Opinion: The year I became a ‘minority’
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(Photo/Getty Images)
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA
CHICAGO — Is the sky falling for minority students because the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case seeking an end to using race as a preferential college admissions factor?
Well I found this remarkably lacking. For example at the end of the piece Cepeda remarks,
If we could find a way to fix the inequality in access to great teachers and strong curriculums long before college, every year earned from then on would be valued equally — regardless of race.
If only everything was equal then we’d all be equal regardless of “race”, isn’t that something? Furthermore she bemoans her lack of “barrio” experience but isn’t this making the case for collegiate diversity on some other level than socioeconomic factor? Without some of these programs that she denounces, how would students with “barrio” experience make it to, her own words, a prestigious marketing graduate program at Northwestern University, ranked in the top 10 of the prestigious U.S. News and World Report “Best Colleges” list? I’m not stating that it’s not plausible but the obstacles are certainly different. Let me reiterate what I’ve been saying for years, if we lived in an equal and just society then we wouldn’t have to worry about the consideration of “race” in collegiate admissions but we don’t live in such a society. And if everything else matters, why can’t “race” matter?
Caption: Students Kritz Eliza and Taylor Matzen, dressed as American Indians, participate during a bake sale led by the Berkeley College Republicans Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011, at the University of California campus in Berkeley, Calif. The Berkeley College Republicans have scheduled a bake sale where the price of a cookie or a brownie depends on your gender and the color of your skin. The price of a baked good costs $2 for white people, $1.50 if you’re Asian, $1 for Latinos, 75 cents for African-Americans and 25 cents for Native Americans. Women get a discount of 25 cents. From SFgate.com
Wow. White girls in headdresses, participating in the bake sale. Are they trying to get free cookies or what? This is the insensitivity supported by the UC Berkeley Campus Republicans and their bake sale. From the article:
The Republican students said offering more expensive pastries to white students and less expensive ones to students of other ethnicities illustrated the injustice of any division by race. A few feet away from the bake sale, opposing groups held a “Conscious Cupcakes” giveaway, handing out their own treats for free. And around midday, hundreds of people dressed in black laid down in Sproul Plaza, silently demonstrating their support of SB185.
This come from the opposition to a bill that would allow California’s universities to consider race and ethnicity as one of many factors, like extra-curriculars, in college admissions. The bill would still ban admission based entirely on race or ethnicity.
<sarcasm> Here’s something more honest: How about you still charge the white guy $2.00 for the cookie, give him $3 to buy it, and then let him punch the Native American students in order to steal their cookies, screaming “MANIFEST DESTINY, ASSHOLES!” triumphantly? After that, how about the African-American students are forced to clean up after the bake sale, as the Campus Republicans sip mint juleps and supervise? Is that more honest? </sarcasm>
I don’t support throwing the baked goods at them, nor screaming obscenities. I do absolutely love the steps taken by the Harry Potter student group, selling “enchanted Costco muffins,” for “Two galleons to pure bloods” and “Eight sickles to muggles.”
This is hands down the most disgusting image from today.
UC Berkeley College Republicans president Shawn Lewis • Discussing his group’s reasoning for having a bake sale where people paid different prices based on their race and gender. The pricing scale’s kinda like this: $2 for whites, $1.50 for Asians, $1 for Latinos, $0.75 for Blacks and $0.25 for Native Americans — with a discount of 25 cents for women of all races. As you might guess, this bake sale, scheduled for Tuesday, is flaring up emotions quicker than a character in the movie “PCU.” It’s not the first time it’s been tried — a couple of other schools have tried the idea, and it’s been shut down at least once. What do you think? Does this seem disrespectful and worth getting angry over, or is there a valid point here? (h/t ProducerMatthew) source (via • follow)
I just want to make a few observations. These type of events were once called affirmative action bake sales, but affirmative action hasn’t been practiced in California since 1996 so they named this particular event “Increase Diversity Bake Sale.” The problems with the new bake sale are the same as the problems with the old bake sales, mainly that they’re stupid so don’t let the name distract you. From The Daily Californian, the on-campus newspaper,
The bake sale is in protest of SB 185,which, if signed by Brown, would allow California public universities to consider a number of non-academic factors such as race, gender, and nationality in the admissions process in order to increase campus diversity.
California public universities stopped considering race in admissions in 1997 after California voters passed Proposition 209.
According to Joey Freeman, ASUC External Affairs Vice President — who said he found the event “incredibly offensive” — there are a number of misconceptions about the legislation, namely that it gives preference to underrerpresented minorities. He emphasized that the bill would only allow — not require — admissions officers to consider race and nationality.
The emphasis is mine. The following, from The Daily Californian, is from another article that touches upon SB 185,
Though Proposition 209 bans awarding admissions decisions based on race and ethnicity alone, SB 185 would allow admissions officers to view ethnicity as part of the student’s background as a whole, according to Jesse Choper, a UC Berkeley law professor who specializes in race.
The bill would only authorize UC and CSU to consider race, gender, ethnicity and other relevant factors in admissions decisions, but will not mandate them to do so.
