Student group offers scholarship for whites only (http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/11/22/caucasian.scholarship.reut/)

POSTED: 10:29 a.m. EST, November 22, 2006

BOSTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) -- A Boston University student group is offering a scholarship for white students to protest financial aid programs in the United States that select by ethnic background, university officials said on Tuesday.

The group, Boston University College Republicans, told campus publications the $250 Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship was intended as a statement and they had raised funds privately for the award, which does not have the backing of the university.

[More... (http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/11/22/caucasian.scholarship.reut/)]

Its their money, I guess they can do with it what they please. I'm sure it will be found illegal and protested. Though, aren't there racialy restricted scholarships elsewhere that are not only viewed as acceptable but even applauded so much they grant the individual or instutition founding them near heroic status?

Its such a funny world we live in.

We will choke ourselves on our polical correctness.

I'm sure it will be found illegal and protested.
I'm not sure on what basis it could be found illegal but I'm sure you're right about it being protested.

Wow, $33,000 tuition per year is insane. How times have changed.

I wonder how much of that $33K goes towards subsidies for the minorities that don't belong there. Perhaps this student group can figure it out, publish it to all the parents who are paying for it, and get them to put pressure on the school. That would be a meaningful protest, instead of just protesting stupidity with more stupidity.

I wish my tuition was $33,000 a year...for undergrad (I am assuming that doesn't include housing/food either; that tacks on another $8,000 at most schools for 2 semesters). 33k is low for a private college :(

When we have academic scholarships that don't ask for your race, but only look at your grades and test scores, I can't see a reason for dumping money to promote students who aren't as academically ready for college.

If kids of certain minorities aren't performing as well when they should be entering college, fix *that* problem instead of creating a performance dichotomy among students that just serves to create more ethnic tension.

There are plenty of deserving, smart kids of all ethnicities out there; let's get as many of them into college as we can.

And don't give me any of that "testing is racially biased" stuff. Standardized testing is biased toward people who took their pre-requisites and know how to read and write English. Why put students who can't read and write English into classes where it's required to be able to pass?

Again, fix the problem, don't try to put a bandage at the college end because the high schools and grade schools and middle schools failed.

fix the problemThe basic problem is poverty. It's a tough one to fix.

Hehe good for them. Offering huge incentives and scholarships to ethnic minority and the schools and work that accept them really bugs me. They want to be equal and that's not equal in the slightest.

Well, one of the basic purposes of education is to stratify people unequally.

To give you something that someone else does not have.

Higher education is the antithesis of equality.

If everyone had a 4, 6, or 8 year degree(whatever it may be), then they would not really mean anything would they then?

Well, one of the basic purposes of education is to stratify people unequally.

To give you something that someone else does not have.

If you give everyone access to education then you treat them all equally. They can then make something of themselves, regardless of other people.

If you give everyone access to education then you treat them all equally.
Who is you?

They can then make something of themselves, regardless of other people.

If everyone is walking around with an MBA or a PhD, how are you going to decide which one to hire when they come walking up to your company looking for a job?

I suppose if everyone starts their own businesses you might be right. But who would work for them? Most likely they would need some form of labor, providing the actual service or making the actual goods for these businesses. Who would you get to do the labor, other folks with MBAs and PhDs?

Kinda defeats the purpose of getting the degree, if all you are only going to do with it is flip burgers. Or nail sheetrock to walls.

If everyone had a 4, 6, or 8 year degree(whatever it may be), then they would not really mean anything would they then?

Sometimes I wonder if mine is means anything anyway....

If everyone is walking around with an MBA or a PhD, how are you going to decide which one to hire when they come walking up to your company looking for a job?

You take the best for the job, just as you do now, regardless of qualifications. What do you expect?

I suppose if everyone starts their own businesses you might be right. But who would work for them? Most likely they would need some form of labor, providing the actual service or making the actual goods for these businesses. Who would you get to do the labor, other folks with MBAs and PhDs?

Thank you for taking a simple point and trying to make me defend its most extreme conclusion. Education isn't just brain surgery and particle physics.

So what do you actually believe in? Do you really want to continue an education system that "stratifies people unequally" just so that educated employers have an uneducated workforce to do their menial work?

Does anyone here understand why there was affirmative action in the first place? What the justification for it was? Just asking because it was started a long time ago, from some of your perspectives, probably before some of you were born or old enough to understand what it is.

Kinda defeats the purpose of getting the degree, if all you are only going to do with it is flip burgers. Or nail sheetrock to walls.

Not everyone wants higher education. Some people would rather nail sheetrock to walls, or pour concrete, or become a carpenter, etc. Many of such jobs even pay more than some degree oriented employment.

Affirmative action based on race is wrong.

