Over on Political Animal, the former Calpundit suggests compromising with the right by replacing race-based affirmative action with income-based affirmative action.
Kevin means well, but I see two immediate problems with this proposal. First, racism against middle-class blacks, latinas and American Indians happens, and shouldn’t be ignored as if it were acceptable.
Second, racism against lower-class blacks, latinas and American Indians happens, and shouldn’t be ignored. Income-based affirmative action would benefit low-income whites who are, objectively, much wealthier than the minorities they’d be beating out for those income-based AA slots.
Why? Because looking at income – even if we concentrate only on low-income folks – vastly understates how much poorer minorities are than whites. Low-income white families are simply much wealthier, on average, than low-income minority families. I wrote a couple of detailed posts about this in 2003 (here and here); this table from one of those posts illustrates what I mean:
| Income class |
percent of whites |
percent of blacks |
white average net worth |
black average net worth |
ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $15,000 |
17.6% | 40.9% | $63,836 | $16,152 | 0.25 |
| $15,000- $24,999 |
15.2% | 16.9% | $108,696 | $31,913 | 0.29 |
| $25,000- $49,999 |
29.5% | 24.8% | $136,455 | $62,635 | 0.46 |
| $50,000- $74,999 |
19.3% | 11.1% | $24,5647 | $96,645 | 0.39 |
| $75,000 and over |
18.4% | 6.2% | $1,119,335 | $320,223 | 0.29 |
Because low-income white families have far more wealth and (on average) live in nicer neighborhoods with better schools, compared to low-income (or even middle class, sometimes) minorities, they’re probably better positioned to take advantage of low-income AA programs. That, combined with their greater numbers, will mean that most low-income minorities – despite being objectively poorer – would wind up being shut out of income-based AA.
(It’s not a simple thing to just make it wealth-based AA, instead. Income can be verified just by looking at last year’s income tax forms – but there’s no such easy way for college admission programs to verify wealth.)
Not that I’m against income-based affirmative action. But while income-based affirmative action would be a good thing on its own, it’s no substitute for race-based affirmative action, and it shouldn’t be proposed as one.
On top of what your chart shows, there is wealth that poorer white families have that poorer minority families have that can’t be counted. It’s not just government programs. We’re fixing to move out of a lower-middle class white neighborhood to a lower-middle class racially mixed neighborhood and the differences are astounding. No banks, no grocery stores, and generally no investment in the residents by outside business. The schools are spaced farther apart and it’s therefore harder for kids to get there. Structurally, racism is so ingrained it’s amazing.
On a factual note, it’s absolutely possible for a college to verify a family’s net worth. If you’ve ever filled out the FAFSA or any financial aid form, there are dozens of questions about bank account balances, stocks and other assets, pension funds and retirement benefits expected, property values, and all those other things that determine net worth, and they use all of that to determine who can pay.
Moreover, when most of us talk about socioeconomic affirmative action, we’re proposing a system that takes into account the neighborhood a person grew up in, the advantages the student had, hardships he went through. If I were running a school, I think I’d have set-asides for disadvantaged students with criteria combining objective measures like net worth and schools attendend with an essay each applicant would write describing her background. But there are dozens of methods schools could use to find students deserving of help. Many or most of them would likely be minorities, since you’re right that minorities are statistically more likely to come from disadvantaged backgrounds. But some would be white kids, and almost none would be black private school students from upper middle class families.
But how can you counter things like in Amanda’s example? There are too many ways in which minorities are disadvantage that can’t be measured independently of their minority status. Socioeconomic factors are an indicator of disadvantage, but they are just that, an indicator, not the root of disadvantage.
You know, Michael Berube has a pretty sensible take on this, for all that it is a bit lighthearted. Berube addresses the SAT, but I think a ‘handicap’ system based on multiple degrees of advantage (ie, race, gender, income, parents’ education, etc) would be worth considering.
Of course, Michigan’s system, which was very similar, is the one that the Supremes just forced to take ‘race’ out of the mix.
And also there are already forms of affirmative action based on the neighborhood one comes from employed at alot of state universities. And of course, federal financial aid is based on socioeconomic status instead of race. Socioeconomic affirmative action and race-based affirmative action can co-exist quite peacefully.
And also there are already forms of affirmative action based on the neighborhood one comes from employed at alot of state universities. And of course, federal financial aid is based on socioeconomic status instead of race. Socioeconomic affirmative action and race-based affirmative action can co-exist quite peacefully.
