Boat Baby be considered having
unfair advantage due to birth.
When college presidents and academic administrators pay their usual obeisance to "diversity" you know they are talking first and foremost about race. More specifically, they are talking about blacks. A diverse college campus is understood as one that has a student body that -- at a minimum -- is 5 to 7 percent black (i.e., equivalent to roughly half the proportion of blacks in the general population). A college or university that is only one, two, or three percent black would not be considered "diverse" by college administrators regardless of how demographically diverse its student body might be in other ways. The blacks in question need not be African Americans -- indeed at many of the most competitive colleges today, including many Ivy League schools, an estimated 40-50 percent of those categorized as black are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants, or the children of such immigrants.

As a secondary meaning "diversity" can also encompass Hispanics, who together with blacks are often subsumed by college administrators and admissions officers under the single race category "underrepresented minorities." Most colleges and universities seeking "diversity" seek a similar proportion of Hispanics in their student body as blacks (since blacks and Hispanics are about equal in number in the general population), though meeting the black diversity goal usually has a much higher priority than meeting the Hispanic one.

Asians, unlike blacks and Hispanics, receive no boost in admissions. Indeed, the opposite is often the case, as the quota-like mentality that leads college administrators to conclude they may have "too many" Asians. Despite the much lower number of Asians in the general high-school population, high-achieving Asian students -- those, for instance, with SAT scores in the high 700s -- are much more numerous than comparably high-achieving blacks and Hispanics, often by a factor of ten or more. Thinking as they do in racial balancing and racial quota terms, college admissions officers at the most competitive institutions almost always set the bar for admitting Asians far above that for Hispanics and even farther above that for admitting blacks.
This disgusting mindset that parallels US Navy policy to actively discriminate against those that don't fit their theory will spread in the strangest ways - like any cancer.
But what Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call “career-oriented activities” was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural wars. Participation in such Red State activities as high school ROTC, 4-H clubs, or the Future Farmers of America was found to reduce very substantially a student’s chances of gaining admission to the competitive private colleges in the NSCE database on an all-other-things-considered basis. The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. “Being an officer or winning awards” for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, “has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions.” Excelling in these activities “is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission.”

Espenshade and Radford don’t have much of an explanation for this find, which seems to place the private colleges even more at variance with their stated commitment to broadly based campus diversity. In his Bakke ruling Lewis Powell was impressed by the argument Harvard College offered defending the educational value of a demographically diverse student body: “A farm boy from Idaho can bring something to Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarly, a black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer.” The Espenshade/Radford study suggests that those farm boys from Idaho would do well to stay out of their local 4-H clubs or FFA organizations — or if they do join, they had better not list their membership on their college application forms. This is especially true if they were officers in any of these organizations. Future farmers of America don’t seem to count in the diversity-enhancement game played out at some of our more competitive private colleges, and are not only not recruited, but seem to be actually shunned. It is hard to explain this development other than as a case of ideological and cultural bias.
Once you buy into bigoted theories of the Diversity Industry - more discrimination is easier and easier to do.

Nice, no?

14 comments:

ewok40k said...

quote:

<span>Espenshade and Radford don’t have much of an explanation for this find, which seems to place the private colleges even more at variance with their stated commitment to broadly based campus diversity.</span>

heh... tell that to "anything private is better than state-owned" orthodoxes... and compare to the French meritocracy of state schools - where only admission criteria is the test results

AW1 Tim said...

In for a penny, in for a pound. The "Diversity Industry" is either all or none. It's like the saying that "You can't be a little bit pregnant".

Jerry Hendrix said...

Wow, I had no idea my FFA background would kill my application to Harvard!  Gosh, if I had to do it all over again....F#$k 'em, I'd do it all the same.  My day to day experiences on my father's dairy farm has had more to do with my "success" in life than anything else I have ever done.  Get up earlier, work harder, stay later if need be, take care of the little things and the crops will grow.  Still works to this day.

CDR Salamander said...

You penultimate sentence kind of describes the work you do now, doesn't it. BTW, we used your name in vain some yesterday.....

Aubrey said...

Ewok - a private college isn't truly private in the US.  You step one foot out of line (especially out of the diversity line) and the gov't will pull your accreditation.  Bam, no more college - you just went out of business.

And, by the way, government-colleges are much, much worse....I went to two of them (on opposite sides of the country), and will ALWAYS recommend a private university in preference to one of the state-run indoctrination centers.

