Affirmative Action 8

[Maui]

My initial experience with Affirmative Action policies occurred at the first place that I applied for work when I graduated from school with an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Materials Science. I sent a resume to a prospective employer through a friend of mine who told me that they were looking for people with my background and credentials. My friend and I worked in the same lab in graduate school, and he thought that he could set up an interview for me with his employer, a major aluminum manufacturer. I don't remember his supervisor's name, so I'll refer to him throughout this thread as AL COA. He passed the resume on to AL COA, who informed him that I would not be interviewed because they were required to hire a minority for the position, and I didn't fit the profile.

The recent Supreme Court case involving Affirmative Action policies regarding college admission criteria will no doubt impact engineering programs for years to come. I'd like to know where engineers stand on this issue, and why. For each of you that responds, please include in your response an indication of whether or not you have directly benefitted from these policies. And has anyone else run into problems that are similar to the one that I describe above?


Maui

 

[IRstuff]

That's an amusing statistic regarding the Law School, but it's basically crock as far as the end numbers are concerned. This is from the UM website:

>>>" Q7. Are most law students members of minority groups?

A. The most recent entering class (2002) has 352. The following students reported being members of racial or ethnic minority groups: African American - 21 (6%); Asian American - 30 (9%); Latino - 24 (7%); Native American - 8 (2%); Total: 83 (24%). &quot; <<<

So there 269 white students to 21 African American. Which means that even all the black students were eliminated, only 21 slots would have been freed up.

The bottom line is that there were nearly 10,000 white applicants compared to only 21 black applicants. Given that the overall percentage of blacks in the general population is obviously higher than the 0.2% that got accepted and even assuming that there might be a lower percentage of blacks interested in law, there is clearly an imbalance. So where is the real fairness? TTFN

 

[brad]

IRStuff--
Good observations on the statistics. This is largely (to my understanding) the defense which UM is making--that these steps are required to correct a societal imbalance.

Using these numbers (and I'm only using the numbers others have provided), if we presume that all African-American applicants are as equally-qualified as Caucasian, there would have only been a net gain of 20 positions for Caucasians over what there was. This would bring the acceptance rate for Caucasians from 3% to slightly more than 3%. The likelihood of acceptance for the entire Caucasian group given this change to the rules is minor; however if you're one of those 20 that would've otherwise made it, this is very significant.

The crux of the case is do we promote (claimed) societal good (presumably through such quotas) at the expense of some individuals (in this case, the 20 whites who didn't get in). The plaintiff argument is that this approach is in violation of equal protection.

There is clearly a statistical difference that is nontrivial in the acceptance criteria. Even UM does not deny that.

Just so I don't sound like the stereotype White Angry Conservative--the real shame is that we are addressing the fundamental problem far too late. The fundamental problem is not &quot;Why do African-Americans get accepted at a disproportionately higher rate to (fill in the blank)?&quot;, but rather &quot;Why is it that only 0.2% of applicants to this law school are African-American, when African-Americans make up 10% of the population?&quot;.

This core problem will never get addressed by intervention at the University level and beyond; it needs to be addressed when children are in diapers. HeadStart, engagement in poor urban schools, and a true concern to help disadvantaged children learn and love to learn is what is needed. If 10% of all Engineers are African-American, and 52% are female (instead of 3% and 17% respectively), a diverse workplace will take care of itself. Until the diversity in engineering graduates comes somewhere close to representing the diversity in the general population, there will be issues.

Brad

 

[Maui]

This is an excerpt from the University of Michigan's website devoted to the lawsuits that it is currently immersed in. This statement was made by University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman:

“We do not have, and have never had, quotas or numerical targets in either the undergraduate or Law School admissions programs. Academic qualifications are the overwhelming consideration for admission to both programs.

“In our undergraduate admissions system, fully 110 points out of 150 are given for academic factors including grades, test scores and curriculum. We only count 12 points for test scores, but that is because we value high school grades to a much greater extent---they can earn up to 80 points. We consider many other factors as well. Race is one of those, but a student who is socioeconomically disadvantaged also can earn 20 points (students cannot earn 20 points for both factors, however). Geographic diversity is also important, and a student from Michigan’s upper peninsula, for example, earns 16 points. We also consider leadership, service, and life experiences, among other elements.