Yeah. IMHO, racism and classism are joined to the hip.
While racism and classism are “joined to the hip” they are also not the same thing. Several recent studies have shown that black workers earn less than white workers with the same qualifications. In fact, darker skinned black and hispanic workers earn less than those with lighter skin. Racism exists, and it can’t be reduced to wealth or income. However, having said that, we certainly do need to put programs in place that provide social justice for those who suffer from economic inequality as well as racial inequality.
The study is only as good as the political bias that perverts it. The fact of the matter is that a thousand and one different variables go into how much anyone worker makes over another. The 2000 census showed that black and white families who were in “stable” relationships earned the same amount. Plus just looking at similiar qualifications in determining the evil of the “white man” is not good enough. Those black workers who had to deal with past discrimination did not move up as fast as whites in certain businesses and therefore ended up with less income than those with similar qualifications. When you look at recent workers who just enter the field and compare them with their peers the difference dissappears. and come on does anyone seriously believe that a kid of a Black lawyer who made a 100000 a year had a tougher time to go to college than a cambodian refugee whose parents work in sweatshops in manhattan, or a white kid in a single family home whose mother is on welfare? come on give me a break
“Black lawyer who made a 100000 a year had a tougher time to go to college than a cambodian refugee whose parents work in sweatshops in manhattan, or a white kid in a single family home whose mother is on welfare? come on give me a break”
Exactly. It just doesn’t pass the laugh test. Anyone here think Colin Powell’s or Jesse Jackson’s kids are at a comparative disadvantage with an poor Asian immigrant or poor white Appalachian kid?
” Several recent studies have shown that black workers earn less than white workers with the same qualifications. ”
I would like to see those studies. I want to see if a black engineer, programmer, or IT professional with the same education and experience, working in the same field, in the same area of the country/neighborhood makes any less than an Asian or white American.
A different perspective:
June 2003
“A Poor White Kid Takes on Affirmative Action”
by Daniel Carson
It saddened me deeply to wake up the other morning to the news that the Supreme Court has essentially “kept affirmative action alive” by upholding the use of unconstitutional racial profiling and discrimination techniques in order to achieve what they call “diversity.” In reality race-based affirmative action rarely, if ever, benefits those truly poor and disadvantaged students that need the extra help getting their foot in the door at the nation’s top universities. Instead, it continues to symbolize an institutionalized form of racism and spoils system that benefits middle and upper class blacks and minorities over all others.
Before we can discuss an alternative to race-based affirmative action, it is important to discuss “what diversity means to you.” If you are in the camp that many campus and political leftists seem to reside in that believe that any “person of color” instantly somehow brings something “different” to the table – a new or fresh perspective – regardless of whether they grew up in Harlem or Beverly Hills, then you probably see nothing wrong with the current system. After all, aren’t we all fascinated and moved to tears by stories of blacks getting “dirty looks” when they fly first class? If you are of my thinking however, and believe that diversity depends less on your skin color and more on your life experiences, then you being to see a new way of thinking about how affirmative action can be used to not only increase sincere diversity, but also truly help those who really need and deserve the opportunities afforded by affirmative action programs. While it may seem like common sense to most that a bourgeois “beamer” black has about as much in common with a welfare receiving black in inner city Chicago as Donald Trump does with a poor white coal miner in West Virginia, the mind of the super liberal does not work in this fashion. People are worth nothing more than the groups they are pigeon-holed into and are not defined as their worth as individuals, but instead are stereotyped by their race. IS it fair to say that all blacks are “educationally disadvantaged” and all whites have the world handed to them on a silver platter? I suppose if you yourself are a privileged white professor who has grown up with all the advantages in the world you might think all other whites share your experience, but in the world beyond the ivory tower and self absorbed intellectual, reality is completely different.
According to the census bureau there are approximately 20 million whites and 10 million blacks living below the poverty line in America today. Growing up I was one of these “poor whites,” and I learned early on what it meant to be truly “disadvantaged” in America. After my father became disabled while working as a construction worker, my mother’s paltry single-income was all my 5-member household had to live on for years. I can distinctly remember helping her roll pennies to buy items at the supermarket not covered by food stamps, and collecting discarded cans on the side of the road for extra cash. I can also remember living in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, a neighborhood full of children and families of every race and background. As children we lived together, played together, and went to the same schools. Our educational opportunities were the same regardless of our skin color and though we were all different ethnicities and races we had one uniting factor – our socioeconomic status. Needless to say my experiences growing up cause me to get more than a little frustrated and angry when I hear leftist professors and members of the black and white elite tell me that I and 20 million others like me are somehow beneficiaries of a pervasive “white privilege” and therefore should not get, and are not entitled to, the type of help attaining a higher education afforded to minorities regardless of their economic status.
