I tutored an Indian high school student in math back when I was a grad student, and during her senior year we talked about her preferred universities. She went to a school where a lot of well-off kids and children of the professors of my own university went, and there was a lot of competition among the students. She told me that just from talking with other students it was known that the Indian and other Asian students there had to work the hardest to get into the best schools. She wasn't exactly a conservative type herself, but the way she said it expressed a sense of unfairness about it.
At time-point 56 minutes: Glenn’s concept “social capital” was discussed as connected to the development of raw resource. If I understand this concept correctly, then examples would be the sobriety performance of Mormons and Muslims, and the singing career success of African Americans. I want to add to a would-be list of resource-development factors; (1) Perception and (2) Interpretation. Each human possibly carries a metaphorical glass of water constantly that is filled mid-way. When anything noticeable occurs- we ask ourselves “Is my glass half-full or half-empty?” That is my oversimplification of perception. Interpretation is the story we tell ourselves about a historical event that occurred 1 minute ago or 1 decade ago. Each perception incident and interpretation incident are pathway splits from which there is no return. I can use my personal experience as example. I know of individuals who came from less yet achieved more than me. At age 55, I can acknowledge that some of my perceptions and interpretations of younger years were very stupid. Investment advisors ideally tell a person how to achieve maximum future potential from $10K or $100K. Communities need similar experts from within that can advise the individual on maximizing their internal resource and group resource and also advise at the community level. An expert from within has a personal “skin in the game” interest or personal interest that motivates. Of course all humans have a societal interest - but that interest is at a different level and connected to different motivation. Interest at both levels is important.
I think of the City State Singapore with envy. I am a lifetime civil service employee who is aware the Singapore has a global reputation for superior civil service. I am also competitive and I want to out-perform my counterparts in Singapore. Singapore success could be connected to social capital at the societal level.
I have a story about math. When arriving at 7th grade, my sister and I were at same grade level (not twins). On the roster for math classes; our two names accidentally became switched. Her math class was too hard and mine too easy. She was moved to an easier class, but I was not moved. I lost a year of math. I took Calculus at the University and loved it.
I have 3 personal health Equity goals that are not necessarily aligned. I want longevity (living many years) and good health till death and good mental health. Dying peacefully of a heart attack in my sleep at age 70 would not be longevity. Dying at age 92 after 15 years of terminal illness would not be good health.
Walking into a candy-store and randomly pointing to candy is not methodical, nor structured. Public Health has already had “Equity” priorities for more than three decades. We called it Epidemiology. I found out that NYC had decided to vaccinate African Americans first as an Equity priority. Afterwards, activists saw a glass half-empty because “African Americans were given vaccine first- for allegedly experimental reasons.”
My most direct experience with confronting the difference affirmative action and effective quotas can make relates to a discussion I had with a (very left of center) favorite professor who had taught mostly judicial politics and was at the time of our meeting a dean in the graduate social and behavioral sciences program. I’d been the top student in a couple of his classes and he and other professors had apparently spoken a number of times about my future prospects. But like a lot of kids of pretty rocky backgrounds I was still a pretty volatile mix of some pretty negative ideas about the relationship between consistent effort and results; I had plenty of bad habits and unhelpful hang ups. In tie first class I took with this professor, an honors advanced writing class, he actually read my essay word for word to the rest of the class to demonstrate what was possible. He then joked with the class that what he’d read was actually an essay from The New York Times Magazine. A friend of mine from the class believed him. By the second class I took with him, I was missing 3/4 of the classes, but somehow still managed the only perfect score on the midterm and an ‘A’ overall.
The reason I was meeting with him a few years later was I had had a series of breakdowns and finally was clinically diagnosed with two conditions. I’d eventually graduated, including with a major writing award, but had wrecked my grades. A blunt and acerbic born and raised New Yorker, this prof told me “look, I believe in you as much as I did then, but you’re damaged goods”. He showed me all the grids where students had been admitted to various law schools, in which the lowest grades intersected with various ranges of test scores. And said: don’t you understand? All of these spots are reserved for racial minorities? Neither of us were editorializing about affirmative action. It was just matter of fact.