Now, if they want to begin some affirmative action based on poverty, I'd be all for that. If a kid who was raised in poverty can match the achievements of a kid raised in middle america who makes it to college, the poor kid deserves to get to school and to come first for scholarships. I don't care if he's black from an urban wasteland of poverty, white and from a trailer park, hispanic from the farms of california, or native american from the reservation.

Well, native americans should be treated differently. I am all for affirmative action based on ethnicity for them. America's ****ed them but good.

I wish my tuition was $33,000 a year...for undergrad (I am assuming that doesn't include housing/food either; that tacks on another $8,000 at most schools for 2 semesters). 33k is low for a private college :(


Wow didn't know pie school costs that much :texla:

Does anyone here understand why there was affirmative action in the first place? What the justification for it was? Just asking because it was started a long time ago, from some of your perspectives, probably before some of you were born or old enough to understand what it is.

It was started as a means of boosting the ability for blacks to improve their conditions as a result of the injustice and racial prejudice in America which kept the community as a whole from being able to attain education and the social and economic benefits that come with education.

Its been three decades now, though. That's a long time in the educational world and affirmative action has only gotten broader. The amount of outright descrimination against white males in the academic world is getting extensive. Affirmative action has recently made men the minority in college admissions relative to women and there is growing concern that within a decades, at the current trend, they will have to begin implementing affirmative action programs for men. There is a growing concern amongst educators that the focus has been so much on improving the education of girls that boys in elementary and high school are being left behind by the educational system.

The pendulum has swung too far and its beginning to irritate more and more people.

I wish my tuition was $33,000 a year...for undergrad (I am assuming that doesn't include housing/food either; that tacks on another $8,000 at most schools for 2 semesters). 33k is low for a private college :(
Holy crap! College education should be handled in the same way that K-12 is handled -- free public schools. It is in the best interest of our country to educate our citizens. Globalization is inevitable and many of the jobs where a high school education was sufficient are going to be lost to countries where workers are willing to work for significantly less. We can either foot the bill for the unemployed workers who lack the education to compete in the job force of the future or we can do what's necessary to prepare them. Sure, it would be expensive but in the long term it would be more expensive not to.

There are plenty of alternatives for college funding, including the government underwriting low interest loans to cover student fees or a 'graduate tax' which recoups the costs from individuals after their education. It all depends who you want to pay, when they need to pay, and how much they should pay.

It was started as a means of boosting the ability for blacks to improve their conditions as a result of the injustice and racial prejudice in America which kept the community as a whole from being able to attain education and the social and economic benefits that come with education.

I think to better explain it it was put into place for several reasons. When you've been oppressed and denied opportunity for the history of the country, you don't have educated parents, you might have received a pretty poor education yourself, and you don't have the financial ability to boot strap yourself up into higher education.

Wikipedia does a pretty good job of describing it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action
Affirmative action began as a corrective measure[2] for governmental and social injustices against demographic groups that have been said to be subjected to discrimination in areas such as employment and education. The stated goal of affirmative action is to counteract past and present discrimination sufficiently that the power elite will reflect the demographics of society at large, at which point such a strategy will no longer be necessary.

Some groups who are targeted for affirmative action are characterized by race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or handicap. In India, the focus has mostly been on undoing caste discrimination. In South Africa, the focus has been primarily race-based and, to a lesser extent, sex-based discrimination. When members of targeted groups are actively sought or preferred, the reason given is usually that this is necessary to compensate for advantages that other groups are said to have had (such as through institutional racism or institutional sexism or historical circumstances).
So when do you decide that it is time to end affirmative action? Shouldn't that happen when power in the country adequately reflects the racial and gender distribution?

The problems with affirmative action is its a shotgun approach. Middle class+ Minorities get benefit of both, and poorer whites (and asians) both have problems resulting from poverty and then have to compete mostly against middle/upper class whites and asians. - Thats not even factoring in problems like recent immigrants who families either did not suffer, or did not take advantage of slavery/segregation/etc.

Economic targeting is much more fair, and IMO less likely to lead to resentment (which then adds to the problem of racial tensions)

Re: When to stop: Ignoring the arguements above, another big problem with waiting till things are equal is things are really delayed 10-25+ Years in terms of power structure. (both political and government) (Most of people in power now, graduated in the 1970's or earlier)

So when do you decide that it is time to end affirmative action?Preferably, before it begins. Unequal access to education is just a symptom of poverty and cultural attitudes that don't stress education. Instead of trying to put a band-aid on the symptom, fix the underlying cause, and you will have a real solution.

Affirmative action is just another bad idea from the 60s, like housing projects. The only reason we don't abandon it is collective guilt, not because it works. It has failed miserably.asiansWhy don't we have affirmative action in favor of Asians, a minority who were horribly discriminated against since they first came to the United States? Or Jews for that matter?

