Preening self-regard pretty much sums up liberals.
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?
Yes, this kid’s problem started well before getting to UC:
“Maybe he didn’t have to be the straight-A kid he’d been in high school anymore...”
It’s obvious he has no critical thinking skills. He is another product of ‘social promotion’. He should have been held back until he could show he could read & write in elementary school.
Yes! but if you have a black dorm because you want segration then you are a racist and that is bad.
If you have a black dorm because you want the black kids to feel better about themselve then you are still a racist but your motives are pure and you are better than others and that is good.
Were I to compile a list of the more outrageous names....I’d bet that at least a few would be barely believable!
Jatavauis ? Shambresha ,?
I feel SPECIAL just having READ those names....
Imagine going through life as orangello
Thomas Sowell made the observation (my approximation) that it is better to graduate from a state school or community college than to flunk out of Harvard.
There are many elements in this article that are sad. One concerns writing (thinking) skills. This young man thinks he can write better by tossing in high sounding words. I think that is a common mistake that should have been addressed in high school. It seems this student is still not getting the message.
Rather than retrench and start over, writing more simply and clearly, he has the opportunity to blame “the system” or “racism” for his low grades. People often choose guaranteed short term satisfaction over uncertain longer term reward. It is more satisfying to blame others than to admit that one lags behind. If others are walking, who wants to crawl?
Perhaps “the system” really is to blame, but only for not setting this young man straight. His teachers, backed up by the school administration, should pull him aside and work on his basic skills.
But what are they to do if his performance does not improve? Flunk him? That is just the kind of result that would risk unflattering attention from liberal circles, possibly including the US Department of Justice. In our infantilized world, one must not “make Obama mad.” I’ve heard our liberal press refer to Obama’s emotions as children might refer to their father’s emotions. Something along the lines of: “Oh your in trouble now, he’s really steamed.” There was a time when we did not have to fear our Presidents.
Let’s contrast this young man’s academic failings with the success of young black men in football. College football is populated by many young men who respect their coaches. They don’t complain if he tells them to practice tackling, run laps, etc. They don’t get to blame the system. There is no heat applied to the coach or the school for cutting a student from the squad. This is a context full of short term pain, with the promise of long term reward. Everyone is judged by the same harsh standards, and young black men, often from broken homes, do just fine.
Surely someone will wonder if black’s have an innate advantage in sports and an innate disadvantage in academics. The Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume noted the lack of accomplishment of Africans in architecture and music. Can anyone today deny that blacks have contributed to music?
Thomas Jefferson, intellectual and broad minded as he was, tried to involve blacks in sports. With the evidence available to him in his day, he had to conclude that they had little aptitude. It is easy to be blinded by current evidence. I am convinced that each of us falls far short of our potential.
The young man who is the subject of this article can fairly blame bad public schools and affirmative action. But blame only gets you so far. Like a young athlete who wants to make the cut next year, he has work on himself and his skills. Then, as a man, he should accept success or failure as it comes to him.
Heather Mac Donald is an excellent writer.
Yeah, the unfortunate names must be tough—unless you’re the spawn of Hollywood or a rock star.
I imagine rap singers and movie stars are whom they are emulating, if it is not already a multi-generational tradition in their family.
The victimology runs deep. Incredibly sad. The race-baiters nave been extremely successful. If you fail at what you do or are dissatisfied of your station in life, it’s always somebody else’s fault. In this case, it’s the “racists” on campus.
Did you see that video a few months ago or more about a Chines building collapsing? There are many substandard buildings in China. They weren’t all built by Peoples Construction Crews, but many had been build by people who had grown up listening to commie ideology. I remember seeing a video in a college geography class in the early nineties concerning Russian i.e. Soviet workers. It was made before the fall of the Soviet Union. My prof’s area of expertise was Russia and the satellite countries. The video followed one Russian guy who worked in construction, and it showed some of the stuff he was proud of making. Looked like something a crew of drunken bums made. Maybe they were drunk.