Many of us have been through some hard times as kids and/or will go through our share or worse. I have to own my own mistakes and failures. But it was made pretty clear to me by someone very much in a position to know that those failures would have been forgiven and I might well have been offered the opportunity to attend an at least very solid law school, if - actual upbringing and hardships aside - I’d simply been born with a different skin color. Maybe even having one parent of continental Spanish heritage would have been enough.
I can only control what I can control, and I had failed to maximize my chances to pursue what had once been what I was certain would be my academic and career path, and one the professors who knew my work best thought for sure would involve a top-ten law school. A mind is terrible thing to waste - for people of any color.
The problem, too, is that DEI has become another vehicle and license, to be driven for perpetuity, by which to openly demonize people simply for being born with the phenotypes of paler skin and other features - unless of course they can claim and deploy to their advantage “one drop” of preferred racial/ethnic heritage. It’s become a bludgeon and tool by which to shame, scapegoat and marginalize people who have done no wrong, all while pretending to celebrate, with a sickeningly saccharine grin, concepts like “diversity” (no white people) “inclusion” (anybody but white people) and “equity” (a new caste system in which white people are relegated to the very bottom, unless they can claim radically queer or trans status). And, oh what a coincidence: vastly greater proportions of younger people, especially white and/or Jewish young women are now loudly adopting these supposedly inherently interesting and heroic new identities, because it’s getting pretty damn ugly in so many of these spaces - not by the lowest lows of history, but vis a vis other identities - to try and simply live life as a white woman or gay man, let alone as “white male cis het scum”. Coleman Hughes and others have noted how this plays out at schools like Columbia, where virtually everyone without a preferred racial and sex or gender identity is now trying to one-up each other by claiming ever more debilitating traumas and mental illnesses.
There are related, subtler losses in suspecting you don't have to be quite as good to at least get in the game, expecting to cash in. If you really care about something and it is slipping away, you start looking for other ways to skin the cat. I was a musician with below-average coordination, so I worked on voice and styling. I worked on finding good band members to work with and encouraged them. I learned how to read a crowd and work it. People who love a sport may find they just don't have what it takes to go to the next level. Okay, can you find a niche like defense and just hang on and be satisfied? Can you learn to coach? Can you write about the sport, or interview players? Can you scout?
Michael Caine used to tell people who said they wanted to be an actor "No, you want to be famous. There are plenty of community theaters who need people, the opportunity is always there." Do you really love the law, medicine, or managing investments or do you just want to be admired? Are you willing to be poor and treated badly for a decade in order to get this?
If people don't get to see where they really stand until it is too late, they don't learn where the back doors and side doors are. Almost everyone is going to need to scramble someday and it's better to practice being nimble early.
Does anyone know if the whites & Asians (both Far East & Near East) are having similar issues with "elite" universities in Europe? Do foreign whites and Asians have an easier time getting into American "elite" schools?
Virtually any applicant from a particularly wealthy and famous family is going to get into an elite school, not only because they bring glamour and status, but also of course because it means big donations and influential connections. With applicants from abroad from families which are merely wealthy accepting them is almost addiction at many schools, not only because some are both wealthy and “of color”, but because their family pay a premium in tuition.
Thank-you John and Glenn for discussing a subject that white and Asians, particularly the males, are not even allowed to discuss. Most of us were screwed by Affirmative Action since it’s inception in 1964. Do some of us resent being discriminated by government policy for decades? Of course. Meanwhile, the Liberal Dem elite have optimized destruction of black men by positioning so many to be either a shooter or shooting victim. Would love you two to look at Philly as an example of the optimization of the destruction of its young black men.
DEI sounds like a noble aspiration, until you realize Diversity is used to promote racialism, Equity is used to promote redistribution, and Inclusion is used to exclude certain groups. Quite Orwellian...
Back in the day, the top firms didn’t solely recruit from the top schools (comprised of bright but highly conformist and risk averse grads) but gave an opportunity for regular kids (from poorer family and academic backgrounds) to “work their way up”. Many of these kids learned how to work hard (and improve themselves)on the job even if that wasn’t necessarily the family or academic environment they came from. I have always felt that poor kids from challenging environments who prove they can excel despite that environment (whether at school or work) are exactly the kind of people I want to work with and are often more perceptive and resilient than their driven and conformist private school brethren. And sometimes the kid that gets B+‘s in that poorer environment is a better investment than the A+ kid with all the advantages.
