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Lord Valve
Poor Whites Need Not Apply
Patrick J. Buchanan writes:
A decade ago, activist Ron Unz conducted a study of
the ethnic and religious composition of the student
body at Harvard. Blacks and Hispanics, Unz found,
were then being admitted to his alma mater in numbers
approaching their share of the population. And who
were the most underrepresented Americans at Harvard?
White Christians and ethnic Catholics. Though two-
thirds of the U.S. population then, they had dropped
to one-fourth of the student body.
Comes now a more scientific study from Princeton
sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford
to confirm that a deep bias against the white
conservative and Christian young of America is
pervasive at America’s elite colleges and Ivy League
schools. The Espenshade-Radford study "draws from
the National Study of College Experience - gathered
from eight highly competitive private colleges and
universities (entering freshman SAT scores: 1360),"
writes Princeton Professor Russell K. Nieli, who has
summarized the findings:
Elite college admissions officers may prattle about
"diversity," but what they mean is the African-American
contingent on campus should be 5 percent to 7 percent,
with Hispanics about as numerous. However, "an estimated
40-50% of those categorized as black are Afro-Caribbean or
African immigrants, or the children of such immigrants,"
who never suffered segregation or Jim Crow. To achieve
even these percentages, however, the discrimination
against white and Asian applicants, because of the
color of their skin and where their ancestors came from,
is astonishing. As Nieli puts it, "Being Hispanic
conferred an admissions boost over being white -
equivalent to 130 SAT points (out of 1,600), while
being black rather than white conferred a 310-point
SAT advantage. Asians, however, suffered an admissions
penalty compared to whites equivalent to 140 SAT points."
"To have the same chance of gaining admission as a
black student with a SAT score of 1100, a Hispanic
student otherwise equally matched in background
characteristics would have to have 1230, a white
student a 1410, and an Asian student a 1550." Was
this what the civil rights revolution was all about -
requiring kids whose parents came from Korea, Japan
or Vietnam to get a perfect SAT score of 1600 to be
given equal consideration with a Jamaican or Kenyan
kid who got an 1150? Is this what it means to be an
Ivy League progressive? What are the historic and
moral arguments for discriminating in favor of kids
from Angola and Argentina over kids whose parents
came from Poland and Vietnam?
There is yet another form of bigotry prevalent among
our academic elite that is a throwback to the snobbery
of the WASPs of yesterday. While Ivy League recruiters
prefer working-class to middle-class black kids with
the same test scores, the reverse is true with white
kids. White kids from poor families who score as well
as white kids from wealthy families - think George W.
Bush - not only get no break, they seem to be the most
undesirable and unwanted of all students. Though elite
schools give points to applicants for extracurricular
activities, especially for leadership roles and honors,
writes Nieli, if you played a lead role in Future Farmers
of America, the 4-H Clubs or junior ROTC, leave it off
your resume or you may just be blackballed. "Excelling
in these activities is ‘associated with 60 or 65 percent
lower odds on admissions.’"
Writes Nieli, there seems an unwritten admissions rule
at America’s elite schools: "Poor Whites Need Not Apply."
For admissions officers at our top private and public
schools, diversity is "a code word" for particular
prejudices. For these schools are not interested in a
diversity that would include "born-again Christians from
the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural
and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S.
military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches,
Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, lower- and
middle-class Catholics, working class ‘white ethnics,’
social and political conservatives, wheelchair users,
married students, married students with children or
older students just starting into college and raising
children." "Students in these categories," writes Nieli,
"are often very rare at the most competitive colleges,
especially the Ivy League."
"Lower-class whites prove to be all-around losers" at
the elite schools. They are rarely accepted. Lower-class
Hispanics and blacks are eight to 10 times more likely
to get in with the same scores. That such bigotry is
pervasive in 2010 at institutions that preen about how
progressive they are is disgusting. That a GOP which
purports to represents Middle America, whose young are
bearing the brunt of this bigotry, has remained largely
silent is shameful. Many of these elite public and
private colleges and universities benefit from U.S.
tax dollars through student loans and direct grants.
The future flow of those tax dollars should be made
contingent on Harvard and Yale ending racial practices
that went out at Little Rock Central High in 1957.