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Cruelty to Black Students
Townhall.com ^ | September 21, 2016 | Walter E. Williams

Posted on 09/21/2016 4:57:10 AM PDT by Kaslin

Last year's college news was about demands for safe spaces, trigger warnings and bans on insensitivity. This year's college news is about black student demands for segregated campus housing and other racially segregated campus spaces and programs. I totally disagree with these calls by black students. It's a gross dereliction of duty for college administrators to cave to these demands, but I truly sympathize with the problems that many black college students face. For college administrators and leftist faculty, the actual fate of black students is not nearly so important as the good feelings they receive from a black presence on campus. Let's examine some of the problem.

A very large percentage of all incoming freshmen have no business being admitted to college. According to College Board's 2015 report, the average combined SAT score for white students was 1576 out of a possible 2400. Black student SAT scores, at 1277, were the lowest of the seven reported racial groups (http://tinyurl.com/ozpkpdk). The College Board considers an SAT score of 1550 as the benchmark that indicates a readiness for college-level work. Only 32 percent of white students scored at or above proficient in math, and just 7 percent of black students did. Forty-six percent of white test takers scored proficient in reading, and 17 percent of blacks did. The ACT, another test used for admission to college, produced similar results. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reports, in an article titled "A Major Crisis in College Readiness for Black Students," that 34 percent of whites who took the ACT were deemed college-ready in all four areas -- English, mathematics, reading and science. For blacks, it was only 6 percent (http://tinyurl.com/h6x5g8n).

These are significant differences in academic preparation between white and black students. I am sure that the differences give black students feelings of inferiority and being out of place. Black college students across the country have demanded segregated housing and other "safe spaces" on campuses designated for students of color. Students calling for segregated spaces do so because they allege their campuses are oppressive, are discriminatory and represent institutionalized racism. For decades, colleges have purchased peace by creating whole departments of ethnic, diversity and multicultural studies. All too often, these "studies" are about propaganda and not serious education. Plus, they provide students with an opportunity to get an easy A.

The most pervasive form of racial discrimination at most colleges is affirmative action. In the name of helping people from groups that have suffered past discrimination, colleges admit black students whose academic preparation differs significantly with that of their white peers. Those differences are not subtle. It should not come as a surprise that the intended beneficiaries of that "benign" discrimination feel themselves ridiculed, isolated and treated differently. As a result, students who might be successes in a less competitive environment are turned into failures. One faculty member at a historically black college put it this way: "The way we see it, the majority schools are wasting large numbers of good students. They have black students with admissions statistics (that are) very high, tops. But these students wind up majoring in sociology or recreation or get wiped out altogether."

The problem of black education begins long before college. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as The Nation's Report Card, shows that nationally in 2015, only 7 percent of black 12th-graders scored proficient in math, and only 17 percent did so in reading. This suggests that the average black 12th-grader has the academic proficiency of a white eighth- or ninth-grader. Consider the following question: If one admits 1,000 randomly selected eighth- and ninth-graders to college and admits 1,000 randomly selected 12th-graders, who do you think is going to come out on top? Who would be surprised if the eighth- and ninth-graders felt inferiority, oppression and insensitivity?

The academic elite feel righteous seeing blacks on campus, even if they are severely mismatched. Black people must ask: Are we going to sacrifice our youngsters so that white liberals can feel good about themselves?


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: academia; affirmativeaction; blackstudents; highereducation; racerelations; walterwilliams
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1 posted on 09/21/2016 4:57:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: All

It breaks my heart to think of all the young black children who are being oppressed by black culture and the lowered expectations of white Liberals.


2 posted on 09/21/2016 5:02:00 AM PDT by Maverick68 (p)
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To: Kaslin
.. it's a gross dereliction of duty for college administrators to cave to these demands ..

There's nothing more cowardly than a college administrator.

3 posted on 09/21/2016 5:05:44 AM PDT by Byron_the_Aussie (Globalism = Terrorism)
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To: Maverick68

Many “white liberals” profit directly from the black “poverty industry”; they draw “combat pay” pretending to teach in their districts, work as “social workers” maximizing the taxpayer funds given to their “clients”, and represent them politically by playing to their self-inflicted “grievances”...

The separate treatment of blacks at all levels is an overt display of the government’s belief in their genetic inferiority.


4 posted on 09/21/2016 5:09:45 AM PDT by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: Kaslin

“A very large percentage of all incoming freshmen have no business being admitted to college.”

Those same freshmen have no business graduating college either - and employers know it. Their worthless degrees force employers to just hire other “preferred minorities” (Hispanics, women) in their stead.