That's right, they made something of themselves, got rich, and solved their own problems. Now the schools are overflowing with talented Asians (many of them children of immigrants, who initially faced poverty and discrimination), so much so that schools are trying to keep them out.

Oh! This is interesting. An article about affirmative action in India. They've had centuries of discriminating against certain Castes that they're trying to correct. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HSP/is_1_4/ai_66678565
The Indian approach perhaps can be understood best using the economic theory pioneered by Glenn Loury that distinguishes between "human capital" and "social capital." Human capital refers to an individual's own characteristics that are valued by the labor market; social capital refers to value an individual receives from membership in a community, such as access to information networks, mentoring and reciprocal favors. Potential human capital can be augmented or stunted depending on available social capital. Economic models demonstrate how labor market discrimination, even several generations in the past, when combined with ongoing segregated social structure can perpetuate indefinitely huge differences in social capital between ethnic communities.

Wow, that article is fascinating.

I'd say that if anything Affirmative Action has failed in the US it is because it hasn't recognized the differences between human and social capital.
In 1980 a Presidential Commission (known as the "Mandal Commission" after the name of its Chairperson) issued a comprehensive report and set of recommendations for national standards. Although the Mandal Report did not use the term "social capital," its central premise was that the mere prohibition of discrimination and a policy of "equal opportunity" were insufficient to remedy the profound social effects of the caste system. It stated: "People who start their lives at a disadvantage rarely benefit significantly from equality of opportunity ... Equality of opportunity is also an asocial principle, because it ignores the many invisible and cumulative hindrances in the way of the disadvantaged."
The article suggests a way of redressing this in the US that wouldn't matter so much about ethnicity but is based more on being segregated and disadvantaged.
An alternative approach even more likely to survive strict scrutiny would be to take the Indian experiment one step further by eliminating altogether explicit use of ethnic identity. If a key cause and indicator of inadequate social capital is segregation, why not ask persons seeking affirmative action to provide evidence of their personal experience of segregation rather than presuming it from their ethnic identity? (The Federal DBE regulations allow as one alternative to membership in one of the four specified ethnic groups a showing that the applicant has suffered from "long-term residence in an environment isolated from the mainstream of American society.") One category on an application might be residential segregation, requiring the applicant to list every neighborhood (identified by zip code) in which he or she has lived, indicating the dates and applicant's age at the time. Another category could be educational segregation, listing elementary, junior and senior high schools, also by dates and age when attending. A Federal agency such as the Census Bureau could become the U.S. equivalent of the Mandal Commission by assembling a national data base rating zip codes and schools as to the degree of impact by segregation at various points in time and developing a standard formula for correlating the raw data supplied by applicants into a "severity of segregation" score. This segregation score could then be combined with an economic disadvantage score based on applicant-supplied information (primarily parental income and occupation during applicant's formative ages) and the total used to decide whether DBE certification was warranted. Certification might be granted to applicants from middle class backgrounds if evidence of severe segregation (and presumably reduced social capital) was presented; likewise applicants who grew up in poverty might be certified even if less affected by segregation (as might especially be the case for persons from small towns and rural backgrounds). This approach would resolve both the over-inclusion and under-inclusion problems raised by the trial court in Adarand. Persons not individually disadvantaged would not be included by an automatic presumption based on ethnic identity. Persons actually disadvantaged would not be presumptively excluded simply because their ethnicity did not fit within a limited number of groups. Indeed this approach might not even trigger strict scrutiny since the segregation factor would not be a racial or ethnic category as such and would not merely be a token substitute for such categories since not all members of an ethnic group would be able to present data giving rise to a significant segregation score.

Why don't we have affirmative action in favor of Asians, a minority who were horribly discriminated against since they first came to the United States? Or Jews for that matter?

Not sure if you are disagreeing or agreeing with me or what but..

y point is rather that because Asians as a "whole" in the United States are quite successful, we do not have affirmative action towards them - but how is this is it fair to Poorer asians who have similiar lack of opportunities compared to other Minorities (IE blacks) because of socioeconomic factors, but do not recieve the same level of help because they are of an ethnicity that is on the whole more successful. (its not)

My point is rather that because Asians as a "whole" in the United States are quite successful, we do not have affirmative action towards themRight. Which belies the purported purpose of affirmative action, to reverse past discrimination which allegedly resulted in modern inequality. If we compensated for past discrimination against Asians, they'd be even more successful than they are.

We shouldn't be running a system of discrimination when we're not even being intellectually honest as to the purpose of the system.

So when do you decide that it is time to end affirmative action? Shouldn't that happen when power in the country adequately reflects the racial and gender distribution?

