|
| 阅读上一个主题 :: 阅读下一个主题 |
| 作者 |
 再转一篇文章,在美华人，特别是有孩子要上学的，必看 |
 |
| 所跟贴 |
我也看不懂为什么很多在美华人支持这个法案，也请消极或者老右介绍一下 -- Anonymous - (0 Byte) 2005-5-25 周三, 上午6:25 (99 reads) |
Imbecile
[博客]
[个人文集]
游客
|
|
|
作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
http://www.asian-nation.org/affirmative-action.shtml
One of the most controversial issues in the discussion of race relations in the U.S. is that of affirmative action. Not only are different racial/ethnic groups arguing with each other over this topic but many times, members of the same racial/ethnic group can't agree with each other over it. Even after the recent ruling by the U.S Supreme Court that race can be considered as a factor in admissions (although not through a quota system), the question still remains becomes, how does affirmative action affect Asian Americans?
WHAT EXACTLY IS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?
Affirmative action was first developed in the early 1960s under President Kennedy, who said that government should take "affirmative action" to address the inequality and discrimination that Blacks still experience. President Johnson strongly supported this policy and expanded it. Johnson gave a very famous speech about it in 1965:
You do not take a person who has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him up to the starting line, and then tell him that he's free to race against all the others and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
However, President Nixon was first to set up federal guidelines to implement affirmative action policies. We should understand that there are several different forms of affirmative action, practiced by different types of organizations (i.e., public versus private sector, large versus small company, etc.). They generally involve three main purposes. The most general guidelines are preferences or when specific racial/ethnic groups or women get preferential consideration in a hiring, admissions, or award decisions when other qualifications have been met.
The second type of guideline involves setting affirmative action goals -- when a certain percentage of racial/ethnic minorities or women are hired, admitted, or awarded. Finally, the most rigid guideline is the dreaded quota that involves setting aside a specific number of hiring decisions, admission positions, or awards to racial/ethnic minorities or women.
As you may suspect, I support affirmative action. It was designed to provide equal opportunity, not equal outcome. Its goal is to provide groups that have historically been discriminated against the opportunity to improve their life chances. It was not meant to guarantee success, but to provide a fair opportunity to work toward achieving success. In the case of Asian Americans however, many say that affirmative action has been a blessing and a curse.
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?
Students studying together © Corbis
When affirmative action was first implemented in the early 1970s, Asian Americans benefitted from it in large numbers, as did Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos, American Indians and the group that has benefitted the most, White women. Since that time, Asian Americans have achieved notable successes in educational attainment, employment, and income -- so much so that Asians are frequently called the "model minority."
In fact, on many university campuses around the country, Asian Americans soon became disproportionately represented. That is, it was common for 10%, 15%, or more of a university's student population to be of Asian ancestry at a time when Asians were only about 3% of the general population. This was also because the Asian American population is relatively young, so many more Asians were applying to college than before as well.
Nonetheless, many universities became alarmed at the growing Asian American student population on their campuses. So much so that once the Asian proportion of their student population reached 10%-15%, they began to reject Asian students who were clearly qualified. Soon, Asian Americans were accusing universities such as U.C. Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Brown of imposing a quota or upper limit on their admission numbers. After several protests and investigations, these universities admitted that there were problems with these admission policies but never admitted any deliberate wrongdoing.
Soon thereafter, many conservatives and opponents of affirmative action began to argue that these Asian American students were "victims" of affirmative action, just like Whites. In other words, these Asian American students were being denied admission when other "less qualified" ethnic groups (implying Blacks, Latinos, and American Indians) were being admitted.
As many Asian American scholars note, at first this argument may sound plausible. But after careful investigation, the real issue is not that Asian students are "competing" with other racial/ethnic minority groups. Rather, the real cause of this controversy is the widespread use of admissions factors that always seem to favor Whites.
For example, many private universities use "legacy clauses" in which the children of their alumni are almost always admitted, many of whom would not have been admitted otherwise. The problem is that legacy clauses almost always favor Whites because a generation ago, there were very few racial/ethnic minorities attending these elite schools. As research showed, the widespread use of these legacy admissions is what's responsible for the artificially low admission rates for Asian Americans.
A recent National Merit Scholarship winner © Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis
Other factors that lowered the admissions rates for Asian students included persistent stereotypes that Asian students were not "well-rounded" candidates and rarely participate in extracurricular activities. Again, national research showed that in terms of participating in sports, performing arts, academic and social clubs, and community activities, the rates for Asian students were almost identical to that of White students. The point is that in this case, Asian Americans were still the targets of discrimination and that the real beneficiaries of this were not other racial/ethnic minorities, but the children of alumni at elite universities.
THE DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF BEING 'QUALIFIED'
This does not mean that all Asian Americans support affirmative action. While public opinion surveys generally show that a majority of Asian Americans support affirmative action, many in our communities believe that American society is indeed a meritocracy and that everyone should be judged purely on his/her abilities, rather than ethnic identity. As Asian-Nation discusses in many articles, there is a lot of diversity in the Asian American community, and that includes views about affirmative action. Nonetheless, this particular Asian American (that would be me) does support affirmative action and here is why.