In my view the problem with affirmative action is that it benefits wealthier kids of color attending better schools who (as pointed out) might be working less hard than their peers (note I didn’t work very hard in my public school and I am white, because my parents prioritized going to college, not going to Harvard). Meanwhile, the academic strivers in poorer public schools are working harder than their peers….when not getting beaten up by them. Let’s put a thumb on the scale for high achieving public and parochial school students (of any race)from middle class, working class and poor districts, and let’s give all admitted students some intensive support in year one to teach them how to write, how to research, how to organize their time. Some will get it, some will not.
Obviously we are taking only the top of the pyramid here - the bigger societal issues are to improve our abysmal primary school instruction and quality (so that all kids can read and write and add) and provide apprenticeships and training for high school kids not going onto college.
If something is unfair on an individual level how can it be fair on a larger scale? How can these high level appointments, such as to the Supreme Court, etc, empower a larger group? This seems to be the assumption: that a high-level appointment of a black person helps all blacks, but does it? Did having a black president help blacks in general? Are the disadvantages greater than the advantages? Seems to me there are disadvantages that have not been analyzed both to minority groups and to the majority group, and to society as a whole.
In my experience this question about affirmative action also has an affect on students who are excellent but not outstanding.
I was a student who did very well in math and reading but was only above average at writing (B to B+). I scored well on standardized tests but I wasn't full 99th percentile in every category. In other words, I was excellent but I wasn't a "genius". My one claim to fame as a student, other than grades, was that I began taking college courses in Highschool starting when I was 15. At the start they were mostly highschool level courses but the accelerated pace allowed me to get a head start on content beyond the scope of a normal highschool education. I ended up going to a very average college where I sailed thru my courses relatively easily and acquired a B.S in physics.
I think there are a bunch of circumstances that led me away from getting into an elite school. For example, I was probably not as disciplined as some of the Asian American students who drill the ACT/SAT until it becomes second nature. One contributing factor that I think is relevant to this discussion is the psychological affect of knowing you have to be beyond excellent to qualify. I don't know if I was better than any of the admittees to Harvard, CalTech, or MIT, but I didn't believe I was "special" and in my highschool mind that was what it took to get into those colleges. So why should I kill myself with effort trying to get into a college that won't accept me anyway? Not to mention how you won't be favored for scholarships even if you do scrape by the admissions process. Even at my very average college I got maybe 1000$ of scholarships for being the top student in my department year after year.
In the same way that lowering standards teaches students to drag their feet, creating an impossible standard causes students that could be great to drag their feet. In both cases potential is squandered that should be properly developed.
I hope my rant has not come off as bitter. Despite my humble credentials I have learned to cultivate a desire and love of learning that may not have survived a competitive environment like Harvard or MIT. My goal was to give an anecdotal account of an almost excellent student and the psychological impacts of selective admission criteria on drive to succeed. It does, I think, make a difference in the real actions that students take to develop themselves.
Thanks for the thought provoking conversations Glenn, they do seem to shine light on these difficult problems.
I think stories like yours are the norm, and probably too much of today's political and cultural analysis comes from people who think the entire nation shares the luxury of their educational and egotistical obsessions.
Let's have more measurables, less "prestige." I'm still amused by a recent guest who asked Dr. Loury, "What good is this Harvard law degree to me?"
It probably does affect performance, but the interesting thing to me is that the supposed "victims" of preferential admissions are in a lot of ways, not really victims. If you study harder, you learn more, you become more capable of doing more. Yeah, of the ten elite schools you applied to, you got into one, versus the black guy who was hanging out instead of studying got into six. But you're still smarter and more capable, and that difference will reemerge during college, then again during professional school, then again, in the workplace. Ultimately, as we've seen, the economic and social disparities between the races don't change at all, notwithstanding generations of preferences. It's just a different way of shuffling.
What a dumb reply. Is this the extent of your ability to articulate an argument? Are you perhaps one of the people with an * beside their name to show that you advanced not on merit but on racist discrimination policies?