“In making admissions decisions to the Law School, we also carefully review individual experiences and interests in our highly competitive process. Everyone competes fairly for every seat.&quot;

If that is true, and everyone competes fairly for every seat in the law school program, then there should be no correlation between a student's ethnic background and whether or not they are accepted into the program. Let's see if that's true. Using the numbers provided by IRstuff, there were 10,000 causcasian applicants in 2002, 21 black applicants, and 62 applicants from other minority groups to U of M's law program. So there were approximately 10,083 applicants in total, and there were only 352 openings to fill. So that means that each student had a 3.5% chance of being accepted into the program, assuming that they competed on an equal basis.

The caucasian applicants were accepted at a rate of about 3%. The african american applicants were accepted at a rate of 100%. If ethnicity did not play any role in determining who was accepted then these numbers should be the same. They are not. The african american applicants were favored over the caucasian applicants by a huge margin. This is the reason why there is a lawsuit pending in the Supreme Court.

 

[IRstuff]

That's simply an argument for maintaining the status quo. Children grow up to be engineers, doctors and even lawyers because there are role models available to consider.

As mentioned earlier, the 3% acceptance is out of a population of 10,000 applicants, while there was only a total of 21 black applicants. That's 0.2% of the total applicant pool, while the total population has 10% blacks.

The end result is that the system as a whole is biased against having black lawyers.

To keep the system as is guarantees a perpetual lack of black laywers as role models, leaving pushers, gangster rappers and basketball players as the only role models. So who's really discriminating here? TTFN

 

[melone]

Yes, it's the white folks that actually studied and passed the tests that are too blame. Let's punish the people that actually followed directions and did what they were told. It is really any surprise that the easiest way to become successful, that you need to do well in school and not go to jail?

Some people gets penalized because of a riduclously politically correct set of rules! THERE'S the discrimination! I guess I don't understand how white people are responsible for their own actions, but minorities aren't. Are you implying that minorities aren't capable of taking responsibility for themselves?

 

[brad]

IRstuff--
I'm not sure who your comment was directed at, but I presume it was me. Your statements:
&quot;Children grow up to be engineers, doctors and even lawyers because there are role models available to consider. &quot;
and
&quot;The end result is that the system as a whole is biased against having black lawyers.&quot;

These statements agree with my point.

I'm not against affirmative action; I think it has done a fair amount of good. However, after 30 years we still have the situation that (by your statistics) only 0.2% of applicants to a prestigious lawschool are African-American.

I liken the current approach to somebody ignoring a brain tumor for 15 years, then prescribing aspirin. The patient (in this case disadvantaged minorities) will continue to suffer, but the aspirin may appear at times to alleviate such suffering. If a CAT-scan (early-school intervention) had been performed earlier and proper treatment done, the net effect would be a better patient and less cost overall.

As it is, we're making up for 18 years of neglect by giving a step up to the small percentage of students who are able to compete at all; rather than working to help the larger group compete.

Brad

 

[Luk]

Hi there!

I'm not sure whether I am out of topic but let me relate my experiences.

Most of the graduate engineers in the company that I work for are girls. The ladies employed may be as competent or even better than the guys (in some ways).
But the feelings of reverse discrimination on the guys are evident. It is the young GUY graduates who suffer.

The younger generation of engineers (Gen X & Gen Y) do not feel the need of promoting engineering to girls due to the evolved equality between boys & girls; but the ladies in the baby boomers era feel that ladies are still being discriminated in the engineering field. (The senior ladies engineers do not get promoted as fast and as high as some senior guy engineers- *This is disputable since there are larger numbers of senior guys than ladies engineers.)

What can I say, discrimination occurs everywhere, even within the engineering disciplines.
No discrimination makes anyone feel good (unless they are THAT selfish.)

Cheers,
Luk

 

[IRstuff]

The fact that you call them &quot;girls&quot; speaks volumes TTFN

 

[brad]

IR-
TA (that would be &quot;total agreement&quot;, just to avoid any confusion)
Brad

 

[melone]

IRstuff, please respond to the obvious implication that you have made....minorities are not as capable as caucassians and asians.