Does affirmative action mean rewarding those who are not qualified? It all depends on how you define being qualified. Do standardized tests, such as the SAT, last, GRE, MCAT, etc., accurately measure whether someone is really qualified? Consistently, studies show that the answer is no -- these tests cannot predict anything valid. They cannot predict how well a student will do in school, how likely s/he is to graduate, nor how intelligent s/he is. All they measure is how well a particular student can take that particular test at that particular time.
It may surprise you to know that the corporations that create and administer these tests and education officials at all level already know this and have admitted that their standardized tests do not measure inherent intelligence or the likelihood of success. In fact, the Chancellor of the University of California system recently proposed eliminating the SATs in admissions decisions. These and other criticisms of the SAT finally prompted the College Board (the company that administers the SAT) to significantly revise the test to make it more useful and valid.
So why do such standardized tests still exist? Their supporters say that although they are imperfect, they at least provide a way to evaluate candidates by one consistent, standard measurement. To a certain degree, they have a valid point. A student's grades are slightly better at predicting success, but grades are heavily dependent on the quality of a student's school and his/her environment. For example, if a student is unlucky enough to be in an environment that is not conducive to learning and where s/he has to deal with surviving poverty, hunger, violence, then that student is already at a disadvantage.
When it comes to hiring decisions, should the "most qualified" candidate always get the job? I and many others would answer, not necessarily -- it should go to the the most appropriate candidate. For example, is a candidate who has a degree from Cornell that much more qualified than one who has a degree from the University of Michigan? Does a candidate who has 18 years of managerial experience that much more qualified than one who has 15 years?
Nothing wrong with diversity © Steve Chenn/Corbis
Of course, there should be minimum standards for all admissions, hiring decisions, and awards. But once those minimum qualifications are met, it should not be a crime to consider someone's race in the final decision. This is especially true if the goal is to achieve diversity and integration, which the Supreme Court has now ruled is a perfectly legal and constitutional goal. If it's perfectly acceptable to admit students just because they parents are alumni then it should be perfectly acceptable to use other "arbitrary" preferences, such as race/ethnicity or gender. The National APA Legal Consortium presents a very clear and concise look at the University of Michigan case and why considering race is just as fair as any other consideration in admissions decisions.
Those who argue that affirmative action is reverse discrimination against Whites should remember that for centuries, because racism denied minorities educational, economic, and other opportunities, we basically had a system of affirmative action for White males. Those who argue that their ancestors never owned slaves so why should they pay for the sins of slavery should remember that while their ancestors did not own slaves, they did enjoy the benefits from slavery by having less competition for school admissions, jobs, and government programs. It was these and other resources that helped propel many Whites and their descendents into the middle and upper classes while slaves and their descendents were left behind -- forgotten and invisible.
Further, sociological and economic research consistently shows that the overwhelming majority of job losses among White workers in recent decades is not due to affirmative action. Rather, those losses have been due to (1) deindustrialization and the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs (including moving such jobs overseas); (2) downsizing, corporate layoffs, and early retirements, and; (3) technological innovation and computer automation. Therefore, the belief that large numbers of Whites are losing out to Blacks, women, and other groups of color is just not supported by the facts.
ASIANS AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION TODAY
Most observers would agree that, considering the socioeconomic and academic progress Asians have made in the last few decades, affirmative action has helped Asian Americans to some extent, although probably not to the same degree that it's helped women, Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos, and Native Americans. In fact, many academic or employment affirmative action programs do not consider Asian Americans to be an "underrepresented" group any longer and therefore have stopped including them in their affirmative action guidelines.
At the same time, many (although not all) have also recognized that Pacific Islanders and some Southeast Asian groups (i.e., Laotian, Cambodian, Hmong, etc.) are still underrepresented and therefore should still be included in their affirmative action programs -- it just depends on the specific program in question and how they structure their preferences. In other words, they understand one of the main themes that Asian-Nation and other Asian American scholars have consistently repeated -- that not all Asian Americans are the same; rather, there can be significant socioeconomic differences among specific Asian groups.
The question still remains, do Asian Americans still benefit from affirmative action or are they being hurt by it? Again, it all depends on the specific program and set of guidelines in question and whether or not they include Asian Americans (or which specific APA groups) as an underrepresented group. Have some Asians been hurt by affirmative action in the form of being passed over for some other candidate who may not have as high of an SAT score, etc.? Probably. But I would argue that in trying to achieve the goal of promoting diversity and overcoming centuries of systematic discrimination against Blacks and other groups of color who are still underrepresented, affirmative action is imperfect but still necessary.
Now that the Supreme Court has affirmed that race can be used as a legitimate factor in admissions decisions, we should still realize that American society does not have to be a zero sum proposition -- that is, one person's gain is not always another person's loss. Instead, if we work together, there can be plenty of opportunities to go around. That's exactly the case when our economy is expanding, going well, and producing new jobs. It's very sad that when things start to turn sour that so many people become so defensive -- and prejudiced.
Copyright © 2001-2005 by C.N. Le. All rights reserved. Suggested reference: Le, C.N. 2005. "Affirmative Action and Asian Americans" Asian-Nation: The Landscape of Asian America. (May 24, 2005).
作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
|
|
| 返回顶端 |
|
 |
| |
|
|
您不能在本论坛发表新主题
您不能在本论坛回复主题
您不能在本论坛编辑自己的文章
您不能在本论坛删除自己的文章
您不能在本论坛发表投票
您不能在这个论坛添加附件
您不能在这个论坛下载文件
|
based on phpbb, All rights reserved.
|