Affirmative action should end when you can be confident that recruitment/enrolment is free from other bias. If the government provides equal opportunity then everything else will follow, even if it takes a while for each community to grasp that opportunity.

I wouldn't want to deny one child their education because another child fits a worthier political demographic. Two wrongs don't make a right, especially when it applied to a long term government education policy.

I think to better explain it it was put into place for several reasons. When you've been oppressed and denied opportunity for the history of the country, you don't have educated parents, you might have received a pretty poor education yourself, and you don't have the financial ability to boot strap yourself up into higher education.

Wikipedia does a pretty good job of describing it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action

So when do you decide that it is time to end affirmative action? Shouldn't that happen when power in the country adequately reflects the racial and gender distribution?

It is hard to explain to a great number of other ethnicities who came to this nation with no education, no money, and faced blatant and rampant discrimination, why only people of color get the special treatment...especially given its been quite a few years since affirmative action was implemented. The children who were the first beneficiaries of higher educational affirmative action have had their own children who had the benefits of affirmative action...who had their own children who are just now starting to reap the benefits of affirmative action.

There was no affirmative action for Irishmen or Italians or Jews or Poles. While there is affirmative action for various asian ethnicities, for the most part they do not require it.

As for women...they didn't need affirmative action, they just had to decide to go to school themselves.

You can't tell someone is an Irish American or came over with the Mayflower after the first generation is native born. Whereas it is easy to tell if someone is Black, or Asian, or female and to continue to discriminate on that basis. As was mentioned in that article I linked and quoted, you also don't have the social networks or capital to be able to get in.

I would say that as soon as the numbers reflect the diveristy of the population, you can end AA for that particular group.

Err...

While obviously its easier to tell if someone what ethnicity someone belongs to the less generations they've been here. Most ethnicities are still readily indentifiable for a few if not more generations. (Depending on rate of intermarriage)

Unless someone's family has been in the US for more then three or four generations, AND intermarried, it's not overally difficult to tell what ethnicities they are from, if not by their Looks, then by their name, specifically last name. (obviously it will depend on each individual, but for example I'm willing to bet that Aidon is probably recognized as Jewish based on either his looks or name, in RL, (Although I don't know how long his family has been here)

Besides your changing the point of Affirmative Action, now you are arguing that it is to counteract PRESENT racist attitudes - which undiably still exist, but that is even more problematic. make sure we have 6

You can't tell someone is an Irish American or came over with the Mayflower after the first generation is native born.

Eh? It was plenty easy for people to tell if someone was Irish. They spoke with a funny accent and had names like Seamus Maguiggan, and they were horribly discriminated against by WASP America.

The same for Guiseppe Cimino when the Italians were coming over...and the same for Danislaw Drozdowski when the Poles were arriving.

And the same for Mendel Moscowitz...well, pretty much up through the late fifties and even into the 60's(Its common knowledge that the most "prestigeous" clubs in town did not permit Jewish members. No bank in the Toledo area would hire a Jew until the early '80's. No Jew was hired at Owens Illinois, until the 70's I believe. this was when Toledo was still the Glass City in fact and not just in name).

Whereas it is easy to tell if someone is Black, or Asian, or female and to continue to discriminate on that basis. As was mentioned in that article I linked and quoted, you also don't have the social networks or capital to be able to get in.

Why would females lack the social networks or capital to be able to get in?

Further, what the **** are we basing anything off who a person may or may not know? That's ****ing idiocy and tarring vast swaths of America has having some manner of influence that they don't necessarily have.

Oh, I thought Affirmative Action

I would say that as soon as the numbers reflect the diveristy of the population, you can end AA for that particular group.

...Well women are beyond the numerical reflection of diversity <eyeroll>

As for Asians...really, they ain't hurtin for college ;).

As for blacks...well, their parents better stop letting their children be absolute scholastic failures if they want the numbers of collegians to reflect their numbers in society.

Guess what? You don't need affirmative action to go from broke and uneducated to successful over the course of a generation or two.

The Jews did it. The Asians did it. The Latinos are doing it right now. The Irish, Italian, Poles, etc. etc. etc., they all did it and they did it without special racial or ethnic treatment.

If the black community in America wants more kids to get into college...they need to start instilling an appreciation for knowledge, respect for education and an expectation of scholastic success in their children.

It isn't discriimination keeping black numbers down in school...its the fact that parents aren't bringing their children up with any expectations.

And no, that's not racist or bigoted talk, because you see the exact same thing in various white populations around the nation...where a man who demonstrates a broad vocabulary is scorned and where people vote for the dumber of two presidential candidates because they have no respect for intellect.

After thirty years, the only people at fault if blacks haven't caught up numerically, are black parents.