Education in America?

[Ryany]

I refuse to check the race section on forms as a way of protest for it mattering enough for it to have a section. People likely assume I'm Asian from my last name even though I'm not.

I'll also admit that it really bothered me when I watched multiple cousins that were less intelligent than me get a free ride through school for being poor (and they were Caucasian). Middle class people such as myself and my sister got loans for the full amount of school with interest.

Don't get me started on the fake-colleges that are appearing these days. They still charge as much as many major universities, aren't accredited so credits won't transfer, and I'm almost sure they really don't prepare you for anything other than learning what it is like to get robbed of your money. You can find their commercials on Maury Povich between the commercial aimed towards drivers that are illegally driving without insurance and the commercial with the ambulance chaser lawyer telling you to sue.

A telling example you can use on the old 1600-scale SAT is to calculate what score you would have gotten by only doing one section. A 700+ score in either section would put your score in the 900s even if you left the other section blank. Therefore, you can say how you would have outscored many people by only doing half the SAT.

[Woozie]

I'll gladly pay more for tuition if it means I get to be white! People don't cross the street to avoid me or clutch on to their belongings when I step into an elevator with them. Hell, some even give me a nod and a hello while making eye contact when I walk by them on the sidewalk. Being white is great.

Plus, college isn't a waste of money for you because you'll actually be able to get a job when you're done.

[Havok]

Did people really get scholarships for fucking 1300-1400 SAT scores? I had a 1440 with a 3.4 gpa (on the rediculously harder grading scale my county used to have) and didn't get jack shit.

I think it's as others have said. My parents have never been rich or anything, but we weren't doing badly either. That's where they get you. These days you're better off if your family is poor so you can get free school...retarded.

[Beckwin]

did you just not apply to any state schools? your GPA is kinda low but that SAT score should've gotten you a ride somewhere for just about free.

5 seconds of google:

The Presidential Scholarship is open to incoming freshmen at Virginia State University who have completed a college preparatory course of study with a minimum high school 3.2 GPA. You must have an SAT score of 1100 or an ACT score of 24 to eligible to receive this award. It is renewable for up to three additional years if you maintain a 3.0 GPA, participate in the University Honors program and maintain residence on campus.

I know nothing about Virginia State but you could've qualified for this scholarship.

Honestly, it seems that if you have a tests score that would get you into an upper-tier Ivy, and assuming your GPA isn't horrible and your application isn't terribad, you are pretty much guaranteed a scholarship to a state school.

Also, OP: affirmative action doesn't really apply to international students.

[Lucavi]

If you are the following:
1.) White
2.) Male

You have rich family members somewhere in your family line, and should hope that your parent didn't fuck themselves out of a hefty chunk of some of that old slave and oil money. You also have a much, much easier time with cops and with profiling in general. Enjoy!

Here, I fixed that for you. You can thank me later.

[Lucavi]

I'll gladly pay more for tuition if it means I get to be white! People don't cross the street to avoid me or clutch on to their belongings when I step into an elevator with them. Hell, some even give me a nod and a hello while making eye contact when I walk by them on the sidewalk. Being white is great.

Possibly a double post, but yeah, that'd have been nice growing up. Being a 10-year-old with your mom at the salad bar at the Giant and having old white ladies walk by clutching your purse, thinking you didn't notice them... yeah, annoying. Sometimes I wanted to sneer at them or something - give them a reason to legitimately fear me, since they were going to do it anyway.

[Talka]

In Tennessee, we have the Lottery Scholarship. If you graduate from high school with a 3.0 GPA, you get enough money to cover most of the cost of community college. A part-time job (or some low-interest loans) will cover the rest.

4-year universities cost about double that, and scholarships depend on the university you attend. My university makes it simple - rack up $12,000/year in scholarships and you're covered, room and board included. You can get $5,000 from the lottery and $5,000 from the school. The other $2,000 you either pay yourself, or you can get a loan, or apply for departmental scholarships.
Most kids from my school who keep their grades up have no more than $10,000 debt when they get out.

[Talka]

Did people really get scholarships for fucking 1300-1400 SAT scores? I had a 1440 with a 3.4 gpa (on the rediculously harder grading scale my county used to have) and didn't get jack shit.

I think it's as others have said. My parents have never been rich or anything, but we weren't doing badly either. That's where they get you. These days you're better off if your family is poor so you can get free school...retarded.

It really, really depends on the school. My university would give out $2-3,000 for the GPA, as long as your SAT score is the equivalent of about a 25 ACT. The state would also cough up about the same amount, since we have the lottery funding us.

UTK is another story. My sister went in with a 4.0 GPA, National Honor Society, 40+ service hours, a Tennessee Scholars certificate, and AP classes out the ass. She got $2,000 for UTK. My parents will have to fork over at least 14 grand a year, unless she manages to max out her lottery scholarship. Which would still leave us with a $40,000 bill for her degree. :/

[Sepukku]

Here, I fixed that for you. You can thank me later.

My ancestors (Polish) weren't here during the slavery period, did not participate in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade from Europe, and THERE IS NO OIL IN POLAND. There is just lots and lots of dead victims from the Nazis/Soviets.

