Recently, AAMC.ORG put out their AAMC Underrepresented Minority (URM) Discussion Document in which they were attempting to gather input on widening the scope of URM, and in this very meticulous, 40-pg document, which is on @ aaamc.org, it states that if all medical schools ONLY considered merit, the number of whites accepted would go up 5%, the number of asians accepted would go up 25%, and the number of URM would go DOWN 80%. that shocked me. from reading the past URN thread, I would like to propose we discuss whether widening the scope of URM is important.
to me it comes down to once central issue:
-what is the proportion of "disadvantageness" that is contributed from economic factors vs. racial factors?
i.e. is will smith's kid going to do worse (only talking about merit here: gpa, mcats, lor, quality of activivties, etc...basically everything other than race) than his rich white peers JUST b/c he is black?
-alternatively, given a group of black students in a terrible HS, lower class, etc. will they all perform equally poorly irrespective of their intra-group variation in wealth (assuming there is a significant amt.)
-therefore, I think we need to find out which factors are more momentous, and maybe there shoudl be some kind of weighting sytsem between "racial" disadvantageness and "economic" disadvantageness...b/c honestly, I that that assuming URM=disadvantaged is simply an overgeneralization that overloooks the fact that the majority of poor people in this country are white, and what the hell will we do in 20 yrs when 2 generations of minorities and whites have intermarried, and then will we apply AA to the "one-drop" rule?? ok, Say I'm 1/4 latina, 1/4 asian, 1/4 irish, 1/4 iranian....am I URM?
i think we need to, as many have suggested, go beyond the PC, superficial definition of "diversity" for the sake of showing off "diversity" on our med school catalogs and websites to others, and at the same time engendering a sense of victimization among URMs who get in with sub-par merit, and a sense of distrust and suspicion among everyone else.
to me it comes down to once central issue:
-what is the proportion of "disadvantageness" that is contributed from economic factors vs. racial factors?
i.e. is will smith's kid going to do worse (only talking about merit here: gpa, mcats, lor, quality of activivties, etc...basically everything other than race) than his rich white peers JUST b/c he is black?
-alternatively, given a group of black students in a terrible HS, lower class, etc. will they all perform equally poorly irrespective of their intra-group variation in wealth (assuming there is a significant amt.)
-therefore, I think we need to find out which factors are more momentous, and maybe there shoudl be some kind of weighting sytsem between "racial" disadvantageness and "economic" disadvantageness...b/c honestly, I that that assuming URM=disadvantaged is simply an overgeneralization that overloooks the fact that the majority of poor people in this country are white, and what the hell will we do in 20 yrs when 2 generations of minorities and whites have intermarried, and then will we apply AA to the "one-drop" rule?? ok, Say I'm 1/4 latina, 1/4 asian, 1/4 irish, 1/4 iranian....am I URM?
i think we need to, as many have suggested, go beyond the PC, superficial definition of "diversity" for the sake of showing off "diversity" on our med school catalogs and websites to others, and at the same time engendering a sense of victimization among URMs who get in with sub-par merit, and a sense of distrust and suspicion among everyone else.
