Elinda wrote:
The results of this study just released are sort of relevant to the is conversation. It claims that minority students are punished more harshly than white students.
The article you linked to says that. The statistics they quoted from the study only say that minority students are punished
more often than white students. It's pretty speculative to assume this means that the same exact behavior at the same school results in greater punishment because someone is a minority.
Quote:
I suppose you could say we over-punish minority students while in HS, then we turn around and over-reward them (via AA) as they leave HS (if they've not already quit or been expelled).
Or... People release studies which almost no one will read, which are then reported on by people who will be read far more widely in such a way as to suggest that this is the case.
No one's disputing that there are socio-economic factors which result in black and latinos being subject to disciplinary actions more often (and more harshly) than other groups. The results in that study should not surprise anyone who's looked at prison statistics. It's the same thing, right?
The question is about what we do about it. And I don't think that AA helps at all. I think it treats the wrong problem, in the wrong way, and allows the real problem to go by unaddressed. So each generation that gap in "real" outcome grows, but instead of doing anything about it, we comfort ourselves that we're offsetting that with some bonuses on the back end. And while I'm sure AA helps out the middle class black folks just fine, I don't think it's doing a whole hell of a lot at all for those who are really suffering.