But…wouldn’t a sensible, fair, less-divisive and much more effective affirmative action program be one based solely on economic status? A majority of Americans seem to think so, and the students and educational system as a while would be better served to adopt such a strategy. Time and time again we have been reminded that the number one prediction factor of whether or not a student has received a good education and will succeed in school is socioeconomic status and not race. Why should some hyper-rich blacks like Michael Jordan’s kids receive “extra points” or special consideration when applying for college? Have they had to struggle their entire life to make ends meet? Will they bring the experiences of the ghettoes and the streets with them? Of course not. They have had the best educational opportunities in the world available to them, and if they are still not smart enough to get in on their own merits, then they simply do not deserve to be there. As a matter of fact, they may get in before another much more deserving and equally qualified poor black student. Any logical person can see this, and realize that it isn’t usually the kids in the ghettoes that are applying for spots at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Instead it is usually the solidly middle and upper class blacks that have the educational background and support system to desire to go to Ivy League schools, and it is these students (who often go to fine schools and cannot claim to be disadvantaged in any way that affects their educational opportunities or upbringing) who make up the “diversity numbers” at these schools. Here they are taught that even though they are millionaires and members of the top earning households in the nation the fact that they get followed at Saks Fifth Avenue is a severe form of discrimination and sign of institutional racism that they should feel just awful about as they charge thousands of dollars to daddy’s credit card. Cry me a river. Meanwhile the poor of all races continue to suffer and watch as top educational opportunities are given to those that deserve it least, all to make a bunch of politically correct buffoons at the university feel better about themselves because they’ve managed to add a few “colored” faces to the crowd. Unfortunately however, in America the only color that truly matters in the end is the green on the dollars in your bank account. The sooner pig-headed leftists and race pimps understand this, the sooner they can actually start helping the inequality and race problems in America instead of complicating and profiting from them.
and come on does anyone seriously believe that a kid of a Black lawyer who made a 100000 a year had a tougher time to go to college than a cambodian refugee whose parents work in sweatshops in manhattan, or a white kid in a single family home whose mother is on welfare? come on give me a break
What about the example Amanda cited? What about the poor Black kid who lives in an all-Black neighborhood that businesses won’t touch, the city ignores, and the police avoid? What about the poor Black kid who goes to a crumbling school (because the school has no money to fix the asbestos problem, the bad plumbing, the drafty windows, etc.)
An overall look at the race wage gaps shows that rich Black people are the exception, not the rule. It’s far more common for Whites to be wealthy.
I don’t think the “perspective” El Toro quotes is a serious contribution to the debate over affirmative action (terms like “pig-headed leftists and race pimps” don’t exactly inspire confidence), but it does at least mention a serious issue.
I would make the following points:
1. There is little evidence that racial preferences unfairly advantage overprivileged racial minorities or disadvantage underprivileged whites (Carson claims that they do, but provides no evidence to support his assertion).
2. College and university affirmative action programs typically include preferences based on race-neutral socioeconomic measures in addition to explicit racial preferences.
3. There are reasons to favor racial preferences even for beneficiaries who are not socioeconomically disadvantaged in ways other than their race.
4. Socioeconomic-based preferences suffer from all the same supposed defects of racial preferences other than being an explicit racial classification, and have additional problems that make them difficult and costly to administer.
My greatgrandparents were sharecroppers working along side the slaves. My mother grew up on welfare and pulled herself out of it by herself b/c she was totally humiliated by her poverty. She’s a single mom who qualified for but refused welfare b/c she wanted her children to be successful and independent. I applied for every tiny scholarship available and worked hard to make up the difference b/c my mother was not able to assist me. I graduated in 3 years to save on the costs and get started on a career. FASTFORWARD. I recently left a position in the Admissions Office at a small public liberal arts university. I can’t speak for all universities (esp. Top Ten schools) but an overwhelming majority of black students received full-tuition grants based on financial situations (and some received academic scholarships additionally). We like most colleges have open admissions policies allowing ANYONE to enroll. Many, many of these students receiving a free education flunked out after their first semester or first year. Many white students on free rides as well, for that matter. But during my 2 1/2 years there I never met a kid that tried his/her best and still came up short. Not even close. Our future is an incredibly lazy and ungrateful one and I’m not for pissing money away at people who don’t care. I’m not saying black people don’t care. I’m saying opportunities that are not well-deserved are very often unappreciated.
