I’ve been a lot more blogging about political topics lately especially because of some ugly racial politics over the last couple of days.  I came across this little tidbit of an article about admissions practices at elite schools.  I’ve excerpted the most relevant part:

Translating the advantages into SAT scores, study author Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist, calculated that African-Americans who achieved 1150 scores on the two original SAT tests had the same chances of getting accepted to top private colleges in 1997 as whites who scored 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s.

Granted my first emotion was to react in disgust, but setting my personal feelings aside and wondering about the greater good, I ask myself is this a good or a bad thing for society on the whole?   Extrapolating the results of this study, it says that if we were end racial considerations today, our high-end, elite educational institutions would consist almost entirely of rich Asian and white students.

Of course we want the best of the best, but is homogeny really worth the price?  On an individual level, I’m sure I would be furious if I were rejected for a less qualified candidate, but policy molds society.  We do have some part in deciding what kind of society we want to live in.  Schools most assuredly have a huge role in that process.

I have heard off hand before, “Oh, it’s because he’s Asian” or “You’re Asian; you must be good at math.” In some respects, I am proud.  My mom instilled in me a great need to continually improve my education.  Of course, this was usually under the threat of getting grounded or spanked if I brought home less than an  “A”.  At the same time, it has worked in my favor as well as against.  Asian Americans are not well known (outside of classical music) of being heavily involved in the creative arts, and I’m sure somewhere along the way someone noticed my last name in undergraduate (BFA), at some job and perhaps others other facets of life.

I can testify that being around people from many cultures has improved my education in so many ways.  It’s changed my world view and my approach to people and problem solving.  The problem with diversity is that it is hard to quantify without resorting to quotas and percentages.