From: johnhall@microsoft.com (John Hall)
Subject: Re: "Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby"
Date: 14 Dec 92 01:06:09 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Distribution: usa

In article guillory@crhc.uiuc.edu (Stanford Guillory) writes:
| johnhall@microsoft.com (John Hall) writes:
| >with much higher scores. [Human Capitol Model studies].  As AA
| >is designed to admit people with lower scores than people who
| >otherwise would have been the lowest qualified people on campus
| >it would be quite suprising if there wasn't a substantial
| >statistical difference in course of study chosen between
| >AA admittances and the rest of the student body.  
| 
| Hello!?!? Are you as stupid as the above sentence tends to
| paint you as?!? AA has nothing to do with admitting people with
| lower scores than (others). AA has to do with making an effort to
| include minorities into your search process. 

Stan, this simply isn't true.  If that was all AA was I wouldn't have
a problem with it.  This might be what your programs at Intel
do and call themselves AA, but it isn't what programs at Berkley,
or for that matter Indian Medical schools WRT untouchables do.

You asked me to read Gertrude Ezorsky's book "Racial Justice: ...",
and I did so [BTW, you didn't fulfill your part of that bargain].
A large percentage of the book deals with an attack on merit
in general (why should only the best be hired?) and an exploration
of 'basically qualified' versus 'best'.

| BTW, I am STILL waiting for you to produce a list of white
| and asian students who were "qualified" and have not been
| able to attend college due to AA. 

Get a court order to look at the Berkley admission/rejection
records.  According to previously posted figures that list
would be about 500/yr denied admission to Berkley.  The claim
isn't that they couldn't attend college -- indeed the 500 AA
admittees could have attended college easily elsewhere.  The
claim is that they were denied admission based on race.

| Also, 
|    racism != racial discrimination

I'm sorry, Stan.  I don't agree.  I think that equation
is designed to make the world safe for racial discrimination.
Similar to people who claim only whites can be racist.

| 
| Since we
| >also know that blacks in general take a different statistical
| >mix of courses from other groups, your assertion is highly
| >questionable.
| 
| This statement, more than any other you have ever made has led me
| to wonder how you could ever have obtained a job at a company like
| microsoft. You have ignored SO MANY issues in making the above 
| statement that it is a wonder that ANYONE could POSSIBLY BELIEVE
| that you have any GRASP on SCIENCE at ALL.

Oh calm down.  You were specifically arguing for increasing the
percentage of minorities taking engineering a while back, which is
an implicit recognition that there are statistical variances
between ethnic groups over what courses of study people take.

How is your daughter doing?



-- 
-------------------------
My comments are my own.  They are independent and unrelated to the
views of my company , relatives or elected representatives.

Xref: sparky misc.education:5334 alt.discrimination:5350 soc.culture.african.american:12976 soc.women:21545