Also, I now work for a state agency (higher edu related). If you are black and esp. if you are a black female applying for a job, you’re hired here. Also, you get an office with a window even if it makes more sense to give that office to someone white. I’d feel insulted if that were me. but hey, i paid my way.
Mary, can you point to even a single verifiable source supporting your claims, or do you think I should just take your word for it?
Sheelzebub: What about the example Amanda cited? What about the poor Black kid who lives in an all-Black neighborhood that businesses won’t touch, the city ignores, and the police avoid? What about the poor Black kid who goes to a crumbling school (because the school has no money to fix the asbestos problem, the bad plumbing, the drafty windows, etc.)
DonP: 1. There is little evidence that racial preferences unfairly advantage overprivileged racial minorities or disadvantage underprivileged whites (Carson claims that they do, but provides no evidence to support his assertion).
Query whether any of the people Sheelzebub is concerned about is getting into schools like University of Michigan on affirmative action programs. Although most schools don’t record this data, Harvard looked into it and found
“the majority of them [blacks at Harvard] — perhaps as many as two thirds — were West Indian and African immigrants or their children or, to a lesser extent, children of bi-racial couples.”
I support “top 10%” plans, that would help “the poor Black kid who lives in an all-Black neighborhood that businesses won’t touch, the city ignores, and the police avoid.” The ones out there now, though, are heavily slanted to pick the Barack Obamas of the world — children of non-slave-descended Africans and Caucasians growing up in all-white neighborhoods.
By basing affirmative action on “race” as a proxy for who we really want to help (poor African Americans harmed by American discrimination), we are in fact leaving those we want to help behind again.
I wish I could get statistics from schools other than Harvard. Unfortunately, they simply do not release it. Until they do, I see no reason to think that Harvard’s experience is anomolous.
Richard,
you wrote
The main reason I can see for considering it anomolous is because it is Harvard, one of the ultra-elite schools in the country? Also, it is a private school, and therefore does not privelege state residents, but instead draws exclusively from the top students in the entire country. State schools such as UMichigan tend to privelege state residents, and therefore draw from a broader swathe of the population (since the main pool of potential students is much smaller, it is possible to draw from a wider portion of the pool).
While one data point is better than none, and is worth paying attention to, it is unfortunate if Harvard is the only data point, since it is certainly not typical of universities and colleges in the US.
Actually, slightly lower in the article there is one more stat: In a survey of “28 selective colleges and universities”, 41% of immigrants defined themselves, children of immigrants, or mixed race.
41% is somewhat less than 50-67% at Harvard, but still largely disproportionate to the population as a whole.
The question is really: who is affirmative action supposed to help, and how many of them are being helped? If the goal is to help the poor, inner city, black descendents of slaves and those who lived through Jim Crow, maybe we’re not really helping as many of those people as we think.
If it turns out that the true face of affirmative action is the son of a Caucasian and a non-slave Nigerian immigrant, is that really worth all of the political heat pro-affirmative action groups are taking?
Fair question, Richard.
I’m one of those black people you’re talking about, as my parents are Ghanaian though I think my nationality has finally settled down as British (long stupid story). I attended an Ivy League college (not Harvard) and on one of my recent visits to the States, I asked this question recently to one of my little sisters who is happily struggling with the H-1 to green card process:
– How many professional black people do you know?
– Quite a few.
– How many are American? As in family been here for generations, not naturalised or first or second generation?
– Not that many. Actually, very few.
Where it’s really spectacular is graduate school: almost every last black person you see in graduate courses will be from abroad or have parents who are. And that goes double if you’re talking about the sciences or engineering courses.
It’s very very sad. And the danger is that ignoring the fact that many ostesnsibly successful black people are actually imports obscures the depth of the problem.
>>It’s very very sad. And the danger is that ignoring the >> fact that many ostesnsibly successful black people
>> are actually imports obscures the depth of the problem.
