[264] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Affirmative action
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kenneth Lu)
Sat Apr 28 00:13:29 2001
Mime-Version: 1.0
Message-Id: <a05010400b70ff1f36851@[18.251.1.56]>
In-Reply-To: <200104280253.WAA19568@Press-Your-Luck.mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 00:12:26 -0400
To: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
From: Kenneth Lu <kenlu@MIT.EDU>
Cc: "Victoria K. Anderson" <vkanders@MIT.EDU>, mit-talk@MIT.EDU
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
I'm not sure I'd support diversity at the price of rejections based
on race, but even assuming that diversity is what we want, I'd agree
with Chris's comment that diversity of thought in terms of cultural
background is what schools would want to shoot for. White immigrants
from an obscure European country, for instance, could very well bring
more to a school than local underrepresented minorities.
Now, I'm not sure I'd support that because enforcement of cultural
diversity bothers me because it's difficult not to associate it with
race... But one analogy would be something that happened in my high
school district, where racial quotas were removed after much debate,
and economically based bias was instituted instead, which to me makes
more sense, and has far less potential for abuse. In any case, my
point is that I don't think using race as a shortcut to get cultural
diversity or to make up for lost opportunities is worth the downsides.
-ToastyKen
-----------------------------------------------------------
| Kenneth Lu - kenlu@mit.edu - http://www.mit.edu/~kenlu/ |
-----------------------------------------------------------
| "Life is far too important to be taken seriously." |
| |
| -- Oscar Wilde |
-----------------------------------------------------------
