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While most African Americans are descendants of slaves, most successful Blacks are actually recent immigrants. For example, the father of President Obama was from Africa. Recent immigrants from Africa are roughly as successful as recent immigrants from Asia.
Affirmative Action doesn't help traditional African American communities. Disadvantaged kids from all races are still excluded from elite schools. Harvard wants more Blacks, but only the privileged Blacks.
While most African Americans are descendants of slaves, most successful Blacks are actually recent immigrants. For example, the father of President Obama was from Africa. Recent immigrants from Africa are roughly as successful as recent immigrants from Asia.
Affirmative Action doesn't help traditional African American communities. Disadvantaged kids from all races are still excluded from elite schools. Harvard wants more Blacks, but only the privileged Blacks.
Maybe they will rename Harvard to be "Harvardistan"?
While most African Americans are descendants of slaves, most successful Blacks are actually recent immigrants. For example, the father of President Obama was from Africa. Recent immigrants from Africa are roughly as successful as recent immigrants from Asia.
Affirmative Action doesn't help traditional African American communities. Disadvantaged kids from all races are still excluded from elite schools. Harvard wants more Blacks, but only the privileged Blacks.
You bring out the inconvenient facts about Affirmative Action that we're not supposed to notice. Academia at the elite level doesn't care about poor inner city black kids who can't pay their way, but they do want to give the appearance of caring by having lots of black kids enroll.
A black and very accomplished friend of mine from Martinique sent his son to Harvard & then Harvard Law, and he didn't need financial aid to do it. A win-win for Harvard achieving its AA goals. The large suburban high school I went to in an upper middle class community was 99% white, and we had one kid go to Harvard. He was black.
I think Affirmative Action should be based on economic factors rather than race. The wealthy black kids that live in my daughter's upscale neighborhood don't need extra help. Poor kids of all races in Appalachia, in our inner cities, and in decaying mill towns do.
While most African Americans are descendants of slaves, most successful Blacks are actually recent immigrants. For example, the father of President Obama was from Africa. Recent immigrants from Africa are roughly as successful as recent immigrants from Asia.
That was my experience too when I was a tutor. The black kids who were recent immigrants from Africa, the Middle East or even Asia were on fire with their achievement. My guess is they had to have high-skilled parents in order to even complete legal immigration to the US, and as we know the parents' values really drive what the kids get. Obviously in my case, they had to have the $$ to have a tutor in the first place. One of my buddies is a teacher in the Bronx and he said his African students don't even hang out with the native black kids because the values are so different. Just anecdotes here so IDK if it's true everywhere but I def saw what you're describing.
While most African Americans are descendants of slaves, most successful Blacks are actually recent immigrants. For example, the father of President Obama was from Africa. Recent immigrants from Africa are roughly as successful as recent immigrants from Asia.
Affirmative Action doesn't help traditional African American communities. Disadvantaged kids from all races are still excluded from elite schools. Harvard wants more Blacks, but only the privileged Blacks.
Perhaps, but doesn't this also pretty much prove the point that Affirmative Action was trying to address? That under privilege people have less opportunity, and that despite what racist right-wing fanatics say, that all blacks are not just lazy.
It highlights two things:
1. (your point) that A.Action is not working in it's current state, and
2. Privileged people still get a pass, and the cards are stacked against those who are not in the loop.
WIth this new info, what can we do to support our Declaration of Independence, and promote all people being created equal, all with equal opportunity?
My mother recently passed and something that I had always noticed slightly really became noticeable talking with a couple of relatives. Her parents were basically immigrants- my grandfather an immigrant and my grandmother the daughter of an immigrant living in a majority Italian area of Boston- and all the siblings were decidedly working class. Every one of the children went on to do well. My mother was the only one with a college education but she always joked a couple of the others did better financially. I think we often discount the immigrant experience and how fiercely most immigrants focus on seeing their children succeed whether that be a trade, military, blue collar or the more accepted academics to professional career path. MY mom liked to call it an immigrant work ethic.
To me that was the real theft from the black and Native American communities. So many were dropped into a foreign place, exploited and literally barred from moving ahead. By the time Freedom or 'equality' came along many had been locked in long term cycles of poverty, under education and locked out of avenues for advancement by segregation.
The most successful AAs I can think of with a more typical background would be Condoleeza Rice and Robert Johnson. Her parents were very well educated for their day and he went to one of the Ivy League schools so both were moving ahead from young ages. I discount Oprah because she was a phenomenon and you cannot replicate her rise/career. As OP pointed out Obama, Colin Powell and many others were actually immigrants from either Africa or the various island nations in the Caribbean. I've seen a statistic that something like 45-50% of recent African immigrants hold college degrees. That's pretty staggering when you consider only a low 30 something percent of US citizens have earned degrees. It pretty much highlights that this is not a racial but a cultural issue.
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