To a certain extent, the same can be said of Hispanics. A disproportionate fraction of Hispanics in graduate school and teaching at Universities are recent immigrants who moved here after high school.
I never got the impression that the foreign born Hispanic grad students at U of Illinois were admitted under any special programs– but they do get counted as Hispanics when people collect statistics.
If we wanted to answer the question of who is being helped by AA or any, program, it would be useful if they collected statistics on these sorts of things.
To clarify, Lucia: there is no special program for admitting foreign students. They either have to pay full price or else fight for merit-based scholarships offered by individual schools. But as you say, when it’s time to do the statistics…
Naa-Dei, special admissioin programs don’t necessarily imply scholarships or financial aid. When making admission decisions, some schools consider a wide range of non-academic features — including whether or not your parents are graduates, sometimes race, sometimes athletics.
What I meant was I was not under the impression that the foreign born Hispanics graduate students were admitted under different academic standards than any other foreign born students.
Actually, if you’re not American, colleges are a lot less interested in background than they’d otherwise be. It’s essays, scores, recommendations and ability to pay that count a lot more. *Especially* ability to pay. I remember the first question the advisor for the United States Information Services in Accra would ask: ‘how much money do you have?’ It does skew the intake of foreign students because you get the people with the best resources and/or academic achievements, but if I’m honest, I’ll say that you can’t separate academic achievement from opportunity to achieve — nice settled surroundings and supportive parents and teachers with lots of resources are such helpful things to have. I don’t think that it matters much where in the world you’re from either.
Nothing wrong with that: it’d be wrong to disregard nationality when making admissions. However, from a statistical point of view, foriegn students regardless of national or ethnic origin should be classed as foreign otherwise you run the risk of fudging the true picture as far as AA and real opportunity for the country’s citizens goes.
Anyway, to get back to the topic: at its truest, Affirmative Action’s goal should be putting itself out of business. Putting itself out of business doesn’t mean letting one or two kids into nice colleges. It’s about addressing the structural problems (such as the non-existent banks and distant schools so eloquently described above by another poster) that make getting ahead such an exceptionally tough job. It’s depressing that it’s devolved all too often into tokenism.
>>It’s about addressing the structural problems (such as the non-existent banks and distant schools so eloquently described above by another poster) that make getting ahead such an exceptionally tough job.
True. It would be much better to fix the structural problems.
Unfortunately, these problems are very difficult to address. Amanda described lack of grocery stores and outside businesses in minority neighborhoods as well. Swaying private individuals or corporation to invest in a neighborhood against their own judgement is nearly impossible. It is extremely difficult even if the individual or corporations judgement is totally distorted by prejudice.
So, the question that always arises is this: Given the fact that the structural problems currently exist, what can we do now to mitigate the effects? (BTW, I don’t actually know the correct answer.)
I’m not of the school of thought that makes good the enemy of perfect: helping individuals up given that they’re having a tough time of it is a good thing. It does have its problems but I think the complaint of ‘letting unqualified people in’ is the least founded of them.
The trouble I’m having is that I get the sense that it’s being thought as the *solution* to entrenched discrimination and disadvantage rather than as a part of fixing the problem. So the rest of the problem goes unaddressed, which is a crime. I know there are initiatives out there and I know of one group that challenged a bank over its red-lining practices but at the moment, they’re small and disjointed and don’t have the pressure power they ought to have. It’d be good for that to change. Who knows, maybe a new slogan: PUT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION OUT OF BUSINESS — REAL SOCIAL JUSTICE NOW! ;-)
Btw, I’d been wondering why you kept referring to Hispanic students until the penny dropped. No, ‘Ghananian’ refers to Ghana, in West Africa, not Guyana. :) Could be worse — we once got important mail that had been misdelivered to China several months after we needed it.
>>I’d been wondering why you kept referring to Hispanic students
I wasn’t confused about your country!
I was adding the observation that, just as you observed a disproportionate number of Africans in grad school are foreign born, many Hispanics in grad school are foreign born. Sorry if that was confusing.
The problem is similar: American born Hispanics are often not getting into grad school (for whatever reason). Foreign born Hispanics are counted in the AA statistics, which can mask the depth of the problem.
BTW. I was born in El Salvador, but my case, and that of my family, is one that causes people to argue about the correct and meaningful definition of Hispanic.