I tutored an Indian high school student in math back when I was a grad student, and during her senior year we talked about her preferred universities. She went to a school where a lot of well-off kids and children of the professors of my own university went, and there was a lot of competition among the students. She told me that just from talking with other students it was known that the Indian and other Asian students there had to work the hardest to get into the best schools. She wasn't exactly a conservative type herself, but the way she said it expressed a sense of unfairness about it.
In short, yes. The kids already know.
At time-point 56 minutes: Glenn’s concept “social capital” was discussed as connected to the development of raw resource. If I understand this concept correctly, then examples would be the sobriety performance of Mormons and Muslims, and the singing career success of African Americans. I want to add to a would-be list of resource-development factors; (1) Perception and (2) Interpretation. Each human possibly carries a metaphorical glass of water constantly that is filled mid-way. When anything noticeable occurs- we ask ourselves “Is my glass half-full or half-empty?” That is my oversimplification of perception. Interpretation is the story we tell ourselves about a historical event that occurred 1 minute ago or 1 decade ago. Each perception incident and interpretation incident are pathway splits from which there is no return. I can use my personal experience as example. I know of individuals who came from less yet achieved more than me. At age 55, I can acknowledge that some of my perceptions and interpretations of younger years were very stupid. Investment advisors ideally tell a person how to achieve maximum future potential from $10K or $100K. Communities need similar experts from within that can advise the individual on maximizing their internal resource and group resource and also advise at the community level. An expert from within has a personal “skin in the game” interest or personal interest that motivates. Of course all humans have a societal interest - but that interest is at a different level and connected to different motivation. Interest at both levels is important.
I think of the City State Singapore with envy. I am a lifetime civil service employee who is aware the Singapore has a global reputation for superior civil service. I am also competitive and I want to out-perform my counterparts in Singapore. Singapore success could be connected to social capital at the societal level.
I have a story about math. When arriving at 7th grade, my sister and I were at same grade level (not twins). On the roster for math classes; our two names accidentally became switched. Her math class was too hard and mine too easy. She was moved to an easier class, but I was not moved. I lost a year of math. I took Calculus at the University and loved it.
I have 3 personal health Equity goals that are not necessarily aligned. I want longevity (living many years) and good health till death and good mental health. Dying peacefully of a heart attack in my sleep at age 70 would not be longevity. Dying at age 92 after 15 years of terminal illness would not be good health.
Walking into a candy-store and randomly pointing to candy is not methodical, nor structured. Public Health has already had “Equity” priorities for more than three decades. We called it Epidemiology. I found out that NYC had decided to vaccinate African Americans first as an Equity priority. Afterwards, activists saw a glass half-empty because “African Americans were given vaccine first- for allegedly experimental reasons.”
My most direct experience with confronting the difference affirmative action and effective quotas can make relates to a discussion I had with a (very left of center) favorite professor who had taught mostly judicial politics and was at the time of our meeting a dean in the graduate social and behavioral sciences program. I’d been the top student in a couple of his classes and he and other professors had apparently spoken a number of times about my future prospects. But like a lot of kids of pretty rocky backgrounds I was still a pretty volatile mix of some pretty negative ideas about the relationship between consistent effort and results; I had plenty of bad habits and unhelpful hang ups. In tie first class I took with this professor, an honors advanced writing class, he actually read my essay word for word to the rest of the class to demonstrate what was possible. He then joked with the class that what he’d read was actually an essay from The New York Times Magazine. A friend of mine from the class believed him. By the second class I took with him, I was missing 3/4 of the classes, but somehow still managed the only perfect score on the midterm and an ‘A’ overall.
The reason I was meeting with him a few years later was I had had a series of breakdowns and finally was clinically diagnosed with two conditions. I’d eventually graduated, including with a major writing award, but had wrecked my grades. A blunt and acerbic born and raised New Yorker, this prof told me “look, I believe in you as much as I did then, but you’re damaged goods”. He showed me all the grids where students had been admitted to various law schools, in which the lowest grades intersected with various ranges of test scores. And said: don’t you understand? All of these spots are reserved for racial minorities? Neither of us were editorializing about affirmative action. It was just matter of fact.
Many of us have been through some hard times as kids and/or will go through our share or worse. I have to own my own mistakes and failures. But it was made pretty clear to me by someone very much in a position to know that those failures would have been forgiven and I might well have been offered the opportunity to attend an at least very solid law school, if - actual upbringing and hardships aside - I’d simply been born with a different skin color. Maybe even having one parent of continental Spanish heritage would have been enough.
