43% of all white students at Harvard are legacy, athletes, directly related to faculty, or have family that donated to the university. That number falls to 16% or lower for black, latino, and asian students.
75% of that aforementioned group of white students would not have been admitted had it been based on merit. 70 percent of all legacy applicants are white, compared with 40 percent of all applicants who do not fall under those categories.
Why does the average applicant need to be penalized when their grandparents legally could not attend these institutions? I think it's pretty obvious why people have such reactions to DEI when it's literally just "legacies for people who legally were barred from participating".
> Why does the average applicant need to be penalized when their grandparents legally could not attend these institutions? I think it's pretty obvious why people have such reactions to DEI when it's literally just "legacies for people who legally were barred from participating".
Averages are meaningless, only individuals matter. Suggesting that preference for legacies be removed is a fine topic on its own, but it's orthogonal to explicitly discriminating against individual applicants based upon the color of their skin.
Since you clearly feel strongly about this topic, I'll ask again. Why should the poor white kid with no legacy relationship get cast aside for some other non-legacy kid with a tan?
> Averages are meaningless, only individuals matter.
Exactly. We shouldn’t treat similarly situated people differently because of group averages. That’s the definition of racism.
It’s also irrational in practice. If you want to compare whose grandparents had it harder, Indians and Chinese are clearly entitled to the most affirmative action.
75% of that aforementioned group of white students would not have been admitted had it been based on merit. 70 percent of all legacy applicants are white, compared with 40 percent of all applicants who do not fall under those categories.
Why does the average applicant need to be penalized when their grandparents legally could not attend these institutions? I think it's pretty obvious why people have such reactions to DEI when it's literally just "legacies for people who legally were barred from participating".
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1060361