Richard Bellamy:
Are you suggesting that the high proportion of immigrant blacks at Harvard is evidence that racial preferences are unfairly benefitting overprivileged members of racial minorities? I don’t see how that follows. In fact, the article you linked to reports that the two professors who made this discovery are rather ambivalent about its implications for Harvard’s affirmative action policies.
As for “top 10%” plans, I might favor them where explicit racial preferences are not politically feasible, but they have their own problems. They rely on residential patterns of racial segregation to boost the representation of racial minorities. And to the extent that their motive and purpose is to increase minority representation, they are dishonest. They hide a racial preference behind a proxy, which tends to mask the problem.
Naa-Dei:
Anyway, to get back to the topic: at its truest, Affirmative Action’s goal should be putting itself out of business. Putting itself out of business doesn’t mean letting one or two kids into nice colleges. It’s about addressing the structural problems (such as the non-existent banks and distant schools so eloquently described above by another poster) that make getting ahead such an exceptionally tough job. It’s depressing that it’s devolved all too often into tokenism.
What alternative do you suggest? It’s all very well to say that we should address the structural problems of inequality, but what does that mean in terms of concrete–and politically feasible–public policy? As Lucia observed, there are severe limits to our ability to induce the private sector to invest in impoverished areas.
And I’m not sure what you mean by “tokenism,” but one of the justifications for affirmative action is its inspirational and motivational benefits through the creation of role models. The beneficiaries of affirmative action are not just the direct beneficiaries of the preference, but the minority community more generally. Black children who see other blacks in positions of power and authority are more likely to be inspired to try and achieve those goals for themselves than black children who see only a lilly-white elite. Don’t underestimate the power of example.
Are you suggesting that the high proportion of immigrant blacks at Harvard is evidence that racial preferences are unfairly benefitting overprivileged members of racial minorities? . . . [10% laws] hide a racial preference behind a proxy, which tends to mask the problem.
My issue is really one of first principles. The topic and content of this post focused on the importance of using race, rather than using economics as a proxy for race. If the problem is a racial one, then I completely agree.
My problem, though, is that I think race ITSELF is merely a proxy. Consider whether you, as a pro-affirmative action person, would be happy to find out that your local university just filled 12% of its student body with black students, all of whom had just graduated from African or West African High Schools. No U.S. citizens in the bunch.
My reaction would be, “No. I don’t want to just help Black people before of their race. I think they should receive affirmative action because of America’s long history of slavery and Jim Crow laws against them and their ancestors.”
It’s not a question of “overprivileged” racial minorities — it’s a question of what affirmative action is supposed to do. In my mind, if it is acceptable at all, it is to counter structural barriers that face African-American students. Those barriers are less likely to face Foreign students, children of foreign students, and children who have at least one white parent. The fact that this is so is borne out by the fact that they are using up a disproportionately high percent of the AA slots.
I disagree with Naa-Dei Nikoi above in his statement that AA is only a partial solution. To the extent that we are ignoring the problems of the inner cities because we feel we can make up for it by using AA, AA is really part of the problem, since the people who we wish to help the most are precisely those we are ignoring by instead setting up AA programs that help other people entirely.
Note that the New York Times has another article on a related issue (who is an African American) today.
While “race” as a proxy for who AA policies really want to help may have made sense in 1975, it makes less sense today, and will continue to make less sense as demographics and global mobility change.
The percent of immigrants, children of immigrants, and children of one white parent who take advantage of AA today may be 30%, 50%, or 70% today. The likely direction, however, with immigration and intermarriage and the like, is that it will be more and more every year.
Why wait 10 or 20 years before looking at the entrenched underclass again and saying, “Hey, I didn’t realize that AA programs weren’t actually helping them!”
Richard, That NYT article has some interesting demographic data. In the 1990’s, the number of blacks with recent roots in sub-Saharan Africa nearly tripled while the number of blacks with origins in the Caribbean grew by more than 60 percent, according to demographers at the State University of New York at Albany. By 2000, foreign-born blacks constituted 30 percent of the blacks in New York City, 28 percent of the blacks in Boston and about a quarter here in Montgomery County, Md., an analysis of census data conducted at Queens College shows.
That’s quite a lot of immigration.
It certainly is. Not that I object. It is certainly proper that there be more immigration from Africa and the West Indies than there has historically been. And I strongly believe in continued liberal immigration policies, especially from poorer countries in Africa.