I can only control what I can control, and I had failed to maximize my chances to pursue what had once been what I was certain would be my academic and career path, and one the professors who knew my work best thought for sure would involve a top-ten law school. A mind is terrible thing to waste - for people of any color.
The problem, too, is that DEI has become another vehicle and license, to be driven for perpetuity, by which to openly demonize people simply for being born with the phenotypes of paler skin and other features - unless of course they can claim and deploy to their advantage “one drop” of preferred racial/ethnic heritage. It’s become a bludgeon and tool by which to shame, scapegoat and marginalize people who have done no wrong, all while pretending to celebrate, with a sickeningly saccharine grin, concepts like “diversity” (no white people) “inclusion” (anybody but white people) and “equity” (a new caste system in which white people are relegated to the very bottom, unless they can claim radically queer or trans status). And, oh what a coincidence: vastly greater proportions of younger people, especially white and/or Jewish young women are now loudly adopting these supposedly inherently interesting and heroic new identities, because it’s getting pretty damn ugly in so many of these spaces - not by the lowest lows of history, but vis a vis other identities - to try and simply live life as a white woman or gay man, let alone as “white male cis het scum”. Coleman Hughes and others have noted how this plays out at schools like Columbia, where virtually everyone without a preferred racial and sex or gender identity is now trying to one-up each other by claiming ever more debilitating traumas and mental illnesses.
There are related, subtler losses in suspecting you don't have to be quite as good to at least get in the game, expecting to cash in. If you really care about something and it is slipping away, you start looking for other ways to skin the cat. I was a musician with below-average coordination, so I worked on voice and styling. I worked on finding good band members to work with and encouraged them. I learned how to read a crowd and work it. People who love a sport may find they just don't have what it takes to go to the next level. Okay, can you find a niche like defense and just hang on and be satisfied? Can you learn to coach? Can you write about the sport, or interview players? Can you scout?
Michael Caine used to tell people who said they wanted to be an actor "No, you want to be famous. There are plenty of community theaters who need people, the opportunity is always there." Do you really love the law, medicine, or managing investments or do you just want to be admired? Are you willing to be poor and treated badly for a decade in order to get this?
If people don't get to see where they really stand until it is too late, they don't learn where the back doors and side doors are. Almost everyone is going to need to scramble someday and it's better to practice being nimble early.
I can’t believe this discussion. OF COURSE, Black kids know the score. Oh, just in case you want to test that, it’s very easy: just ask them.
Does anyone know if the whites & Asians (both Far East & Near East) are having similar issues with "elite" universities in Europe? Do foreign whites and Asians have an easier time getting into American "elite" schools?
Virtually any applicant from a particularly wealthy and famous family is going to get into an elite school, not only because they bring glamour and status, but also of course because it means big donations and influential connections. With applicants from abroad from families which are merely wealthy accepting them is almost addiction at many schools, not only because some are both wealthy and “of color”, but because their family pay a premium in tuition.
Thank-you John and Glenn for discussing a subject that white and Asians, particularly the males, are not even allowed to discuss. Most of us were screwed by Affirmative Action since it’s inception in 1964. Do some of us resent being discriminated by government policy for decades? Of course. Meanwhile, the Liberal Dem elite have optimized destruction of black men by positioning so many to be either a shooter or shooting victim. Would love you two to look at Philly as an example of the optimization of the destruction of its young black men.
DEI sounds like a noble aspiration, until you realize Diversity is used to promote racialism, Equity is used to promote redistribution, and Inclusion is used to exclude certain groups. Quite Orwellian...
Back in the day, the top firms didn’t solely recruit from the top schools (comprised of bright but highly conformist and risk averse grads) but gave an opportunity for regular kids (from poorer family and academic backgrounds) to “work their way up”. Many of these kids learned how to work hard (and improve themselves)on the job even if that wasn’t necessarily the family or academic environment they came from. I have always felt that poor kids from challenging environments who prove they can excel despite that environment (whether at school or work) are exactly the kind of people I want to work with and are often more perceptive and resilient than their driven and conformist private school brethren. And sometimes the kid that gets B+‘s in that poorer environment is a better investment than the A+ kid with all the advantages.
