Posted on 08/26/2013 7:12:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Los Angeles Times recently published a devastating case study in the malign effects of academic racial preferences. The University of California, Berkeley, followed the diversocrat playbook to the letter in admitting Kashawn Campbell, a South Central Los Angeles high-school senior, in 2012: It disregarded his level of academic preparation, parked him in the black dorm — the “African American Theme Program” — and provided him with a black-studies course.
The results were thoroughly predictable. After his first semester, reports the Times:
[Kashawn] had barely passed an introductory science course. In College Writing 1A, his essays — pockmarked with misplaced words and odd phrases — were so weak that he would have to take the class again.
His writing often didn’t make sense. He struggled to comprehend the readings for [College Writing] and think critically about the text.
“It took awhile for him to understand there was a problem,” [his instructor] said. “He could not believe that he needed more skills. He would revise his papers and each time he would turn his work back in having complicated it. The paper would be full of words he thought were academic, writing the way he thought a college student should write, using big words he didn’t have command of.”
His grade-point average was 1.7, putting him at risk of expulsion if he didn’t raise it by the end of the year. The one bright spot in his academic record? Why, African American Studies 5A, of course! Kashawn had received an A on an essay and a B on a midterm, the best grades of his freshman year:
Kashawn reveled in the class [a survey of black culture and race relations], in a way he hadn’t since high school. He would often be the first one to speak up in discussions, even though his points weren’t always the most sophisticated, said Gabrielle Williams, a doctoral student who helped teach the class.
He still had gaps in his knowledge of history. But, Williams said, “you could see how engaged he was, how much he loved being there.”
Did Kashawn’s good grades in African American Studies 5A mean that he had suddenly learned how to think and to write? Not at all. He was advancing little in his second go-round at expository writing: “On yet another failing essay, the instructor wrote how surprised she was at his lack of progress, especially, she noted, given the hours they’d spent going over his ‘extremely long, awkward and unclear sentences.’”
His (to him) unforeseen academic struggles took a psychological toll:
He had never felt this kind of failure, nor felt this insecure. . . . Each poor grade [was] another stinging punch bringing him closer to flunking out. None of the adults in his life knew the depth of his pain: not his professors, his counselors, any of the teachers at his old high school.
He tries to rally his spirits with heart-wrenching pathos: “‘I can do this! I can do this!’ he had written [in a diary]. ‘Let the studying begin! . . . It’s time for Kashawn’s Comeback!’”
A counselor in the campus psychologist’s office urged him to scale back his academic ambitions. “Maybe he didn’t have to be the straight-A kid he’d been in high school anymore,” the counselor advised him. This “be content with mediocrity” message is hardly a recipe for future success, but it sums up the attitude that many a struggling affirmative-action “beneficiary” has adopted to get through college.
The black-themed dorm and student center also operated exactly as one would expect, confirming their members’ belief in their own racial oppression:
“Sometimes we feel like we’re not wanted on campus,” Kashawn said, surrounded at a dinner table by several of his dorm mates, all of them nodding in agreement. “It’s usually subtle things, glances or not being invited to study groups. Little, constant aggressions.”
Of course, the only reason that Kashawn and many of his fellow dorm mates are at Berkeley is because the administration “wants” them so much, regardless of their chances of success. It is unlikely, however, that African American Studies 5A discussed the academic-achievement gap in Berkeley’s admissions between black, white, and Asian students. That gap, not racism, explains why Kashawn is not a sought-after addition to study groups. (Kashawn came to Berkeley through one of the University of California’s many desperate efforts to evade California’s ban on governmental racial preferences: an admissions guarantee for students in the top decile of their high school classes, regardless of their test scores or the caliber of their school.)
Kashawn is on tenterhooks waiting to learn if his second-semester grades will allow him to continue into sophomore year. Which course gave him an A–, to pull his GPA over the top? Hint: It wasn’t College Writing.
The Times could not have written a more resounding confirmation of mismatch theory if it had tried. (The paper’s motivations for the story remain mysterious, since the Times is conventionally liberal on race matters.) Mismatch theory, most recently expounded by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, is the most powerful critique of affirmative action yet developed, demonstrating empirically that students admitted to academic environments for which they are ill prepared learn less, and are less likely to pursue rigorous majors, than had they been enrolled in schools where their peers shared their level of academic preparation.
But the Times story conveys a subtler point as well: Racial preferences are not just ill advised, they are positively sadistic. Only the preening self-regard of University of California administrators and faculty is served by such an admissions travesty. Preference practitioners are willing to set their “beneficiaries” up to fail and to subject them to possible emotional distress, simply so that the preference dispensers can look out upon their “diverse” realm and know that they are morally superior to the rest of society.
— Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and the author of Are Cops Racist?
It’s 2013 and there is a black dorm at Berkeley?
Yes. My daughter (Berkeley student) tells me music blasts out of there at full volume 24/7.
With that said, there are VERY few black students at Berkeley and they are desperate to import more.
I see many similar comparisons between the imposition of socialist-entitlement and single-payer Obamacare and socialist-entitlement K-12 schooling.
And...The same arguments used with schooling such as, “Gee! If we could go back to the ole K-12 system,,”, will be used with socialist and single-payer helathcare.
yeah...I bet other races feel soooooo welcome in the black dorm. They’re allowed to segregate themselves, then wonder why they’re not included in other groups. Simply NOT amazing, I’m sure the idea is to boost confidence (have “like” peers around you) but it will have the opposite effect....as usual with liberal policies.
It's worse than that. Average black IQ is 80 vs 100 for whites. 80% of blacks have a lower IQ than the average white person. This is why blacks will never be represented in the professions in numbers proportional to their presence in the general population. Per capita, far more blacks than whites lack the raw talent to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to enter those professions. Telling them to work harder is a lot like telling elite white athletes to keep plugging away at winning the 100m sprint at the Olympics.
I'd argue that your problem employees would have flunked out of those schools. Effort is a wonderful thing, but there's no substitute for native intelligence when it comes to technical fields.
calling any student who is not Cal Berkeley material Cal Berkeley material, does not make him so...
as a homeschooling momma, i had my oldest son take pre-algebra two years in a row even though he averaged a "C" the first year... i could not see him moving on to something more difficult without having mastered what was basic to the next level...it was one of the best decisions i have made in regards to his schooling... the following year he aced it and has excelled in mathematics since... i know that math is developmental... the first year he was not ready to grasp it at his full potential...
California has two College systems:
University System : Berkeley, UCLA, Irvine, Santa Barbara, etc.
"State Colleges" : Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Fullerton, Cal State San Diego, etc.
I was referring to those schools when I said "state colleges"
In general the "State colleges" do not offer PhD programs and have less stringent entrance requirements , while the Universities do have PhD programs and are more difficult to enter.
To confuse issues even further: The official name of Long beach State is: California State University at Long Beach.
But no one, including the alumnae (I am one), call it that. We call it: Cal State Long Beach.
Quite possibly so, but if he had failed out, then he would not have had the elevated expectations of supposedly having MS level credentials, and being incapable of doing the work.
This is the problem with AA as practiced today....it is in reality a "performance reduced" quota system. The same as are women in the military, police, fire occupations.
AA as originally postulated was "supposed" to be based on testing all applicants "equally" and not artificially failing those that happened to be of a higher melanin content.....if it had ever been done that way, then it would have been a great positive.
Deval Patrick is another one...
calling any student who is not Cal Berkeley material Cal Berkeley material, does not make him so...
I apologize. I should have worded that better.
I would like to borrow that phrase for awhile in my tagline
I think I will change my son's name to Keshawn. I/we have a very common last name similar to many African American sport players.
My(Caucasian) son keeps a straight A average in high school. Maybe he could get a free ride into Berkley, Harvard or MIT.
Where does Cal Tech fall into the mix?
Isn’t supposed to be harder to get in than MIT?
A lot of blacks have a vastly-inflated sense of their personal abilities. This is why so many cry racism at the drop of a hat. They are not playing mind games. They do in fact think that they are putting out superior effort and results, and any failure to reward them for these outstanding efforts constitutes racism.
The tragic figure in this story is not Kashawn. It’s the unknown Asian-American kid from Fremont with a straight-A average and very high test scores whose place at Berkeley was taken away by the self-righteous administrators, who admitted Kashawn instead to fill their quota.
That kid will go to another UC school, get good grades, a degree, and likely follow the same path he would have.
The tragedy is that Kashawn would have followed a far brighter path in life if admitted to the right school. (I honestly thought this article was going to end in suicide - but that’s more of an Asian thing than a black thing, because suicide requires self-blame, and in the worst of black culture, blame is always externalized.)
What a sad waste of everybody’s time and money. Liberalism has a lot to answer for.
If ya work it right ya might get Tuition and a BIG BONUS!!
That kid has been nurtured and prepared to be a failure. If he were to actually become educated he might just be able to walk off the plantation. And that cannot be tolerated.
sarc/
Which school, so we can avoid it?
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