Affirmative action condems racism by using racism to punish people for racism that they never committed. If that isn't the most absurd, convoluted thinking, I don't know what is! Perhaps, we should simply suck it up, treat everyone EQUALLY, and stop treating certain groups in society as &quot;special&quot;. I can honestly say, that I have never performed a racist act. So why am I guilty until proven innocent?

Let's look at it another way, Hitler killed thousands of Jews. Hitler was white, male, German, with a moustache. Should we now kill an equal number of white, male, German men with moustaches? (I hope that the answer is no).

Affirmative action only perpetuates sepratism (sorry, I'm a terrible speller). Perhaps, it is not as blatant as it was 30 years ago, but it will always exist when you value one person over another based on their race / religion / socio-economic background / shoe size / hair color / size of their left index finger / etc..

Sorry for the rant, but I just can't believe that any rational person can support something that is so inherently flawed.

 

[IRstuff]

The issue to me is not whether affirmative action is flawed. Given the history of women's rights as well as race relations history from Bosnia/Serb, Israel, etc., it's clear that one could not possibly grade affirmative action as &quot;flawed&quot; for at least 100+ years. Women started from a higher position in society and yet, after 100 years of suffrage, they still make less money and are still dissuaded from technical fields and are still referred to as &quot;girls.&quot;

In the meantime, it's pretty obvious to me that blacks are in an inherently poorer environment for success, due to drugs, inner city crime, lack of stable home life, too much competition for scarce resources, high unemployment, ad nauseum.

Proclaiming that everything is now &quot;color-blind&quot; and that this will be better than affirmative action is to endorse the built-in biases, discrimination and oppression against blacks in society. The way I see it, affirmative action is not a remedy for past injustice, it's the only thing that balances the inherent injustice that exists now.

Society as a whole always makes judgement calls and must balance the results for the good of all. One critical question is whether the 21 blacks can provide more societal good by setting good examples as role models than replacing them with 21 whites. TTFN

 

[zdas04]

The underlying facilitator for affirmative action is stereotyping. While blacks (I WILL NOT use the offensive [to me] African-American term or any other hyphenated American term because those terms undermine this wonderful melting pot we call home - besides it is so incredibly inaccurate, ever looked at the skin color of Austrailian aborganies?, how about Brazilian?) make up 10% of the population and about 30% of the folks in the slums, the other 60% of folks &quot;stuck&quot; in poverty ain't black - yet we [society] continue to say dumb things like &quot;In the meantime, it's pretty obvious to me that blacks are in an inherently poorer environment for success, due to drugs, inner city crime, lack of stable home life, too much competition for scarce resources, high unemployment, ad nauseum&quot;. Benign racisism is still racisim.

What rot. A significant (and growing) portion of the black community are suburban-middle-class-take-the-kids-to-soccer kind of folks. Children from these families go to the same public schools, do as well on standardized tests, and have an excellent chance filling the middle-80% jobs in any level in any industry. Affirmative Action plans get to treat these kids as special and &quot;give them a leg up&quot; while a white slum kid (believe it or not there are about as many of them as there are black slum kids) doesn't get that leg up.

We talk about women being under paid relative to white men. Look at those statistics very carefully. My supervisor (hispanic female) makes a lot more money than I do and she should, she's earned it and being an Engineering Supervisor (the way she does it) is hard work and she is very good at it. The statistics that say that women make less than men are just fun with numbers. In the population labeled &quot;female&quot; there are a disproportionat number of individuals who's self image steers them away from education/training to improve their salary and thereby stick themselves in low-paying jobs for life. That population drags the average salary sharply downward. For the women who prepare themselves to succeed, there is no salary gap and in fact female graduates of engineering schools average slightly higher starting salaries than white males (because Affirmative Action has pushed up the demand faster than the supply has increased).

In trying to fix a problem that was already fixing itself we are creating a new problem that has the potential for damaging the population trying to do good (if you increase the quantity of white males below the poverty line, you &quot;fix&quot; the statistics and hurt the reality). Take this to extremes and in a few dozen generations we will have Affirmative Action for oppressed and enslaved white males. My wife fights daily to help stem this tide that makes is slightly more difficult for our sons to succeed.