Who cares about the cops? Don't do stupid shit to get questioned by them in the first place. If you're speeding, um duh, they're gonna pull you over. If you're thumping with your music, rolling on gangsta rims, OF COURSE THEYRE GONNA PULL YOU OVER. First of all, no one likes cocky people, everyone wants them to be knocked down a peg, and that sort of vehicle just OOZES arrogancy. Secondly, if you have that sort of sound system and/or rims in a low-average quality car in a poor neighboorhood, you're automatically suspiscious. You either are doing something crooked, or you make poor decisions, either of which leads one to believe criminal activity is present. There's lots of nice Escalade's and stuff in the rich part of the city here, but no one pulls them over CAUSE THEYRE IN THE RICH PART OF THE CITY. But when you see an otherwise shitty Cadillac car with shiny gigantic rims and a concert in the trunk roll by in a less-than-rich part of the town, um, red flag.

"Thats part of their culture." Yeah, whatever. People in Africa were rolling around with rims, totally! Hell, even MLK didn't even have rims and subs in mind when he dreamed. America is a MELTING POT. Not a "everyone else does their thing and I'm just gonna do my own thing." Cultures are supposed to assimilate and be absorbed into the populace, not try to be as different as possible and refuse to join the other 80% of the population in the mainstream. Same thing with my 2 recommendations for improving A.A. educational results, idolizing gun toting criminals like TI, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent for their rebelliousness and disdain for law enforcement is part of AA pop culture. Fine! Keep it that way! Just keep wondering why the community is always suspected of law breaking by the cops, why kids drop out of school more, and test scores all around are generally lower. Here's some culture: I know black people are really big about respect - but in the mainstream European community you gotta earn it. Its not given by default. If the AA community wants more respect, there should be a group-wide movement to eliminate and exile poorly behaving individuals and role models and focus on improving educational scores and their overall image in the American society as a whole. Prove to everyone they can kick their asses in the business sector just as much as they can in the sporting sector.

[Woozie]

Who cares about the cops? Don't do stupid shit to get questioned by them in the first place.

LOL

"Thats part of their culture." Yeah, whatever. People in Africa were rolling around with rims, totally! Hell, even MLK didn't even have rims and subs in mind when he dreamed. America is a MELTING POT. Not a "everyone else does their thing and I'm just gonna do my own thing." Cultures are supposed to assimilate and be absorbed into the populace, not try to be as different as possible and refuse to join the other 80% of the population in the mainstream. Same thing with my 2 recommendations for improving A.A. educational results, idolizing gun toting criminals like TI, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent for their rebelliousness and disdain for law enforcement is part of AA pop culture. Fine! Keep it that way! Just keep wondering why the community is always suspected of law breaking by the cops, why kids drop out of school more, and test scores all around are generally lower. Here's some culture: I know black people are really big about respect - but in the mainstream European community you gotta earn it. Its not given by default. If the AA community wants more respect, there should be a group-wide movement to eliminate and exile poorly behaving individuals and role models and focus on improving educational scores and their overall image in the American society as a whole. Prove to everyone they can kick their asses in the business sector just as much as they can in the sporting sector.

You know, you actually made some good points in an earlier post and I thought you somewhat understood black culture and the way things work, but clearly you don't.

First off, what we call "black culture" is actually "inner city ghetto culture". White people from the inner city ghettos act exactly like the stereotypical black person. There's a lot more I could say about how you seem to misunderstand the situation, but I wont bother. There's just way too much wrong with your last paragraph for me to bother going through every point.

And comparing inner city ghetto culture with the culture on a different hemisphere of the globe or with the culture half a century ago is just plain ridiculous. Though it's not surprise you did so since you apparently think culture is genetic or something.

I had actually typed up a response to your previous post, but I decided not to post it because it was so long, somewhat off topic, and like I said, I agreed mostly with your earlier post anyways so I felt there was no real need to post what I had typed.

I never actually closed the tab on my firefox, so my response is still up. I'm going to go ahead and post it anyways since I'm not longer sure if you and I are on the same track here:

Spoiler: show

I'm glad I'm not the only one suffering - although I'm not glad the injustice exists to begin with. I'm by no means a KKK member or some retarded shit, I just want things to be equal. Everything should be based on quantitative qualifications and merits and acolades. Being black isn't a merit. Its just what you are. It doesn't make you any smarter or dumber. There's smart black people and there's dumb white people. Black people are genetically just as capable intellectually as other races. And um... Hello, we have a black President. Black people really don't need the leg up anymore. They needed it in 1960, but its 2010 now. Are their poor black communities still? Yep. There's also poor white areas too.

Two biggest keys to black students catching up to white students:
--Black parents start taking more responsibility for their kids and make sure they don't idolize the wrong pop figures (*cough* everysinglerapperwithgunswhosingslikegettingshotan d/orarrestedissomethingtobragabout) or get in with the wrong crowd. Raise them with an appreciation for education, too.

