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Bump.

I was involved in the debates over the creation of affirmative action programs at the University of California in the early 1970's. We lost, but many of us took a view similar to this article: supporting aggressive outreach to identify disadvantaged (then mostly) black and hispanic kids with talent and potential. Work to help them in the schools, and even give them full support at the really good community colleges, including tutoring, etc., until they had made up all remedial work and were ready to do university level work without any special support. Then, and only then, bring them up to the University of California campuses as sophomores or juniors on scholarship (predicated on maintaining a B average (this was pre-grade inflation) just like all the other scholarships). We thought this was better for the kids being helped, because it focused on the truly needy and didn't create a victim mentality, and better for the university because it maintained academic standards and the value of the degree for all students, including the minority students.

Last Monday, I had to debate Affirmative Action in a business ethics class (I took the con side). The research I had to do was enlightening to say the least. I never knew that Harvard did what they did:

Because too many Affirmative Action students were dropping out of Harvard Law School, the school implemented a “minority grading system” where all minority students’ tests were sent to a central location to be graded on a different scale than other students [8]. This is an insult to minorities in general, and specifically to those that qualified by earning their way into the college. It lumps all minorities into a stigmatized, less-capable group and casts aspersions on the abilities of even the outstanding students.

My argument was that if they insisted on Affirmative Action, it should be based on socio-economics, rather than race/sex/planet of origin.

The root problem is that most impoverished people have their sense of future possibilities crushed out of them at a young age

Ending all the many welfare programs would be a better idea. When you grow up never seeing anyone have to go off to work, you don't learn the importance of studying hard. When you're placed into a Head Start program when you're only 3, you're exposed to many other children of non-working non-productive people. I've seen kids from poor working families succeed on their own without lowered standards.