AA: Why does everyone get so worked up?

i feel you on every word.

Ring ring goes Trouble's phone.

Trouble picks up:

"Hello??"

scota says: "Hello, is Trouble around???"



On a side note, I actually agree with most of what you have said. I'd also add that URM's have been proven to serve as doctors in the neediest areas over other doctors.

Sure, let's give the parents of these disadvantaged URMs a good $80,000/year job. (SES theory)
Let's also transport these kids to a great school like Shaker Heights (no educational opportunity theory)
Let's also provide these URMs with good URM teachers (racist teachers/role model theory).

What do you think the result is? Ask the AAMC.

Perhaps we should eliminate the culture of low expectations? That's a popular theory among conservatives.

In any case, we believe that judging someone based on their race is wrong. The Constitution knows no difference between races and demands equal protection under the laws regardless of an individual's skin color. We believe all citizens of this country deserve and are entitled to civil rights.

Dudes. AA rocks!! Without it, my dad would still be an alcoholic! Seriously, the key is taking addiction one day at a time.

AA.... Don't end it. Ammend it!

yes there are some things to be workout overall in america. but i don't believe med schools have to worry about their approach. it avoids the blatant race factor, i.e. considering race at face value. rather, they use it as a head turner to investigate the extent of the applicant's uniqueness/character/potential/struggles/achievements/etc. if the applicant is successful in articulating their situation in an intelligent way, only then will they get a well deserved leg up.

Originally posted by scota
I believe in socio-economic considerations, regardless of race. I don't think it's fair for a white-collared background hispanic to be accepted over an equally qualified poor white.

Click to expand...

Good point on the socioeconomic status statement, but remember, recruiting URMs is not completely about AA. How likely is a poor white kid to devote themself to serving poor undocumented workers, who can't even speak English? Not likely. Recruiting is about service. Underserved populations need medical care, and docs who come from these backgrounds are more likely to go back and change things for the better. It helps the community.

the thing that gets people worked up over affirmative action is this: it, at its core, gives credit to someone for something they have not done, and morevoer, it has no intelligent oversight. it is true if you are a minority that you have a higher percentage chance of being in a poor public school, but there certainly are whites in the same schools. it is true that if you are a minority that your average income will be less than that of a white, but there will always be individual whites making less and doing more work than you. the reason affirmative action is such a hot topic here is that so many of these people on this board are whites or asians, many not of affluent means, who are quite proud of their hard-faught achievements and, in my opinion rightfully so, are resentful that someone who has not done the work that they have done (gotten a high MCAT, GPA, worked hard since freshmen year etc.) will recieve what they had to work so hard to get (an acceptance from the med school they desire).

the thing that really makes me sad about such programs is the underlying racism inherent in them. if suddenly such a program was instituted nationally concerning where you went to elementary/jr/HS (if you went to a poorly performing public you got a boost over those who went to andover for example) I can tell you that i would certainly benefit. and i can tell you that I'd be the first on the war path to change it. for someone to look at me and say "because of your background you are not competent enough to compete against those with better backgrounds than you- we think you need a boost" would be an intolerable insult- this is the exact reason i never mention my parents' lack of education in personal statements, i dont want any freebies. I guess it just surprises me that more people recieveing such benefits are not so angry over their inherent condescending nature.

Affirmative Action is a blessing. There are too many talented and capable minority students who have managed to rise above "circumstance." And it is a blessing that these students are the ones who most benefit from action in the affirmative. Many people would like to believe that Affirmative Action leads to destitute, unintelligible URM "stealing" the place of a more deserving majority; but fortunately for all parties involved, such is NOT the case. Simple research might uncover truth. But unfortunately, an easy target--a scapegoat--has been born: when you don't get into your preferred school and you realize that a minority student did whom you have managed to deem inferior, you are quick to blame an unfair system. And you wonder why the system was implemented? It might help to reflect on ignorance and prejudice...

I for one revel in the brilliance of my classmates on the regular. Rather than looking for faults when it comes to their achievements, I prefer to strive for excellence in my own right. I have a 3.8 from Yale. When I come up short, and yes I do occasionally fall short due to limitations of my humanity, I put MY pedal to the metal and go to work. A race of man was degraded in this beautiful country for quite some time. The reality of abuse is that it sets its victims at a disadvantage. Stigmatization is real, and it must be conquered. And fortunately, a system that says yes and opens doors was invented to set this nation on the right course. It might help if we taught our peers, and later our children, LOVE, which might exact an end to the need for such a system. But in this day and age when hate drives young adults to scoff at the achievements of their peers by calling them undeserved, it's no wonder why Affirmative Action has not died. It cannot die yet--we as a nation are not ready...