The relevant question though, is whether these are the “right blacks” for affirmative action programs? As Don P accurately notes: the two professors who made this discovery are rather ambivalent about its implications for Harvard’s affirmative action policies. If two strongly pro-AA figures are ambivalent, what should those of us who started out vaguely ambivalent think?
What happens when over 50% of black Americans are or are descended from, say, post-1970 immigrants? Depending on who we want AA programs to help, it is possible that “race based” AA may be an even WORSE proxy than economically based AA in attempting to assist those particular African-Americans who have been most left behind by racism in America.
Oh– I’m all for liberal immigration laws! I’m just surprised at how high the proportion of foreign born blacks in those cities happens to be.
I also think it’s information we need to know in predicting the likely future impact of AA programs as currently constituted. It’s also important information that needs to be collected in assessing the impact of current programs.
Anyway, I highlighted the numbers in bold because I think most people probably didn’t expect those numbers. (Well… I didn’t!)
I would like to add an aklternative view here that i hope is not taken as a racial view.I am a white male who has worked all my life.I never did make a lot but still i worked.My wife was disabled several years ago and two years ago i was injured myself and have eight herniated and inoperable discs.I applied for disability but was turned down.The reason was that presumably(though totally physically disabled),i can still perform less demanding jobs.I have appealed and hopefully this will be reversed as i am Fifty two with no real education.I have tried to get some kind of welfare help for my family but have been refused.I believe it is simply because i am a white male.I know many black men who are much better shape who had no problem getting help.I think there is a racial problem in this regard in america.I also know of many white males who don’t even attempt to get help because they see what is happening.They work hurt and just make do.Maybe i am just frustrated and irrational,but i do think this should be addressed.
David, you do sound frustrated and irrational. Of these Black men you know who have no problem receiving assistance. Are they educated the same as you? Do they do the same work as you?
The determination of who receives assistance and who doesn’t is based on some of these questions. I know a Black man who was turned down for assistance and had to appeal. SSI felt that he could have found a less physically taxing job. The problem was he didn’t have the education for a less phyically taxing job.
I also know a white man who was turned down because they felt he could find a job, even though he was 45 and had lost his arm, (from the shoulder down). At 45 how much time do you have to train for another job when you’ve been doing manual labor most of your life? Whose going to hire someone at age 50 and is just starting out?
This is not to say that people who do manual labor can’t be retrained. I’m sure they can, but if they have been doing it most of their lives, (ie. they are now 45-55 and have to start over)who is going to be willing to take the risk.
Most companies these days are not hiring older workers. It’s one things that a large number of middle income men have been complaining about when trying to find a new job.
Affirmative Action was put into place to stop discrimination, but not just of Blacks, of all minorites. That would include women (white or black and any other race) it also includes Vietnam Vets.
People tend to forget that when they talk about getting rid of AA. They think it’s just a racial thing, but it’s so much more.
I would love to feel that in this country a person could get a job based purely on their knowledge and skill set, but I know first hand that’s not how it works.
Dave, continue your fight, if you are in the right you will get the assistance that you need.
ANY WHITE MALE BORN AND RAISED IN AMERICA, THAT IS NOT WEALTHY, SHOULD BLOW HIS DAMN BRAINS OUT. He is not worthy of anymore consideration. America provides the white male with every advantage to succeed, educated or uneducated, it does not seem to matter. Who among you (white men)can denied the fact that the standing president of this country is a prime example of affirmative action for white males, its called entitlement. Can you truly say, with a straight face, that the man is qualified? If he were black or brown and displayed such a low intellect, he would be lucky to get a job as a laborer. That assumes the man of color still attended and graduated from Yale. White people say they are for welfare reform, but they love corporate welfare and pork barrel handouts at the federal level of wealth redistribution, which again is white male entitlement. The companies that benefit from corporate welfare are all managed to insolvency by well qualified white male CEO’s, such as Ken Lay of Eron. If getting your education was all that is required to create wealth for yourself and family, then what would happen tomorrow if every person of color in america had an MBA? If you have any economic knowledge of supply and demand, you would know that there would some poor and homeless people with MBAs. Education in and of itself is not correlated to wealth creation and the old world view, of getting an education and securing a good job, has been outsourced. Based on my observations of over 50 years, you whine and bitch about any and everything that you don’t control or can’t control. You truly are a mediocre lot that lives in a constant state of denial and fear.
\inhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaale
Yeah man. The only good honkey is a dead honkey.
/exhaaaaaaaaaaale
*cough*
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