Ruling Class, Ruling Culture
Ross's latest column has raised a stink on the left, arguing for what Ross calls (in a subsequent blog post) "a kind of soft affirmative action on elite campuses for the sort of Americans — Southern and Midwestern, blue-collar and rural — who are much more likely than the current population of the Ivy League to be conservative white Christians." College admissions, Ross argues, systematically select against ROTC and 4-H kids -- "candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or 'Red America.'"
Monica Potts unleashes a long, empirical attack on this position, arguing, as you'd expect, that whites, including poorer or more rural ones, are by definition more privileged than blacks. Alas, all her data supports the wrong argument -- for Monica gets Ross's own argument dead wrong. She can only see a pasty pundit wringing his hands over "the plight of poor, white Christians from red states who suffer disproportionately [...] from elite-college admissions policies that favor lower-income black and Hispanic students over them." But Ross's column doesn't at all care about white suffering. He cares about the way our ruling class uses college to create our ruling culture.
I'd like to jump off from this, the real point we really ought to be spending our time arguing over. But I'd like even more to see where you all -- or should I say y'all -- go with it first.
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Jun '10
Re: Ruling Class, Ruling Culture
The Left has always said, an equally important reason for affirmative action (apart from career opportunities for individual minority members) is to expose the university community to diverse cultures and opinions. These days, in elite universities, what's the conspicuously absent culture and opinion? Conservative Bible-belt Christians. They're about as foreign, stereotyped, and misunderstood as New Guinea's headhunting tribes.
Jul '10
Re: Ruling Class, Ruling Culture
What if the ivy league colleges offer a fourth rate education, and its present graduates are sliding along on the coat tail of 2-generation-ago excellence? I mean, for example, Obama: his speech in Cairo was laced with historic mistakes, none of which were discussed by the ivy league educated major media. Also, the present 'elites', educated at these expensive high status ivy league colleges, have been exceedingly willing to believe all that guff about Global Warming. That is the real problem: the present elites, as a class, are parochial, badly educated, greed-ridden, and silly. The people running NYC (ruling class types if you ever saw one), for example, truly believe that if the proposed Ground Zero Mosque is allowed, then the muslims will know they are accepted and loved and so they won't do stuff like 9/11 again. Honestly.
May '10
Re: Ruling Class, Ruling Culture
There's no chance colleges will reach out to poor, rural, white Christians. In their view, they already have enough white students. The elite colleges will only lower their entrance requirements for rich donors, athletes, and underrepresented minorities. Opening up more doofus spots for poor white boys would make as much sense to them as fighting off a bear with a celery stalk.
Remember, the people who run colleges can reduce western culture to Whiteness Studies. To them, there are two types of white people: the enlightened (themselves) and white people.
May '10
Re: Ruling Class, Ruling Culture
Monica uses her personal example of geographical admissions bias as a counter to the claim that poor white Christians aren't preferred. But it isn't as if only a few people from every state apply; there's still a big enough pool of applicants to be able to hand select who you want to admit. I'm from a populationally small red state, who until recently had both U.S. senators from the Democratic Party, and knew several people that applied to Ivy League schools. Even the Great State of Wyoming voted 30+% for Obama. If you have ten kids apply for two slots, you can still get your quota without having a representative sample, and if it requires taking in a few kids below the median it won't make enough of a difference to affect admissions stats. She seems to think this supposed preference balances any negative of being an ROTC officer. But geographic preference is a generalized preference; ROTC is individualized, and no-one else will see it.
But this is a side point. You're right - the main issue is the Charles Murray's top 10% for whom power is disproportionately held.
Jul '10
Re: Ruling Class, Ruling Culture
Really, I have always believed that a university education was about "education". The excellence of that education (in fact) depends mostly upon the quality of professors one meets (and there are very few of them anywhere.) The hard reality is that most of one's academic education is based on a life long interest in a particular subject, and a willingness to pursue that knowledge with an inquiring mind. University is just a beginning, or even, irrelevant. Example: Eric Hoffer.
The issue of admission into an 'ivy league' university is NOT about educational excellence, but about contacts and status, which promise to carry the graduate into a well-paid, high status job. That is why the 'great' universities can charge all that money.
Apparently, Harvard has decided to forego mandatory final exams. Is this true?? If so, it is splendid to see that Harvard is being honest about its actual market brand!
May '10
Re: Ruling Class, Ruling Culture
Though I am a pasty Christian from the Midwest, I didn't apply to any Ivy-League schools so I have little firsthand experience. I feel like Douthat made a good point and then sort of ruined it by agreeing with the "soft affirmative action" characterization. He should have stuck to his main point, that admissions officers should consider factors other than race (which is easier said than done, given that the government guarantees that racial minorities yield increased income) in attempting to select diverse students.
Affirmative action is a bad idea, so advocating a new flavor of affirmative action seems unwise.
At any rate, let's use this as an excuse to quote Ben Folds:
"Ya'll don't know what it's like, being male, middle-class and white..."
Jun '10
Re: Ruling Class, Ruling Culture
What hasn't been mentioned is that DoD has reduced ROTC scholarship money by 50% for FY10, and will probably keep it at that level for FY11. What incentive do universities have to accept ROTC programs and the values that accompany those inclined to military service, when the dollars are no longer there to bribe them?
Jul '10
Re: Ruling Class, Ruling Culture
One contracted word: d'uh!
Why on earth would the academic elites invite in people whom they view as the antithesis of intellectual enlightenment? The "liberal" solution to things like this would be to force the bastards to accept more rural pale Christians. The "conservative" approach would be to create competing institutions that abjure such counterproductive thinking. I vote for the latter.