Just my humble opinion...
God Bless

REASONS FOR PUMPING AA ARE NOT DUE TO HISTORICAL ARTIFACT... Rather, AA is a very very small step in the right direction of correcting a living history of missteps and oppression. Short of 40 acres and a mule, some form of reparations has to happen at a more basic and broad sweeping level.

or...maybe as in brazil, non-assortative breeding is in order--drastic, yes, but it eases coloration boundaries quickly--as that seems to be the crux of the problem in the states.

I apologize for my post not being more substantive while seeming flip or distasteful to some---I'll gather my thoughts later.

Affirmative Action as it exists demands that less academically qualified URMs take slots away from more academically qualified non-URMs. Many try to justify this means by the end (diversity, providing doctors to minority communities, etc). However, injury is an inescapable part of achieving these goals. Why do proponents try so hard to deny that injury occurs?

Whether or not you think this is "stealing the place of a more deserving majority" is debatable, of course.
However, I hope you can recognize that some people think that the more academically qualified applicants are the more deserving applicants.

Of course, you may think my original assumption is incorrect. If so, please provide us with some of this "simple research" that shows that Affirmative Action does not provide a way for less academically qualified URMs to be admitted over more academically qualified non-URMs.

Originally posted by klooless
Affirmative Action is a blessing. There are too many talented and capable minority students who have managed to rise above "circumstance." And it is a blessing that these students are the ones who most benefit from action in the affirmative. Many people would like to believe that Affirmative Action leads to destitute, unintelligible URM "stealing" the place of a more deserving majority; but fortunately for all parties involved, such is NOT the case. Simple research might uncover truth. But unfortunately, an easy target--a scapegoat--has been born: when you don't get into your preferred school and you realize that a minority student did whom you have managed to deem inferior, you are quick to blame an unfair system. And you wonder why the system was implemented? It might help to reflect on ignorance and prejudice...

I for one revel in the brilliance of my classmates on the regular. Rather than looking for faults when it comes to their achievements, I prefer to strive for excellence in my own right. I have a 3.8 from Yale. When I come up short, and yes I do occasionally fall short due to limitations of my humanity, I put MY pedal to the metal and go to work. A race of man was degraded in this beautiful country for quite some time. The reality of abuse is that it sets its victims at a disadvantage. Stigmatization is real, and it must be conquered. And fortunately, a system that says yes and opens doors was invented to set this nation on the right course. It might help if we taught our peers, and later our children, LOVE, which might exact an end to the need for such a system. But in this day and age when hate drives young adults to scoff at the achievements of their peers by calling them undeserved, it's no wonder why Affirmative Action has not died. It cannot die yet--we as a nation are not ready...

Just my humble opinion...
God Bless

Click to expand...

For real, your analysis of this issue shows that there are still reasonable and intelligent people on sdn. For all you haters of AA, you all need to check yourselves. Such misdirected antagonism has no place in the conciousness of our future doctors.

Keep the hope alive Y'all.

Originally posted by Ryo-Ohki
Affirmative Action as it exists demands that less academically qualified URMs take slots away from more academically qualified non-URMs. Many try to justify this means by the end (diversity, providing doctors to minority communities, etc). However, injury is an inescapable part of achieving these goals. Why do proponents try so hard to deny that injury occurs?

Whether or not you think this is "stealing the place of a more deserving majority" is debatable, of course.
However, I hope you can recognize that some people think that the more academically qualified applicants are the more deserving applicants.

Of course, you may think my original assumption is incorrect. If so, please provide us with some of this "simple research" that shows that Affirmative Action does not provide a way for less academically qualified URMs to be admitted over more academically qualified non-URMs.

Click to expand...

Whoa! so young and yet so angry damn that rap music. Chill out, this issue has already been played out, you just have to appreciate its benefits and learn to live with it.

The reason AA exists is not to give historically socioeconomically disadvantaged groups a boost in the admissions process, for the sake of evening the playing field.

It is purely justified because a URM's ethnicity is seen as a qualification-- something that adds to the diversity of the student population. This is the basis for upholding AA in court cases anyway. Unfortunately, the URMs I see rallying on campus seem to focus more on the disadvantages of their people and how they do need a boost. On the other hand, some people that are staunchly opposed to AA think so because they see helping out people just because they are from a minority of commonly disadvantaged people as wrong.

So, what some of you have said about AA not justly addressing the lower-lying problems facing socioeconomic people is based on a mininterpretation of AA. I personnally believe that more programs need to be instated to address inadequate public schooling (i.e. in ghetto areas), and that the including of diversity as a criteria for addcomms to select students is appropriate, to some extent.

Some people have suggested that AA is not as important an issue as access to high quality primary educations - I agree with this completely. However adcoms need to make decisions TODAY about who is most qualified. This is where AA comes in to the picture.