If you want some good info on truly good private universities look up Hillsdale College, Pepperdine, Azusa-Pacific, University of San Diego, Denver University, etc....

The Usual Suspect said...

So the reasoning goes:

Discrimination is bad.
We must stop discrimination.
We must right the wrongs of the past...
by discriminating against those who had nothing to do with the original act.
Ahhh yes, the logic is clear to me now...two wrongs make a right.

Jerry Hendrix said...

I think that Dad's rules describes any "work" that is worth doing.  I hope my name was a least a stick to stir the pot with.

DeltaBravo said...

"Future farmers of America don’t seem to count in the diversity-enhancement game played out at some of our more competitive private colleges, and are not only not recruited, but seem to be actually shunned. It is hard to explain this development other than as a case of ideological and cultural bias."

Which is why the egghead Ivy leaguers are not always at the head of the employment line anymore.  It's okay... schools like Texas A&M will be happy to take the best and brightest FFA candidates.  Which is why their ag engineering and other associated programs are on the cutting edge and making real differences on the ground in real time in the real world.   Harvard and Yale, not so much.  You don't read about them helping Iraqi farmers sow drought-resistant and pest-resistant crops. 

The world's a changing...  some will be left in the dust.  Hahaha.

Oh... and I know a lovely Persian lass... who took Calculus III in her junior year as a summer fun class.  She was that smart.  #4 in her class or so.  MIT wouldn't take her.  They did take a Hispanic girl with not nearly the same level of math aptitude.  Go figure.

This lovely Persian girl will do very well and make a name for herself and her state-school alma mater someday. 

Bubba Bob said...

<span><span>In the words of the great American poet Randy Newman:  </span></span>

<span>Look at the numbers</span><span> </span><span>
</span><span>That's all I ask</span><span> </span><span>
</span><span>Who's at the head of every class?</span><span> </span><span>
</span><span>You really think they're smarter than you are</span><span> </span><span>
</span><span>They just work their asses off</span><span> </span><span>
</span><span>Their parents make them do it</span><span> </span>

Korean Parents (2009)

Scott said...

My roommate at Annapolis was one of those multi-ethnic guys who could check off several blocks under "race" on the application form (black, white, native american, hispanic... I may be forgetting a few).  He told me that this really perplexed the admisssions office, and some LT had to call him up and to ask him to "pick one."  But, he refused to "deny" any of his multi-racial heritage, which probably threw a wrench into their diversity formulations.

It turns out he didn't need any racial preferences.  He was a smart guy, graduated in the top quarter of the class and ended up in the nuke sub program.  He's still serving today.

Stu said...

Everyone can do this now and I encourage it.  Through BOL, each individual can select their race/ethnicity to include not disclosing it.  I have been told when I was young that one of my great-grandparents was an American Indian, so I have selected such on BOL and quite simply the establishment cannot ask me for any proof on this.  And again, one can also opt to not have any preference.  I'm not looking for any special treatment, but I can throw off their calculations.  We all can. 

Anonymous said...

At some future point two of these diversitistas are gonna run into each other - literally.  Either in a multi crew aircraft, or a skimmer, or maybe even those untersea boats.  And people will die, and fingers will be pointed.  And records will be reviewed only to discover that omigosh, these ______ were consistently at the bottom of every achievement standard at every rank but race.  And then records will be expunged.  And some innocent non-minority JO will assume the BOHICA position.  And the minority will get a pointy medal with a red ribbon.  Poison.  This is just poison to an organization.  At some point the non-minorities will get fed up and say "fine, let 'em have it.  I can make more in private industry, not be away from home, and not have to put up with this chicken $hit diet fed to us by Roughead."

The Usual Suspect said...

I used to neatly create my own check box and classification "Human"

Anonymous said...

Year to year it seems more is required to ensure our diversity candidates succeed. Whether it is a leg up on admissions standards, summer school programs, an extra year to complete the curriculum, special race-specific mentoring programs, or a few extra days head start on their classmates, we are bending over backwards to make them succeed. Unfortunately, the enemy or the laws of nature will not give them the same courtesy. When the diversity JO is attempting a critical maneuver with his/her ship/aircraft/tank nature will not be as forgiving as the hand-holders in charge of diversity. Neither will the enemy will give them quarter so they can consult w/their mentor or take a combat refresher course.

It's sad; makes me want to retire immediately so I can wash my hands of the mess. However, someone has to stick around to argue against the idiocy.