In my view the problem with affirmative action is that it benefits wealthier kids of color attending better schools who (as pointed out) might be working less hard than their peers (note I didn’t work very hard in my public school and I am white, because my parents prioritized going to college, not going to Harvard). Meanwhile, the academic strivers in poorer public schools are working harder than their peers….when not getting beaten up by them. Let’s put a thumb on the scale for high achieving public and parochial school students (of any race)from middle class, working class and poor districts, and let’s give all admitted students some intensive support in year one to teach them how to write, how to research, how to organize their time. Some will get it, some will not.
Obviously we are taking only the top of the pyramid here - the bigger societal issues are to improve our abysmal primary school instruction and quality (so that all kids can read and write and add) and provide apprenticeships and training for high school kids not going onto college.
If something is unfair on an individual level how can it be fair on a larger scale? How can these high level appointments, such as to the Supreme Court, etc, empower a larger group? This seems to be the assumption: that a high-level appointment of a black person helps all blacks, but does it? Did having a black president help blacks in general? Are the disadvantages greater than the advantages? Seems to me there are disadvantages that have not been analyzed both to minority groups and to the majority group, and to society as a whole.
In my experience this question about affirmative action also has an affect on students who are excellent but not outstanding.
I was a student who did very well in math and reading but was only above average at writing (B to B+). I scored well on standardized tests but I wasn't full 99th percentile in every category. In other words, I was excellent but I wasn't a "genius". My one claim to fame as a student, other than grades, was that I began taking college courses in Highschool starting when I was 15. At the start they were mostly highschool level courses but the accelerated pace allowed me to get a head start on content beyond the scope of a normal highschool education. I ended up going to a very average college where I sailed thru my courses relatively easily and acquired a B.S in physics.
I think there are a bunch of circumstances that led me away from getting into an elite school. For example, I was probably not as disciplined as some of the Asian American students who drill the ACT/SAT until it becomes second nature. One contributing factor that I think is relevant to this discussion is the psychological affect of knowing you have to be beyond excellent to qualify. I don't know if I was better than any of the admittees to Harvard, CalTech, or MIT, but I didn't believe I was "special" and in my highschool mind that was what it took to get into those colleges. So why should I kill myself with effort trying to get into a college that won't accept me anyway? Not to mention how you won't be favored for scholarships even if you do scrape by the admissions process. Even at my very average college I got maybe 1000$ of scholarships for being the top student in my department year after year.
In the same way that lowering standards teaches students to drag their feet, creating an impossible standard causes students that could be great to drag their feet. In both cases potential is squandered that should be properly developed.
I hope my rant has not come off as bitter. Despite my humble credentials I have learned to cultivate a desire and love of learning that may not have survived a competitive environment like Harvard or MIT. My goal was to give an anecdotal account of an almost excellent student and the psychological impacts of selective admission criteria on drive to succeed. It does, I think, make a difference in the real actions that students take to develop themselves.
Thanks for the thought provoking conversations Glenn, they do seem to shine light on these difficult problems.
I think stories like yours are the norm, and probably too much of today's political and cultural analysis comes from people who think the entire nation shares the luxury of their educational and egotistical obsessions.
Let's have more measurables, less "prestige." I'm still amused by a recent guest who asked Dr. Loury, "What good is this Harvard law degree to me?"
It probably does affect performance, but the interesting thing to me is that the supposed "victims" of preferential admissions are in a lot of ways, not really victims. If you study harder, you learn more, you become more capable of doing more. Yeah, of the ten elite schools you applied to, you got into one, versus the black guy who was hanging out instead of studying got into six. But you're still smarter and more capable, and that difference will reemerge during college, then again during professional school, then again, in the workplace. Ultimately, as we've seen, the economic and social disparities between the races don't change at all, notwithstanding generations of preferences. It's just a different way of shuffling.
The cloud is over Georgetown and all
The other institutions playing this game of mediocrity.
BULLSH!T!!!
What a dumb reply. Is this the extent of your ability to articulate an argument? Are you perhaps one of the people with an * beside their name to show that you advanced not on merit but on racist discrimination policies?