First and foremost, URM and non URM applicants do not enter the medical school application process on a level playing field. The situation Ryo-Ohki describes in which rich black applicants are getting in over poor white applicants is an inaccurate description of reality.

Black and URM medical school applicants on average, have substantially less economic and social resources than white or asian applicants. For Medical School applicants in 2001, black applicants had a median parent income of $50,000 whereas white and asian applicants had median parent incomes of $80,000. Breaking the asian category down further, Indian, Pakistani, Filipino, and Japanese applicants had median parental incomes of approximately $100,000. Also only 51.4 percent of black applicants had fathers who completed college whereas 70 or 78 percent of white or asian applicants had fathers who completed college.

Finally, achieving high grades in college can be achieved much more easily if one has a strong pre-college educational foundation ? in this area, only 3% of black high school seniors are proficient in science or math, whereas 20-23% of white high school seniors and 26% of asian high school seniors are proficient in science or math according to the National Assessment of Education Progress. This should keep GPA statistics in perspective - for example, a 3.1 science GPA with a limited science background might be much more impressive than a 3.5 with a much more extensive science background.

www.aamc.org/publications/factsandfigures.htm

Originally posted by Ryo-Ohki
...If so, please provide us with some of this "simple research" that shows that Affirmative Action does not provide a way for less academically qualified URMs to be admitted over more academically qualified non-URMs.

Click to expand...

Institutionalized racism also plays a substantial part - if society deems blacks to be genetically/culturally inferior, then it is quite natural for blacks to subconsciously adopt societal notions about black inferiority. The impact this has upon students is quite profound - Claude Steele has done quite a bit of research on this. To summarize, Steele took a group of black and white Stanford students and asked them to take a section of a GRE exam and told them that the test measured "ability." The black students did much worse than the white students. Steele, then took another group of black and white Stanford students and administered the same test to them, except that he told them that the test was a "problem solving task" and not a test of ability. Black students performed just as well as the white students. In other words, disparities in test performance were entirely attributable to the situation in which the test was administered. Stereotypes about black inferiority play a large role in affecting black performance on standardized examinations.

http://www.umich.edu/~urel/admissio...ert/steele.html

Does AA contribute to this "stereotype threat"? Possibly. But the real problem is our obsession with tests such as the SAT and the MCAT as measures of "ability." If the outcome of a test for an URM can change substantially based upon the social environment in which one takes the exam, what does that say about a tests' ability to measure academic merit?

Originally posted by Jalby
Ring ring goes Trouble's phone.

Trouble picks up:

"Hello??"

scota says: "Hello, is Trouble around???"

Click to expand...

Originally posted by scota

If America's medical establishment wants to get more URMs in the field, start outreach when the kids are in middle school, the latest! The science/math departments at most urban schools are absolutely atrocious! They should start there.....

Click to expand...

Alot of medical schools are starting there, with tutoring and guidance programs in underprivillaged schools. 3 out of 4 of my interview schools have had something of this nature. It's a great idea. In the mean time, groups like the National Medical Association, AAMC, and the American Public Health Association have pointed to a crisis of underservice. Minority and working class populations are not getting the health care they need.

If you are truly interested, here are some links:

http://www.apha.org/legislative/factsheets/HealthDisparities.pdf

http://www.aamc.org/diversity/reading.htm

http://www.snma.org/education.html

If you are not truly interested, and are just spewing ignorant polemics (this is not directed toward scota or anyone else offering reasoned statements, but toward trolls, ect), don't even waste your time with this subject; study or something.

I signed a truce on this topic but I still think it is an important one so I will break the truce.

Here is some info from the AAMC.

http://www.aamc.org/newsroom/pressrel/2003/031104.htm

The following paragraph underscores that being an URM hardly guarantees admission. Only about half the URM applicants were accepted. You can be for or against AA but it is hard to deny that there is a problem with recruitment as the number of URM students continues to decline.

While the total number of black applicants (2,736), rose almost five percent due to a ten percent increase in black women applicants (1,904), the number of blacks who were accepted and then went on to attend medical school (1,056) declined by six percent. The total number of Hispanic applicants (2,483) increased by less than two percent since last year, while Hispanic attendees declined by almost four percent (to 1,089).

"These latest figures contain both good and bad news for the medical profession. The decrease in minorities entering medical school underscores the need for redoubled efforts to attract a critical mass of students from diverse backgrounds in order to enhance the education of all future physicians," said AAMC President, Jordan J. Cohen M.D. "At the same time, the increase in total and first-time applicants is a reaffirming sign that the current generation of young people recognizes the attractiveness of medicine as a profession."

Shouldnt you guys be drinking wine or eggnog and watching cheesy christmas television?