This article shows that women compose 57% of university students, yet compose about 50% of the US population:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3395977/
Does this therefore mean that "the system" descriminates against men?
Or could it possibly mean that women on average are taking a more serious interest in attending university?
Is it time now to eliminate affirmative action for women in college admissions?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Michael Medved discussed this topic on his radio show yesterday. He seems to think that society has become so slanted to the benefit of women over the last few decades to the point where boys from grade-school on, and young men are now at a disadvantage. Interesting segment of the show.
The success of women undercuts the anti-AA argument, since women have succeeded while qualifying for AA, whereas blacks remain under-represented while qualifying for AA. Anti-AA advocates usually cite AA as a mechanism that hurts its beneficiaries.
However, the success of women also isolates blacks as having a unique problem. Why have women over-reached the equity goal in uneversity enrollment, where as blacks remain lagged? Let's examine some facts:
Non-whites who do not qualify for AA have succeeded (Chinese, Indians, Arabs, etc.).
Women, who do qualify for AA have succeeded.
Blacks, who are non-white and who qualify for AA, are lagging. What are the numbers for black women?
I think that these facts point to a special problem within black socieity, one that AA neither helps nor hurts.
Black women disproportionately make up the vast majority of black college students. There are several factors, most of which you will dismiss as nonsense, because you don't believe that racism exists in your utopian America.
There is a culture of anti-intellecutalism that runs through the newest generations of black children because intellectualism is perceived as "trying to be white." This is a tragedy that is not being challenged in our underfunded public schools. In fact, universities were invented in Africa, and that fact is not emphasized enough for young black students.
American culture promotes rampant materialism, but does not offer poor blacks many alternatives for acheiving the wealth needed to buy "things". The role models in many black communities are generations of people who never went to college, so the mentors we see in those communities are drug dealers, rappers and athletes. Why isn't Dr. Ben Carson a bigger celebrity than Dr. Dre?
Hell, even your president is anti-intellectual. He proves that all you need is a rich daddy or some other means of obtaining money (murder and thugery in Bush's case) to obtain power. Why bother to go to school?
But white kids are being affected by this culture as well because their role models are increasingly becoming those same rappers, athletes and drug dealers. Especially poor whites. College has traditionally been the bastion of the rich and the elite. That isn't changing as quickly as it should.
Nadir: No people with my views have ever said (and none of us believe) that "racism doesn't exist" in the US, nor do we believe that the US is a utopia. We do believe that the black folks who choose to work on meaningful, useful endeavers have excellent chances in the US to be propserous.
Thus we do not disagree with you on the view that America is a place where racism exists and that is non-utopian. Where we disagree with you is in claims that lack of black prosperity here can be explained by racism, the failure of black kids to know such things as "universities were invented in Africa", or having wealthy parents. The most successful groups in the US are non-whites whose parents were poor, uneducated, and born in nations other than Africa (the birthplace of universities).
Most of the people who succeed in the US know every little history, I am sad to say. Thus I do not ascribe my own young adult black daughter's lack of success to any factors cited by you. Telling her about the wonders of Africa's past, changing her skin color, or lavishing her with money will not make her a serious, self-sufficient person. I purchased her a car and her grand mother is paying for her apartment. Me, my brother, and sister (all honkies) received none of this support when we were in college and we did well; she is doing poorly, which is to say, she doesn't care about how she's doing.
Black people are making their own role models, and their own false assumptions, including assertions that you make, like, [the US doesn't] "offer poor blacks many alternatives for acheiving the wealth needed to buy 'things.'" Our society offers great alternatives, so great that non-whites with poor, uneducated parents endure great hardships every year to come and take advantage of those "alternatives," alternatives that these "poor" blacks choose not to take.
Even the "underfunding" of schools cannot explain this choice. Those "underfunded" schools produce great and successful sports teams. The students in those schools elect not to study as much as, and what they, should.
Nadir: In addition to teaching black kids that some of their ancestors built the world's first universities in Africa, why not teach them that some of their other ancestors created the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, etc.?
Why not also tell them that their black ancestors in addition to including millions of pathetic victims, also included millions of ravenous, murderous, raping, rampaging, razing villians?
And why not teach them that their honkey ancestors included not only ravenous, murderous, raping, rampaging, razing villians, but also vast populations of pathetic victims?
Might such FACTS help draw them into the larger population, which has to such a greater extent elected to make more constructive choices about their daily conduct?
Post a Comment