OriginalWheelman wrote:
Please explain in detail how you would not be where you were today w/o affirmative action as you claim. If you are as smart / smarter then I don't believe you needed it at all. Did AA NEED to intervene? Or are you using your ancillary success as a justification when AA had nothing to do with it?
Well, actually I explained this in my prvious post on the first page... here's my quote from that page...
rjdmmfl1 wrote:Affirmative Action:this is a double edged sword, and most folks just choose one side to cut with. Clarence Thomas, who is the biggest pariah in the black community, sees affirmative action as a chronic crutch for people of color. In a perfect society, he'd be right, and we wouldn't need affirmative action... but unfortunately society isn't perfect, and we do ned some of these programs. I am personally a product of affirmative action, but not in the way folks may choose to look at it. The MD/PhD program at Johns Hopkins is arguably the most difficult academic program to enter in the country, with an acceptance rate of around 3%. And although my test scores and GPA were both at the top of the applicant pool, it was my research experiences at the Natiuonal Institutes of Health and Yale University that put me over the top (via letters of recommendation from the Dean of yale's graduate school and the director of the Heart lung and blood institute... HOWEVER, both of those summer research experiences were afirmative action programs that did not TAKE AWAY opportunities for majority folks, but merely added created funding for additional students , particularly students of color to be exposed to the field of biomedical research, a field that these students for many reasons were previously cut off from.
So, my point is, without those programs in place to make me a serious candidate for admission, I doubt I would be a Hopkins students right now. Also, the fact that the NIH mandates that these MD/PhD programs accept a diverse student population (and not fill each class with say all white males) is another reason that I am there... but they didn't have to lower their standards to accept me (as many opponents of affirmative action feel happens )I mention my personal situation only as a means to clartify my stance on affirmative action, and how some of these programs truly give minority students the chance to compete on an already unlevel playing field.
THose two AA sanctioned programs are what put me over the top compared to many other in my applicant pool, specifically the high priority letters of recommendation that came from those internships.
THe NIH internship was also made possible because it was organized through a joint venture with another AA program, the MARC/USTAR (minority access to research careers/ undergraduate student training for academic research) program... again, a program that does not take away chances from anyone else, but identifies individuals that are grossly underrepresented in the field of biomedical research, and provides a unique program aimed at introducing those individuals to these opportunities.
So even with my GPA and test scores, without the MARC program, The MARC/NIH internship program, and the AA Yale BioSTEP research programs, my introduction to the field of biomedical research may not have happened....
i understand that it can be argued that perhaps, some way, I could have tried to do these internships on my own, but the fact of the matter is, if you have 100 students applying to a program, and all of them have 4.0 GPAs, and 80 of them are white, 15 are Asian, 4 are Indian, and 1 is black, what are the chances that that one black student will be accepted? If they only take 5, then 5% chance right. Well what many of these programs do is akin to providing additional funding for another two spots, and target those positions for students that are traditionally under-represented in that field. So now, you can take that black student with the 4.0 GPA and allow him to participate, hoping that he will perform as expected, and build the resumé that will be deemed competitive to programs like this program at Hopkins.
Logan76 wrote:
Do you seriously think you didn't have an unbiased shot at your dream in life? Honestly. As citizens of this country we all have our rights to b**** about it, but unless any of us get off our a** and do anything about it (i.e. contact your state Representative, vote, etc) all we are doing is just that, b****ing. Your correct in your statements that I am not black, and therefore will never understand the problems you say you face. You on the other hand are not white, for some reason you are oblivious to the fact that if I walked down a street in a majorly black city I would be discriminated against. You think I could get a job at a black owned business? There is two sides to your argument, and to say that black people or any minority are the only people to be discriminated against, is just ridiculous. I also don't have any numbers on hand, but I would be curious to see just by how much black people are a minority in this country, I would say not by much.
not quite sure where you gathered that I daid that blacks were the only ones discriminated against... not out of my mouth... and yes, the reaction of many blacks if you walked down the street in south central today would be one of hostility, but that would have more to do with the local history of that particular area... justifiably so "in their minds" if you were walking down Compton blvd, you are either a cop, or a PI, or a bounty hunter, or just generally on a suicide mission. again, as percieved in the minds of the local constituency.
also, regarding blacks being minorites, I'm not sure what you mean by "not by much" last I checked, the U.S. consisted of about 74% whites, and about 13% blacks... how is that not a minority by much???
In any case, as I stated, individuals on both sides of this issue will not ever be pursuaded to the other side of the argument, but one would hope that individuals on both sides at least hear where the other side is coming from.
As Obama stated in his speech on race, many of the very real social issues regarding race are deep rooted, and are largely generational and demographic. From my experience, where someone lives in this country and their exposure to individuals from different ethnic groups determines their particular world view, and it doesn't make them right or wrong, it just makes them a potential slave to what they've been fed by TV and news media.
When I first got to Hopkins, one of my classmates [from Sri Lanka] was shocked to see so many African Americans as 1st year MD/PhD students. Out of the 13 students in the program, 6 were black, a number that is really uncommon for other similar programs in the country (most programs have 1 or 2 in the whole program, we have 20 at Hopkins) in any case, he very innocently stated that "I didn't know you people were interested in higher education"... being that he was foreign, we didn't immediately go with our gut instinct to slap the $hit out of him, we simply asked him to expound. He then stated that in his country, the only portrayals they see of blacks in America were negative, be it through movies or the news reported there. And when he got to America (Stanford undergrad) the only blacks he saw were athletes or chefs. His comments were taken at face value and we totally understood where he was coming from.
I think a similar thing happens here. Contrary to many folks opinions, there are tons of good hard working African Americans in this country. However, for someone that lives in rural arkansas that sees these positive citizens as often as he sees the local unicorn, then to him, they really don't exist, and its easy to get delusioned into thinking that all blacks are what they see on TV. That is NOT his fault, he may be ignorant, but its not his fault! Media and hollywood has a lot to do with that portrayal. Out of the 30+ million African Amercans in this country, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of families with the same hard work values that the Obamas have, or that my parents have...( not necessarily making as much money, but hardworking nonetheless) but that is not what gets portrayed, thus the continued unease amongst many whites in this country towards blacks.
So too can be said about the opinions that many blacks that live in the ghetto have regarding ,whites, the police, and the goverment. Much of that is fed by local social norms that make it OK and normal to say negative things about "The man", and how he is holding us down. (To some extent, that is not entirely BS, but mostly it is) As far as the cops go, don't get me started there.. the fear we feel regarding cops is very real, and necessary in most cases, depending on which parts of the country you live in... but that's a different discussion