 

[TheTick]

I am a first generation American. My ancestors and I had nothing to do with slavery. Yet, for some reason my lily-white skin is proof enough that somehow I am culpable for the troubles of dark-skinned people.

BTW I worked for a company owned by a black man (he refused to call himself African-American) who refused to use race as a factor in hiring. He needed talent, no matter what color the wrapping.

note to IRstuff: one of the greatest fuels for bigotry is oversensitivity to terms. I wasn't offended by the use of the word &quot;boys&quot; or &quot;girls&quot;. I recall a line from the original Star Trek, after a reincarnated Abe Lincoln apologized for referring to Lt. Uhura as a &quot;charming negress&quot;. Uhura's reply (paraphrased): &quot;In the 24th century, we have learned not to be offended by jsuch terms.&quot; Gravity is a harsh mistress.

 

[DaveVikingPE]

You worked for Ward Connerly, TheTick?

.

My feelings on the UofM law school admission thread is that the 21 Black applicants were fully qualified whereas nearly 300 white applicants were fully qualified. What's the issue? I absolutely refuse to believe that U of M bent over backwards or whatever to accept students of lesser caliber just because of their ethnic minority status. On paper it might look that way, but, hey, are the courses and grading skewed such that &quot;dumber&quot; students have an advantage? I say &quot;no.&quot; I also refuse to believe that the children of Ham are any less disposed to academic greatness than the children of Shem or Japeth, so there. Johnny Cochran is a pretty successful lawyer, Colin Powell is pretty good at what he does, too. I will grant that Powell has made public statements to the effect that some sort of AA policy gave him a chance (in the military, I think) but it's a good thing for the world that that chance was there.

Luk: working for and with &quot;girls&quot; is great but beware of defecating where you eat.

 

[testy]

zdas04, I don't know where you are coming from but it certainly isn't Detroit. The population there is more like 70/30 with blacks in the majority. Living in a Suburb of Ann Arbor I can tell you that racism in the outlying areas is subtle but rampant. In almost all of the small companies I have worked for minorities have been conspicuously absent. There are in fact, very few areas in southeast Michigan that are significantly integrated, with perhaps Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti being an exception due to their attempts at diversification. I don't know if affirmative action is the answer, but I haven't heard any better solutions proposed.

 

[TheTick]

No, it wasn't Ward Connerly that I worked for, but he sounds like someone I would like to meet.

Having read Colin Powell's &quot;My American Journey&quot;, I am a fan of the man. He is a man of great integrity, and this country needs him as close to the Oval Office as possible.

It's been observed that the remarkable thing about Powell's appointment to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was not that he was the first black to hold the post, but that he was the first ROTC graduate to hold the post. In the military officer ranks, prejudice by academy grads against ROTC grads far outweighs any ethnic bias. Gravity is a harsh mistress.

 

[IRstuff]

Rot or not, I've worked with a grand total of about 12 black engineers over a span of 26 years. I have no neighbors that are black in what is ostensibly a middle-class neighborhood. The school population at by child's school is predominantly white, followed by Asian and Hispanic.

So if that's great strides, I'll yield that point, except to note that I've worked with probably 10 times as many Asian engineers, despite the fact that they comprise a smaller percentage of the population and in many cases, are foreign-born.

TTFN

 

[melone]

Should the NBA stop accepting qualified black athletes because the vast majority of players are black? Wait a second, the NBA started off with more white players than black, but now it is completely different. According to affirmative action, the NBA should still be all white and asian.

I say we start boycotting the NBA until the start forcing more white people into the game. Hey, while we are at it, how come all of the current stars are all black? This is disproportionate to the population. This is blatant racism!!!!

 

[rd400guy]

Well, here's my two cents. I am a white male &quot;Gen-Xer&quot; with an engineering degree. In my graduating class in my major, 50% of the students were female (she graduated with honors, I didn't). Granted my major was the smallest in terms of number of students (two total that year, but check my math). Materials Engineering apparently isn't as popular as Pharmacy. Which brings me to a very interesting point, which I believe has some bearing on this topic.

