The quote from the Labour MP is absolutely correct. Doubly so when whites are told that they're always "acting to preserve their own power and privilege", even when they're not, and they've been raised to despise the behavior they feel criticized for doing. This leads to the mindset of "well, if I'm a racist either way, I'd rather be one who actually DOES look out for my own self-interest."
It's a classic Prisoner's Dilemma [0]. I feel this dilemma quite deeply myself. I vastly prefer a society that treats people as individuals, while still condemning racism and teaching its role in our history, but if every other group acts selfishly and I still get called a racist either way, then at the very least I won't be a sucker too.
Lately this manifests in access to education. Consider this excerpt from a Washington Post report on admissions changes at Thomas Jefferson, the nation's #1 high school:
>Eleven percent of this year’s offers will go to Hispanic students, and 7 percent will go to Black students — both representing significant increases. 22 percent of this year’s offers are going to White students — a number that is largely consistent with the past four years, when White students accounted for between 17 and 22 percent of offers extended. Fifty-four percent of offers are going to Asian students, a marked decrease. In previous years, Asian students have accounted for between 65 and 75 percent of all offers.
>The county at large was 60 percent White, 10 percent Black, 20 percent Asian and 17 percent Hispanic in 2020, according to Fairfax government data.
>Still, the sharp decline in Asian representation is sure to stoke controversy in the Fairfax school system, a Northern Virginia district of 180,000 located just outside D.C.
Tensions stoked by "a decline in Asian representation"? What about the white parents, whose children make up 60% of the county but just 22% of TJ students? White students are now the most underrepresented race in TJ admissions, by a lot. The possibility that they might object to this status isn't even considered. In this case, every other big racial group is now openly fighting for their own self-interest, in the courts and the bureacracy, except for whites. How long do we expect this to last?
The solution is to preserve and rebuild trust between people of different racial and ethnic groups, including white people. I don't know how best to do this, exactly, but laws like the one proposed in Canada are probably on the wrong track.
> The possibility that they might object to this status isn't even considered.
Presumably because, as you quoted:
> 22 percent of this year’s offers are going to White students — a number that is largely consistent with the past four years
The author for this article has concluded that something changing is more likely to stoke controversy than something remaining more or less the same as it has been for a while.
Are you a TJ grad? It has been wild to see so many people form incredibly strong opinions about the school but have no actual connection to it.
The new policy is race blind. It has further improved access for economically disadvantaged students and students with other special needs. That is precisely the sort of result that class absolutist leftists would hope for.
Further, the merit lottery proposal that activists wanted (which was rejected by the school board and decried by critics as racist) would have produced a more representative student body for all races, including white people because it was a lottery system. The thing you are concerned about isn’t a concern.
The conservative white racists already lost at TJ because their normal arguments of “meritocracy” failed them, so they aren’t an especially important political player on the topic.
I live in DC and read local news. The TJ article was featured in last week's WaPo Metro section. I have a personal interest in the school's academic quality and admissions policy.
>The new policy is race blind.
The old admissions policy was race-blind.
>It has further improved access for economically disadvantaged students and students with other special needs
It has removed standardized literacy and numeracy testing. The test has been replaced with a 7th grade GPA requirement, and opaque "holistic review" which lets county officials paint whatever demographics picture they want. The holistic review is a fig leaf over what many parents suspect to be de facto racial quotas, which are expressly illegal. One group of parents is suing over this: https://pacificlegal.org/case/coalition_for_tj/
What the new process does NOT do is address the root causes which led to low black and Hispanic admissions with the old system, i.e. underperformance on standardized numeracy and literacy tests. A true "class absolutist leftist", which I am not, would address those problems at the root instead of fudging TJ admissions numbers to obscure the issue. Now it looks like the county is preparing more diverse students for success at TJ, which it isn't, because the old race-blind system showed that it wasn't. We've put a thin coat of paint over a bunch of subpar middle schools and support systems.
Under the new policy, TJ will admit more students who are not equipped to succeed in such a rigorous academic environment. In response, either the students or academic standards will suffer. Underequipped students admitted under the new system replace others who in all likelihood would've been better prepared to succeed. This is the problem of affirmative action "mismatch," about which much has already been said: https://harvardpolitics.com/matters-mismatch-debate-affirmat...
>The conservative white racists already lost at TJ because their normal arguments of “meritocracy” failed them, so they aren’t an especially important political player on the topic.
The new process is not perfect and will not address all problems with biased racial outcomes in FCPS education. Many of the activists who support changing the admissions system actually support eliminating TJ entirely and rethinking how access to accelerated education works. Why is there a limit to the number of students who can get these experiences?
However, as somebody who has personal experience working with this for the accelerated programs starting in 3rd grade, it is precisely the same people who complain about policies trying to address inequities earlier in education. This makes the argument that the changing TJ admission policies won't address root issues seem very disingenuous.
If you want to help change inequities in early accelerated education, then there are places where you can help. Since you are local, I'm sure people would love to have you!
I went to TJ. The testing culture there was amazingly toxic and a huge portion of my alumni friends consider our experiences there to be actually traumatic. Not the actual learning, but the testing culture. It has also gotten worse over time, and despite continued high rankings it has become more difficult for graduates to be accepted into top universities. This is true even for institutions like CalTech that famously focus on "traditional" application processes. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the TJ test.
I was one of the students whose parents paid many thousands of dollars for test prep, which was structured in the "testing strategies" manner rather than actually teaching any sort of academic material.
I do not believe that the TJ test was actually a proxy for merit and I do not believe that the incoming class will be ill equipped to succeed at an accelerated program.
It's a classic Prisoner's Dilemma [0]. I feel this dilemma quite deeply myself. I vastly prefer a society that treats people as individuals, while still condemning racism and teaching its role in our history, but if every other group acts selfishly and I still get called a racist either way, then at the very least I won't be a sucker too.
Lately this manifests in access to education. Consider this excerpt from a Washington Post report on admissions changes at Thomas Jefferson, the nation's #1 high school:
>Eleven percent of this year’s offers will go to Hispanic students, and 7 percent will go to Black students — both representing significant increases. 22 percent of this year’s offers are going to White students — a number that is largely consistent with the past four years, when White students accounted for between 17 and 22 percent of offers extended. Fifty-four percent of offers are going to Asian students, a marked decrease. In previous years, Asian students have accounted for between 65 and 75 percent of all offers.
>The county at large was 60 percent White, 10 percent Black, 20 percent Asian and 17 percent Hispanic in 2020, according to Fairfax government data.
>Still, the sharp decline in Asian representation is sure to stoke controversy in the Fairfax school system, a Northern Virginia district of 180,000 located just outside D.C.
Tensions stoked by "a decline in Asian representation"? What about the white parents, whose children make up 60% of the county but just 22% of TJ students? White students are now the most underrepresented race in TJ admissions, by a lot. The possibility that they might object to this status isn't even considered. In this case, every other big racial group is now openly fighting for their own self-interest, in the courts and the bureacracy, except for whites. How long do we expect this to last?
The solution is to preserve and rebuild trust between people of different racial and ethnic groups, including white people. I don't know how best to do this, exactly, but laws like the one proposed in Canada are probably on the wrong track.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/after-admissions-changes-t...