5 posted on 09/21/2016 5:11:10 AM PDT by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: Byron_the_Aussie
There's nothing more cowardly than a college administrator.

I think it's in the job description.

6 posted on 09/21/2016 5:23:23 AM PDT by jonno (Having an opinion is not the same as having the answer...)
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To: kearnyirish2

Agreed 100%, it’s not by accident that the black community is being destroyed.


7 posted on 09/21/2016 5:26:35 AM PDT by Maverick68 (p)
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To: Kaslin

bump for a great article


8 posted on 09/21/2016 5:31:55 AM PDT by BlueLancer ("If the present tries to sit in judgment on the past, it will lose the future." Winston Churchill)
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To: Kaslin

These black students demanding segregated housing are not the caliber of Dr. Williams or the black students he went to school with or probably who he taught when he was at George Mason. Let them segregate. Those who don’t want to segregate are undoubtedly civilized. Let chaos reign in the segregated dorms and peace and harmony in the rest.


9 posted on 09/21/2016 6:09:48 AM PDT by FrdmLvr ("WE ARE ALL OSAMA, 0BAMA!" al-Qaeda terrorists who breached the American compound in)
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To: Byron_the_Aussie

There’s nothing more cowardly than a college administrator.
___________________________

College administration is a very cushy job, and they’re not willing to give it up easily.


10 posted on 09/21/2016 6:11:30 AM PDT by LydiaLong
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To: Kaslin

I wonder if Dr. Williams has done a correlation between the success rates of those black students with low SATs and their graduation rate categorized by degree? I would be interested to see such analysis. I would also like to see SAT score compared to grad rates.


11 posted on 09/21/2016 7:52:55 AM PDT by rjsimmon (The Tree of Liberty Thirsts)
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To: Kaslin

bump


12 posted on 09/21/2016 8:45:54 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (We will be one People, under one God, saluting one American flag. --Donald Trump (standing ovation))
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To: Byron_the_Aussie
There's nothing more cowardly than a college administrator.

Maybe so but few administrators in any professional can stand up to the pressure from the left wingers in the MSM when they go on the attack about some so called injustice against blacks
13 posted on 09/21/2016 8:47:23 AM PDT by uncbob
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To: kearnyirish2
My daughter is a sophmore this year and student teaches a class.

She says it's unbelievable how bad it is. People don't show up, don't do work and when they do, half the time, she says they can't even string together a sentence that makes sense.

She sees this and she's a kid.

14 posted on 09/21/2016 8:51:28 AM PDT by riri (Obama's Amerika--Not a fun place.)
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To: rjsimmon

Actually those studies have been done.

UC Berkeley had a very high drop out rate when they were admitting students with low SAT scores. When they increased the minimum SAT for admission, they had fewer black students admitted but most of them graduated.

Colleges do no favors for blacks when they admit them to compete with whites and Asians who are 300 SAT points higher.

There is an excellent book on the topic
https://www.amazon.com/Mismatch-Affirmative-Students-%C2%92s-Universities/dp/0465029965/ref=pd_ybh_a_24?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TA7Z0B1YQ5Y7D02TSWV0

BRW one of the authors is Stuart Taylor who also authored a book on the Crystal Magnum case at Duke.


15 posted on 09/21/2016 9:01:10 AM PDT by ladyjane
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To: ladyjane

Thanks, Lady Jane. Well worth digging into.


16 posted on 09/21/2016 9:02:25 AM PDT by rjsimmon (The Tree of Liberty Thirsts)
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To: riri

They’ve been written off - and now they know it.


17 posted on 09/21/2016 9:04:10 AM PDT by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: riri

I see the same thing in colleges. In fact, colleges have become such a joke that the Colorado Early College program has 16 year olds in their third year Electrical Engineering program.


18 posted on 09/21/2016 9:06:43 AM PDT by CodeToad
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To: CodeToad
She is in college, I should have clarified that.

My son is 15. (STEM kid). I just paid a $1000 for his (first half of the year) dual enrollment classes--by the end of this year he'll have something close to 20 "college" credits.

He's still got two years to go. It's crazy. I mean, it's great for me as long as he goes in-state, saves me money but I recognize how ridiculous it all is.

19 posted on 09/21/2016 9:16:16 AM PDT by riri (Obama's Amerika--Not a fun place.)
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To: riri

One thing should keep any high performing person going: All the other idiots are their competitors.


20 posted on 09/21/2016 10:30:12 AM PDT by CodeToad
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