Let's for the time being remove race and sex. Since we're all engineers here, can you say that of all the engineering disciplines offered at the college where you were educated, each program had an equal number of students enrolled? The answer is without a doubt, no. So should we institute an affirmative action program to ensure that a certain number of incoming engineering students are distributed throughout the disciplines? Again, no. Well, then, how can this be &quot;fair&quot;? As a materials engineer, I'm being held down and oppressed by the mechanical and electrical engineers! And what about the disciplines that I didn't mention in this post. I'm surely discriminating against you by not mentioning you, right? Does this sound like a stupid argument to anyone else? Wake up!

So why did some of us choose electrical over mechanical, or aerospace over automotive, etc.? Something in each of us drew us to a field that we found interesting, fun, or whatever, whether we're &quot;boys&quot; or &quot;girls&quot;, men or women, black, white, asian, or any of the dash Americans. Maybe I'll start calling myself an &quot;American-American&quot; and claim minority status.

Here's another disturbing thought, why is it that only 10% of my college professors were white males born in America? Obviously white males are the laziest of all, since so few of us are pursuing advanced degrees, or teaching at the college level. Think about that the next time you hear subtle racists talk about how &quot;lazy&quot; or whatever a certain ethnic group is. Perhaps I was lucky enough to go to a college where we had a beautifully diverse faculty, or all faculty was hired to meet &quot;quotas&quot;. I don't know, but I'll tell you this, I could have directly benefitted from affirmative action, but chose not to. Read on.

Upon receiving my bachelor's degree, I thought of going for my PhD and took the GRE's and sent out the applications and did the tours. I was offered research fellowships at more than one univeristy, and one in particular stood out, do you know why? Because I could speak english fluently. They blatantly told me that. The fact that I was an American-American male made me extremely attractive, since &quot;we&quot; are definitely a minority in the graduate programs. But I chose to enter the middle-class grind, and let the university give the fellowship to another applicant, since I &quot;found out&quot; that there was a more qualified Asian gentleman who was also going for the open spot.

The point is, for the most part, people pursue things that they want to do. Who are we to try to understand why a disproportionate number of black students applied to a law program in Michigan? Oh, yeah we're engineers, we try to understand everything. Should they have been accepted? Yes, if they're more qualified than the 9,731 applicants that didn't get accepted. Maybe that year, there were only 21 black people in Michigan that wanted to be a lawyer. And they wanted to be a lawyer for a long time, so they pursued the classes that would make them good candidates to be accepted in U of M's law program.

Granted some of us do live in poor neighborhoods (I do). And some of us live in the suburbs. And some of us, because of our crappy lot will never get out of the slums. And there's without a doubt many more diamonds-in-the-rough that have the potential to escape the ghettos and make something of themselves, but will take a job working at the corner store, on the graveyard shift, for minimum wage, because it's better than dealing drugs and getting shot. And what about the people who do deal drugs? If ever I did see a need for affirmative action, drug dealing is where it is.

I guess I'll wrap up my rant. The point I'm trying to make is this, affirmative action isn't the best system, and yeah, sometimes a more qualified candidate for a promotion or a fellowship, or a spot in the law program does get screwed over. But if you're more qualified, you don't give up just because you didn't make it the first time, or even worse, decide to sue someone because they hurt your feelings. The courts don't need more frivilous law suits (how many potential lawyers applied to U of M's law program that year?). No, what you do is prove your qualifications to someone who is appreciative of what you have to offer. A company or college that isn't concerned with pleasing the masses, but is concerned with having the right kind of people (&quot;right kind&quot; meaning the best for the job) regardless of race or sex or nationality. Is affirmative action an &quot;unfair&quot; system? Probably. Do you have a better solution? If so, tell it to one of the black law students, and maybe when they get to Congress, they'll fix it.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

 

[plasgears]

Tick,
A bit of info:
The majority of the military upper ranks are ROTC grads today. (Ref. to Colin Powell, a fellow grad of ROTC at City College of NY.) Is there an argument for discontinuing the academies? I hope not. The academies are the first line leadership training schools for the military, and the doctrine flows down from there.