Sarah, you said: "Because society can't ignore the color of people's skin, how can we expect, even desire, the admissions processes to remove race from the equation?" Gandhi said "Be the change you want to see in the world." What better way to improve the racist tendencies of society than to disregard them ourselves?
There's a positive feedback loop. Rich people have well-educated kids who then stay rich, and so on and so forth. Ditto poor people. Poor people stay poor. Rich people stay rich.
What we really want is a balance of cultures. People from all across society, not the fairly disproportionate group of at least middle-class applicants Uni gets. That's bad. The applicant pool needs to be widened. Widening it according to race is at best short-sighted, and at worst grossly counter-productive.
I'm a first generation African-American. I have relatives who live in Africa. I speak a few words of Zulu, and I listen to traditional African music on occasion. I eat and enjoy traditional cuisine from my home African country. I have dual citizenship in the same country. I am "black", in any technical sense of the word except the most important. Ethnically, I am black. Culturally, I'm white. Mostly.
Where do I belong? Do I deserve preferential treatment? I'm not historically disadvantaged. I'm not particularly diverse, socioeconomically. But if you didn't have a picture of me, you'd never know I'm not black, from my resume or personal history.
I'm with Carl and Jacob on this one.
Sarah, you said: "Because society can't ignore the color of people's skin, how can we expect, even desire, the admissions processes to remove race from the equation?" Gandhi said "Be the change you want to see in the world." What better way to improve the racist tendencies of society than to disregard them ourselves?
There's a positive feedback loop. Rich people have well-educated kids who then stay rich, and so on and so forth. Ditto poor people. Poor people stay poor. Rich people stay rich.
What we really want is a balance of cultures. People from all across society, not the fairly disproportionate group of at least middle-class applicants Uni gets. That's bad. The applicant pool needs to be widened. Widening it according to race is at best short-sighted, and at worst grossly counter-productive.
I'm a first generation African-American. I have relatives who live in Africa. I speak a few words of Zulu, and I listen to traditional African music on occasion. I eat and enjoy traditional cuisine from my home African country. I have dual citizenship in the same country. I am "black", in any technical sense of the word except the most important. Ethnically, I am black. Culturally, I'm white. Mostly.
Where do I belong? Do I deserve preferential treatment? I'm not historically disadvantaged. I'm not particularly diverse, socioeconomically. But if you didn't have a picture of me, you'd never know I'm not black, from my resume or personal history.