Selective Diversity
In reading a superb Substack article about one person's refusal to use his black heritage as a crutch for college and career, and how he's better for it, I found an interesting nugget.
At that time [early 1990s], the percentage of all blacks on college campuses who were from lower economic backgrounds had fallen to the single digits. These students had been replaced by middle- to upper-class blacks, Africans, Caribbeans, and multiracials like me.
Curious to see where things stand today, I did a quick search, and learned that the bulk of Harvard's students come from top-20% income families, while only 4.5% come from bottom-20%.
Leftists cry rivers of (crocodile) tears at the poor state of inner city and low-income public education, demanding ever more money for a system that has already tripled per-student spending without a whit of improvement to show for it. They rail against changes to the system they built and protected for over half a century, screaming bloody murder about charter schools and other forms of choice that empower parents to better help their kids, insisting against fact and evidence that charters cherry-pick and do harm to the "left behind."
They don't and they don't. In NYC, charter admission is by lottery, and in NYC, charters spend half per student than the traditional schools. Do the math - $18K vs $36K. Not only are they more efficient, every student that goes charter means more money for the students in the traditional schools. But, charters represent an existential threat to the union-powered status quo, so to hell with the kids, gotta protect the unionized teachers.
So, in order to pretend to remedy their own failures, the Best-and-Brightest purport to giving a leg up to the (mostly minority) kids that are underserved at the primary and secondary levels. Aside from the inconvenient fact that education is cumulative, and that a kid underprepared for an elite school is more apt to find success and self-esteem at a mid-level college than by struggling or flunking out because of the harder curriculum.
That underprepared problem is "solved" while still maintaining the veneer of diversity by picking minority kids from wealthier families, who are more apt to have the level of preparation needed to handle Ivy rigor.
This makes affirmative action a sham.
Sure, the Best-and-Brightest tell us that having black or brown skin is such a differentiator in life that even rich minority kids bring so much diversity into their campuses that discriminating in their favor is warranted. No matter that a project kid - or a poor kid of any skin color from Appalachia or the Bayou or the Ozarks - would have a far more different life experience to share with the student body.
This perpetuates the permanent underclass that the Left has created with its misguided and destructive "assistance." In the middle of the 20th century, blacks had greater upward economic mobility than whites, and blacks had a higher percentage of married households than whites. Along came the Great Society, which underwrote out-of-wedlock childbearing and thus removed the social pressures for men to marry their baby mamas and for women to be more circumspect in birthing while single. Top that off with a bunch of intelligentsia folderol from the Best-and-Brightest about how two parent households were an antiquated notion and the concept "nuclear family" was destroyed. No matter that the evidence is clear that having two parents in the house is far and away one of the biggest indicators of life-success.
Because arrogance, conceit, cognitive dissonance, et cetera, our Best-and-Brightest continue to refuse to admit that they've harmed the poor more than they've helped, they continue to fight against the reversal of their bad policies, and they continue to resist changes that we already know work. So, instead, we get the sham diversity of ensuring the rich kids who go to the Ivies have a greater spectrum of skin color, and the poor kids who must endure rubbish ElHi education get nothing but lip service.
Since race essentialism ignores the individual, it tells those poor minority kids "be happy that the richer minority kids are getting into the Ivies. Their success makes your lives better."
Hot garbage.
Throughout history, the Best-and-Brightest have bestowed their largesse upon the unwashed masses, out of a sense of noblesse oblige, but kept themselves to themselves. This hasn't changed, and while women and minorities are now part of those ranks, they still don't have much interest in commingling with the hoi polloi.
In other words, diversity of life experience doesn't count for much in the eyes of the Ivies. That they are now asking for essays about that form of diversity from their students is, I figure, just a way to dodge the 2023 SCOTUS case Students For Fair Admissions, Inc. V. President And Fellows Of Harvard College that severely limited race-based affirmative action.
I'd be surprised - shocked, even - if Harvard's enrollment of low-income students suddenly spiked. We all know that they 'know better' and that no bunch of unwashed right-winger Justices should dare tell them what to do.
And so, the permanent underclass will continue.
Until that underclass finally realizes the harm it has endured and changes its voting patterns.