“Even if Jerry Brown does sign this into law, we will still need to push the regents to implement this bill,” said CalSERVE Senator Sydney Fang, who co-authored the bill, at the meeting. “The bill is a push for admissions to be even more sensitive to how race, gender, ethnicity as well as socioeconomic status, sexual orientation and disability affect our opportunities.”
The emphasis are mine. I agree with Senator Fang but let’s put that aside for now. For anyone interested in the raw data, these are the freshman admission rates since 2007. The breakdown for Fall 2011 is as follows,
- 13.8% Latino/ Chicano
- 3.4% African American
- 0.8% American Indian
While some of these percentages may be up from previous years (lamentably not American Indian), the aforementioned ethnicities collectively constitute only 18% of the entering freshman student body. These percentages were previously 16.3% in 2007, 16.3% in 2008, 16.4% in 2009, and 16.6% in 2010. Please note that the student population has been increasing every year.
Some of you may have also noticed that the Latino/ Chicano ethnicity rose by a whopping 1.2%, an astute observation might I add. However before you make any potentially racist comments, I would love to draw your attention to the following reports by Pew Hispanic Center,
- Hispanic College Enrollment Spikes (white enrollment drops by 4%)
- Hispanic Household Wealth Fell by 66% (white wealth drops by 15%)
- Hispanics Account for More than Half of Nation’s Growth (since 2000)
I recommend that you read these reports, particularly this very long report which explains how these increases in college enrollment within the Hispanic community and Black community transcend demographic shifts. It also makes a very interesting claim,
The 320,000 student decline in young white enrollment since 2009 is a 4% decline and the largest decline in percentage terms since at least 1993 (when this historical series begins). The decline partly reflects that the size of the white 18- to 24-year-old population peaked in 2008.
In other words, as Hispanic populations grow and begin to enroll into college at an increased rate (though predominantly community college), they have also seen their household wealth decline by 66%. During this same period, white 18-14 year old enrollment populations seem to have peaked since 2008 while only experiencing a 15% decline in household wealth. This creates a problem for obvious reasons and can lead to some serious misinterpretation of data.
At UC Berkeley, the finest public university in the world might I add, the percentages of Hispanic admits have remained proportionally the same in recent years. With special consideration that the university lies within a state where Hispanics represent 37.6% of the population, freshmen Hispanic enrollment rates (13.8% of the entering freshmen class) are particularly troublesome. SB 185, in conjunction with the latest research on why these discrepancies exist, seeks to address and ameliorate these problems.
Personal: As a Hispanic male who was admitted, attended and is currently re-attending UC Berkeley, my GPA (about average for Berkeley freshman admits) and SAT scores (an exam I had no money to test prep for and thought was only one hour, about average for UC Berkeley admits) do not say anything about me. They do not speak about some of the disadvantages that plagued my upbringing. They do not mention that my high school had one college counselor for a population of ~4,500 students. They do not mention that my 700-800 high school student graduation class initially had 1,900 entering freshman. They do not mention that we could not take books home because the school could not afford to update them. They do not mention that even my AP courses had 40-60 students. They do not mention that my family at times survived because of welfare or that having a single mother who works two jobs means that you, as the eldest child, suddenly adopt responsibilities that you can’t add or quantify on college applications. These are just a few of the many problems that were not and are still not reflected in the GPA or SAT score of me or many other Latino’s akin to me. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, in fact I wasn’t born using any kind of spoon, but it didn’t stop me from trying my best under the circumstances that I was born into. In addition, I did not and do not expect UC Berkeley to grant me or anyone else admission simply because of an ethnicity, particularly if the GPA or SAT scores are drastically lower than those of other ethnicities, I just want them to understand some of those circumstances and disadvantages that plague particular underrepresented communities. It’s not reverse discrimination, it’s just an admission that the playing field isn’t level.
It turns out the Ivy League’s racial diversity stats are only half the story. People in search of egalitarianism at places like Harvard and Columbia shouldn’t just be asking what color students are, but where they’re from, too.
Call it the Ivy League’s dirty little secret: While America’s most elite colleges do in fact make it a point to promote ethnic diversity on their campuses, a lot of them do so by admitting hugely disproportionate numbers of wealthy immigrants and their children rather than black students with deep roots—and troubled histories—in the United States.
The problem, of course, isn’t that black immigrants are going to Ivy League schools in large numbers; educational success should be applauded no matter where the student is from. But the large numbers of African immigrants on American college campuses, coupled with the remarkably small numbers of native blacks on those same campuses, calls into question the effectiveness of America’s affirmative action programs. While affirmative action started as a system to right the wrongs of slavery and institutional anti-black racism, helping wealthy immigrants who weren’t here for those struggles doesn’t serve any of the program’s original intentions.
» via GOOD
A close personal friend of mine attended Yale, the first in her family to attend Yale or any university. When she arrived at Yale she realized that she needed a bit more money to accomodate her needs, well by now you must be asking yourself what kind of job does an intelligent Latina at Yale attain? She cleaned the rooms of the wealthier students on campus.
