Berkeley and Harvard and Stanford oh my!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 2019

Top schools admit no one but white kids:
When the current "college admission scandal" broke, the New York Times swung into action, doing the one thing it knows.

The New York Times began working from script. In this circumstance, this meant that the New York Times began telling black kids that they were getting royally hosed and should feel deeply aggrieved.

In fact, very few students were affected, in any way, by the recent scandal. But this is the one thing the Times does well. Last Saturday, we showed you one of the more unfortunate passages produced in the Times' blizzard of misleading coverage.

"So disheartening," the headline says. This is the passage in question:
LEVIN, DE LEON AND ASSAN (3/16/19): At the University of California, Los Angeles—among the campuses ensnared in the shocking scheme—students like Ayesha Haleem said she and her classmates were both heartbroken and fuming.

“The higher education system has always benefited people who come from privileged backgrounds,” said Ms. Haleem, a Pakistani 23-year-old senior. “Students of color have it so much harder to even get to these places.”
At UCLA, the New York Times said, a heartbroken student was fuming. “Students of color have it so much harder to even get to these places," she was quoted saying.

By Sunday, the Times had refined its message. An essay in the Sunday Review seemed to say that admission procedures at these upper-end schools were designed to admit as few "students of color" as possible.

That essay principally dealt with Cornell. Yesterday, we showed you the current enrollment figures there—figures which are impossible to square with the Times' ugly, dim-witted propaganda.

Today, let's return to UCLA, the school which is so hard for students of color to get in to. Have they managed to keep the school all white? According to the NCES enrollment data, the answer would seem to be no:
Undergraduate enrollment, UCLA
White students: 27%
Black students: 3%
Hispanic/Latino students: 22%
Asian-American students: 28%
Two or more races: 5%
Race/ethnicity unknown: 2%

Foreign students: 12%
As we noted yesterday, the NCES data treat foreign students as a separate category, with no race or ethnicity recorded. At UCLA, that accounts for 12% percent of the undergraduate student body.

Among UCLA's undergraduate American kids, 27 percent were white; 53% were students of color, with an additional 5% listed as biracial. Compare that with the fuming quotation the Times had chosen to run.

It's hard to have sufficient contempt for a lazy, upper-class newspaper which functions the way the Times does—for a newspaper which aims to mislead its readers about elementary facts, then builds on that by filling good, decent American kids with waves of resentment and grievance.

In fairness, UCLA is a bit of a special case; California is different. These are the enrollment figures for Cal Berkeley, one of the nation's most elite state universities:
Undergraduate enrollment, Cal Berkeley
White students: 26%
Black students: 2%
Hispanic/Latino students: 15%
Asian-American students: 35%
Two or more races: 6%
Race/ethnicity unknown: 4%

Foreign students: 12%
It's true, of course, that black enrollment is quite low at both these upper-end schools. We'll be discussing that general topic all next week, when we focus on the latest front-page report by the Times about New York City's high-powered "specialized high schools."

That said, Berkeley currently enrolls 26% white students and 52% "students of color," with an additional 6% biracial kids. If current admission procedures are intended to keep enrollment by students of color as low as possible, the powers that be at Westwood and Berkeley are doing a rather poor job.

You don't, and you won't, see data like these in the New York Times. Tomorrow, we'll look at Harvard and Yale and Stanford and such—at elite private schools, where you'll see a higher black enrollment.

Deeply serious national issues are involved in the data we've shown you. The New York Times, working from script, continues to propagandize and misinform. It's behaving like the pseudo-liberal, upper-class clown car it has long been.

Are the most elite private schools trying to admit the fewest possible students of color? Tomorrow, we'll show you the data for a range of such schools, and we'll quote that pitiful New York Times essay again.

The Times has played it this way for decades. Rather clearly, this helps explain why Donald J. Trump is in power.

17 comments:

  1. "In this circumstance, this meant that the New York Times began telling black kids that they were getting royally hosed and should feel deeply aggrieved."

    ...and only the righteous D 'party' will help them.

    Yes, Bob, we know how 'liberal democracy' works.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Does Somerby care about black kids?

    At least he notes the extremely low numbers for black students at UCLA and Berkeley. (It’s not much better at Cornell).

    Those numbers are shockingly low. These numbers almost justify the “waves of resentment and grievance” that “good, decent American kids” of color might feel.

