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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"A Grand Bargain for Comprehensive Affirmative Action Reform"

14 Comments -

1 – 14 of 14
Anonymous simon newman said...

"We permanently authorize racial quotas for African-Americans in return for permanently banning preferences for any other ethnic group."

Looking at it from the outside, this grand bargain makes a lot of sense, but it needs to be restricted to the descendants of the USA's antebellum black slaves - no preferences for descendants of upper-class Kenyans like Barack Obama.

10/1/07, 1:53 AM

Blogger Mary Pat said...

Just so the students that AA supposedly helps don't keep getting screwed over, how about stats are kept not just of admissions, but also of attrition? I mean, I know they have those stats, but they should be forced to publish all those stats, from admissions to graduation.

10/1/07, 2:51 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

Another issue is "major decay" -- kids who want to major in something tough like engineering get into a college one tier over their heads and wind up majoring in sociology because they can't hack it in engineering there, while they could make it in engineering at a school more appropriate to their talents.

10/1/07, 3:04 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

No doubt your grand bargain is a little tongue-in-cheek as it clearly, in my opinion, isn't ever going to happen. I think the time has come for white Americans to begin migrating to a part of the country and prepare to secede. To avoid being beat up by the rest of the world as South Africa was or to simply be left alone, we will need to adopt a non-militaristic, hands-off approach to interacting with the remainder of the world, much like Switzerland or today's Japan. To avoid being called racist, we will simply have to not allow low-IQ people in to this newly-formed country.

Does anyone ever stop to contemplate exactly how much effort is expended by whites arguing among ourselves over what to do with minorities? What a blessed relief it would be to have that out of the picture so we could return to honorable, intellectual debate, conducted within a healthy social framework that citizen's intuitively recognized and respected.

10/1/07, 3:07 AM

Anonymous RKU said...

An absolutely excellent idea!

But it really doesn't go quite far enough in solving our overriding social problem of too many Young Black Men in prison and not enough in college...

We should similarly exempt the members of our long-suffering African-American community from all of the regular laws against murder, rape, and robbery.

This would certainly help prevent such horrible miscarriages of justice as the Jena Six...

10/1/07, 5:26 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The vast amount of time and money expended on recruiting high school football players doesn't create much new talent; it just redistributes it among colleges. And the same is true for affirmative action."

Except that in football, you're actually recruiting the best talent. That's why teams that recruit well do well on the field. Pete Carroll has turned USC from an also-ran into a dominant powerhouse with superb recruiting. It's just that much of this superior talent is black. By contrast, affirmative action recruiting isn't about talent or success, it's about keeping the media and politicans off your back.

10/1/07, 9:25 AM

Blogger Jim O'Sullivan said...

Steve: Others may comment on your typically fine analysis of the situation. I just want to thank you for calling the school by its right name.
Except for the service acadamies, there is only one college in America that is known by one name when referring to its sports teams, and another name in every other context: "Cal" (Berkeley).

10/1/07, 12:16 PM

Anonymous AllanF said...

It makes no sense at all to have an affirmative action policy of admitting a black kid with an SAT score in the bottom decile just to boost the "diversity" of the freshman class, and then burning her out and flunking her, replacing her with a community college grad with an even lower SAT score who winds up getting the UCLA degree instead of the smarter black.

I wonder if these transfers are largely the same students the AA candidate originally trumped?

I don't know. It could be the trumped students end up going to private schools for considerably more money, or they go to the Cal State schools, and don't transfer once they settle in to a place. And certainly this whole scheme is an inefficient waste of human capital, as any political spoils system is. But, (if it's not too prole of me to admit) I do wonder about all those drop-outs and transfer students.

Anyone have any data?

10/1/07, 1:05 PM

Anonymous Otto Kerner said...

By the way, if black people in America are accorded preferences, then American Indians should be, too. They're not immigrants, either. I'll assume this was implicitly intended.

10/1/07, 4:02 PM

Anonymous Peter said...

Another issue is "major decay" -- kids who want to major in something tough like engineering get into a college one tier over their heads and wind up majoring in sociology because they can't hack it in engineering there, while they could make it in engineering at a school more appropriate to their talents.

In fairness, it's by no means limited to minorities. It happens to plenty of white students too.

--

Except for the service acadamies, there is only one college in America that is known by one name when referring to its sports teams, and another name in every other context: "Cal" (Berkeley).

What about the University of Mississippi aka Ole Miss?

10/1/07, 7:58 PM

Anonymous Fred said...

The late, great management theorist Peter Drucker said that a business owner is better off paying an incompetent relative not to work, than hiring him: the incompetent relative will screw things up and stoke resentment among the employees who were hired on merit. America's lower-IQ college aspirants are like our incompetent relatives. We are better off paying them not to work, or at least to work in some harmless capacity.

The danger of Sailer's proposal to give quotas for blacks is that it can lead to incompetents ending up in positions where they can do real harm (e.g., as jet pilots, civil engineers, physicians, money managers, etc.). "Major decay" is preferable.

10/1/07, 9:55 PM

Anonymous tommy said...

Another issue is "major decay" -- kids who want to major in something tough like engineering get into a college one tier over their heads and wind up majoring in sociology because they can't hack it in engineering there

Sadly, I don't think sociology is benefiting much from major decay. It seems most sociology students and professors I've encountered were torn between majoring in sociology and things like English Lit, cultural anthropology, psychology, or philosophy. Not many physical science students or engineers seem even secondarily interested in sociology. We could actually use some hard-headed engineering students becoming sociologists - it would do the science some good.

10/1/07, 9:58 PM

Anonymous Bill said...

How about this for an idea? High school should end at the age of 16, and then all students should go to a 2-year community college, where they either learn a trade or prepare for a university education.

I tried to do this (go to a community college at age 15), but my parents vetoed the idea, and I ended up without any classes left to take by my senior year in high school, which I wasted spectacularly.

The US college system is broken. There are some seriously dumb people teaching there, and the smart ones have been reduced to self-delusion to keep their jobs. American universities have become mental prisons.

Except for jobs that require accreditation, such as doctor, lawyer, accountant etc., college is a waste of money. I took two years of Chinese in college, and then learned more in two months in China. This is no exaggeration.

Nowadays, universities are good places to go to find healthy young women who are spinning their wheels in feminist mud.

Young men: go ye out there and rescue the girls from the politically correct dragon! It is your duty, but one you will enjoy mightily.

10/1/07, 10:01 PM

Blogger Ibrahim Nur said...

Authorizing racial quotas for blacks would be a brilliant way to get all other minorities in America to resent blacks all the more. For one thing, it's doubtful that the growing hispanic population would stand for it and the issue would undeniably increase tensions between the two groups. Those on the Left, of course, are smart enough to perceive this eventuality, hence why they would never favor it (though I do indeed belief that a moral case can be made for Affirmative Action to be exclusive to the descendents of those undeniably wronged by America's founders. For instance, no one ever seems to care about Native Americans receiving Affirmative Action at colleges. Maybe it's because they constitute .2% of the population. But maybe it's because we all know those people reeeallllyyyy got a raw deal and consequently don't give a rats ass about any sort of compensation handed to them.)

So, Steve, maybe your idea could work if there were only 6 million black americans as opposed to 36 million.

Affirmative action should be scrapped because it is impractical and tends to hurt its intended beneficiaries. The objection of Fairness To Whites is overplayed and could easily be disgarded IF the system did indeed work. But it doesn't.

10/1/07, 10:47 PM

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