What academically motivated student would want an idiot like this in his "study group?" sheesh. The entitlement bug just never quits.
I don’t know Kashawn, and maybe with a lot of hard work and training he could attend an accredited college and make something of himself. I hope that happens. But the fact is many of the kids are being cheated by the same people who think they’re helping them. Success in life is based on conservatism. There might be a few leeches who get by on the efforts of others, but in the long run things of quality are made by people who work hard and don’t make excuses. It’s not necessarily succeeding every time but not giving up after one fails.
The funny thing is, minority parents are quick to scream bloody murder at the mere thought that THEIR children are being disserved or singled out for less that the best treatment... yet, year after year and generation after patently illiterate generation they sat by letting the schools summarily ‘pass’ their chidren from one grade to the next, WITHOUT the least concern if they could read...!
You mean to tell me a parent can’t tell if their child is learning? A parent can’t determine if their child is reading at his/her age level?
PLEEEAASE!!! Instead they scream bloody murder if their lazy and surly child would be held back longer so he/she COULD read at the proper level.
I suppose you are right overall, government controlled schooling is wrong but the system as it existed prior to the sixties was so much better than it is now as to be in a different category altogether from the current excuse for a school system. Obamacare will never have one percent of the credibility or the beneficial results that the old public school system had.
Was this really an AA story?
It says he was admitted under a program that guarantees admission to the top decile of any high school class. I favor such a program, because I think all state taxpayers in any school district should get a shot to send their kids to a state university.
“Two years at a JC probably could have better prepared him for a four year state college, which is not as demanding as a UC.”
UC is a state college.
The Leftist answer to this is more mandated success. Simply legislate that the same % of blacks entering college must leave with degrees as whites.
And then blame business for not hiring all of the “well credentialed” blacks.
Read this over the weekend.
There is nothing good in this all around — the qualified non-black students who were passed over in favor of a completely unprepared AA choice, the student himself who at no time was told by his school counselors or teachers that he was NOT UC material, African American studies that gave an “A-” to a student who obviously couldn’t write a term paper.
Students lacking in skills like this would be much better off at a 2-year community college out of high school instead of being set up to fail.
Affirmative Action worked for Obama. A few mental midgets are always pushed through regardless of capacity. Which begs the question: “In Obama’s case, WHY?????”
Heather McDonald wrote quite possibly the best analysis on the homeless there is — how the left DEFEND homelessness and believe “if only more money (or services, compassion, housing) were poured on the problem” —completely ignoring the fact that many homeless are mentally ill, drug addled, criminals, etc.
IN some localities, the homeless have more rights than other citizens - but in SF, I notice they’ve been cleared out of the high-end international business areas downtown (The Financial District) and shoved into The Haight — where the businesses there are forced to deal with them urinating in front of their businesses, panhandling around their front doors and driving away customers. Ditto for Santa Cruz.
An amazing article:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_skid_row.html
Think a bit more about this kid’s problems:
Most all colleges today use ‘The Curve System’ for grading.
That means that if the highest score is a 70, then that becomes an “A” and gets a score of 4.0. In the Curve system, if this ‘student’ was getting a score of 1.7, I don’t want to even try to calculate what his scores were on the 100 percentile system really were. Perhaps 20???
When I went to high school, we were graded on the 100 percentile basis. Our Wisconsin high school was considered one of the best in the state at that time.
When I took accounting classes at a community college 10 years later, they were using the ‘Curve grading basis’.
There were 3 persons in those classes who consistently scored 99 or 100 in the exercises & tests. I as one of those 3. I ended up with a 4.0 average for all my classes. SOME of the others in those classes really didn’t like me or the 2 others!!!
It paid off for me. I found better jobs with those accounting class experiences & less than 10 years later, went off a paycheck & became self-employed, doing books for small businesses that didn’t need a full time bookkeeper.
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