    Of course, the increase in diversity at college campuses has not been random. Colleges and universities have in general made a deliberate effort to diversify. We can see this by looking at the trend lines over the past few decades. Of course, this diversification has been accompanied by charges of unfair admission of unqualified students via “affirmative action”, starting famously with the Bakke case, and continuing through UT Austin (back in 2000), and the ongoing legal fight with Harvard by Asian students.

    Somerby is likely to argue that black students in general simply don’t meet the academic requirements, as in the case of NY’s specialized high schools, about which he has expressed waves of resentment and grievance that certain Asian students might be kicked out if deBlasio’s plan is implemented.

    But that sentiment, coupled with his NCES statistics, isn’t likely to allay the resentment and grievance felt by black kids, nor is it likely that these feelings would disappear if the Times told those kids how many non-black people of color get to go to our elite universities.

    That resentment and grievance comes from history and from lived experience, and it does not stem from liberal or pseudoliberal media narrative.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The state of California is only 5.9% Black. I don't know how you conclude that the numbers at the state schools are "extremely low."

      Delete
  3. The Bakke case btw was about age discrimination. Not "I should get in because I'm white."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @4:44,

      Where did you get the idea that the Bakke case was about age discrimination?

      The Age Discrimination in Employment Act makes it illegal to discriminate against people 40 and over in hiring. Bakke sued the University of California because his test scores were better than the 100 people admitted under a program that reserved slots for minorities.

      Bakke, who was 35 when he sued, cited Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin.

      He won.

      Delete
  4. "I made sure to tell them about legacy and development admissions...I wanted my students to know what they were up against." Crucet in the NYT, as quoted by Somerby yesterday.
    How Somerby can think he is refuting Crucet by showing these tables, which only show the race of accepted students is mind boggling. It's lazy, upper class thinking on Somerby's part.
    For the Ivy League as a whole, the number of students from the top 1% exceeds the number of students from the lowest 50% economically.
    For Crucet, this disparity is about race and class. Lord Somerby can't be bothered with class, not even when he quotes Crucet talking about class.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He's annoyed by liberal race-mongering - do you mind? Most people are.

      She didn't have to make it about the 'race', but she did. And so she's getting what she deserves, fair and square.

      Delete
  5. @2:57 wrote: "...that sentiment, coupled with his NCES statistics, isn’t likely to allay the resentment and grievance felt by black kids..." I am afraid @2:57 may be right, even though the truth is the exact opposite. It's easier for blacks to get into college, not harder. Meanwhile whites and Asians also feel a sense of grievance, with greater justification. Regardless of whose grievance is more justifiable, this feeling of grievance against other races is a dangerous, explosive situation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. David and Mao--Read Daniel Golden's "The Price of Admission". He backs you up regarding Asians, but as for whites, it's a lot more complicated. Low and moderate income whites are competing for surprisingly
      few seats. While standards are lowered for legacy and "development" candidates. Really, read his book.There's a nice anecdote about Al Gore right at the beginning, I promise.

      Delete
    2. It's not that complicated, Robert.

      Liberals employ ethnocentric inflammatory rhetoric (not to mention the full-blown xenophobic mccarthyist campaign recently) to agitate certain segments of the population and entice them to vote for the liberal party.

      Once in power, they serve global finance, facilitating free flow of capital and labor across the borders, against the interests of a vast majority of the US population.

      The nytimes is one of their tools. End of story.

      Delete
    3. So you're saying "both sides do it", Mao?
      -------
      Also, love that you think the NY Times is a liberal tool. Can you explain why, during the 2016 Presidential Election season, the NY Times pretended to care that Republicans were pretending to care that Hillary used a private email server during her work for the government?
      I'll be making popcorn, while I await your answer.

      Delete
    4. They wanted to pretend they were objective because they thought Hillary was going to win. Oops. Hillary's deleted emails were criminal, but she didn't lose a single vote because of them.

      Delete
    5. deleted emails were criminal? Bwahahaha!! She was instructed to delete emails that wouldn't be needed for records.

      Delete
  6. Mao, you're not really contradicting me. Neither are you contradicting Crucet. I'm not claiming that the liberal party will save everyone.
    On the other hand, as much as I think that class and wealth are the primary problem for college admissions, race is always in the mix in this country. More or less ,that's how I read Crucet's piece.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You have fallen for a con if you think David and Mao make serious comments. They are both here to prop up their meager egos - David enjoys indulging in racism and Mao is doing some kind of performance art.

      Delete
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