--Black kids stop pressuring others into doing bad. If some black kid is doing really well in school and is showing off their smarts, they're "acting white." Fuck that, they're not acting white, they're just trying to succeed and the antagonizer should bust out a notepad and take some notes on them.

Black students are more than capable of getting SAT scores and GPAs that match asians, whites, etc (and consequently, then we can truly go by SAT/GPA/extracirricular activities). If they don't want to change their culture JUST A TINY BIT to make it even, we should stop giving the money to the kids with 1000 SATs and say "they woulda had such and such score" had they grown up in a richer school district.

Long Response:

Spoiler: show

While your first point (parents taking more responsibility) is certainly true, there's really nothing a black person can do about the fact that his or her parents were irresponsible. So a given young black person is not at fault at all for this particular disadvantage. But if this particular person gets an education, it is more likely that this person will be a more responsible parent. Since we can't do anything about the irresponsible parents, we can at least try to make sure the next generation of parents are more responsible.

I wholeheartedly agree with the parts about idolizing the wrong stars, hanging with the wrong crowd, and ESPECIALLY the part about teaching the value of an education and the part about blacks pressuring other blacks not to succeed. Mizango and I discuss this all the time, and I've had this discussion a lot with my older brother, my friends, and pretty much every other black person who's in college.

Every point you mentioned (even the part about the parents) pretty much sums up what "black people" hate most about "niggas" (to use Chris Rock's famous terminology). The part about the parents just happen to be 100% out of our control. It's decided at our birth and there's nothing we can do about it.

The reasoning behind these black scholarships is the fact that there is a large and obvious gap in education between blacks and whites. This can be perceived as an inequality that needs to be fixed. White people hate when this is brought up, but yes, this is partially related to how blacks were treated in the past. No, I'm not saying black people should blame all of their problems on their environment or on white people. Any black person in my generation has all the same opportunities I had. But it's undeniable that the reason a disproportionately large number of black people are born into disadvantaged situations is partially related to how we were treated in the past. Just as I hate it when black people blame their problems on what white people did in the past, I also hate it when white people act like what was done to us in the past has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with our situation right now.

Since we have what is perceived to be a large inequality, and it is partially related to what was unfairly done to us in the past, I can sort of see why people seem to have this "throw money at black students" mindset. I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm saying I can sort of understand their reasoning.

I'm a black guy who grew up in poverty in a bad neighborhood. My mother was a crack addict who did drugs even while pregnant. I ended up living with an abusive grandmother (still in poverty in a bad neighborhood). In addition, I have learning disabilities. So I was pretty much one of the most disadvantaged people you could think of (or at least as disadvantaged as an American can be). Yet, I managed to make it to college and I did make deans list four semesters in a row despite my learning disabilities/two jobs/family situations/etc. So yeah, I personally agree with you, Sepukku. I've seen personally that a disadvantaged person can rise above their situation and be successful, and end the cycle of poverty. I've seen how the bad decisions a person makes is what causes them to be poor (and hence their poor lifestyles are a matter of personal responsibility).

But some could argue that the best way to change these things is to increase the education level in black communities, which is why they give so many opportunities to them. So again, although I don't necessarily agree with them, I understand their reasoning. It's not exactly easy for a person coming from certain backgrounds and has never seen anyone in their life go to college and be successful to be the first one to break the cycle. It took an extremely dramatic event in my life for me to even consider doing anything other than hanging out with thugs/drug dealers and smoking weed/fighting all day. If that had never happened, I'd probably be in jail right now, with everyone else I used to hang out with. And if it wasn't for the extra opportunities and money given to me, it's a lot less likely that I'd be where I am now. So yes, the extra opportunities given to me certainly made a huge difference. But if I hadn't had these opportunities, then it although it would have been much harder to make it to where I am today, it would have still been possible and I'd still blame any failures on myself.

tl;dr: Your points are valid, but the extra opportunities given to blacks can make a difference for us (and poor whites get similar opportunities so it's not strictly racial). So I do understand why people try to help the black community by giving these opportunities, though I still personally feel that every black person born today is given ample opportunity to succeed even without the extra stuff, and hence the extra stuff is technically unnecessary, and there are better ways to fix what's wrong in the black community.

[Talka]

First off, what we call "black culture" is actually "inner city ghetto culture". White people from the inner city ghettos act exactly like the stereotypical black person. There's a lot more I could say about how you seem to misunderstand the situation, but I wont bother. There's just way too much wrong with your last paragraph for me to bother going through every point.

And comparing inner city ghetto culture with the culture on a different hemisphere of the globe or with the culture half a century ago is just plain ridiculous. Though it's not surprise you did so since you apparently think culture is genetic or something.

Actually, he's not that far from what I see every single day. There are a lot of black people on campus. A lot. And 90% of them are into the whole rap culture. I used to work at the Black Cultural Center, since I'm a minority myself, and all I EVER heard was "Why I gotta study anway?" and "Bitches gonna please me tonite!" I never heard anything good from any black person at that center.

On the other hand, the blacks on campus who hang out with anyone *except* blacks tend to be nicer, act more educated, and don't talk about dem biches suckin their cock.

The same applies for Hispanics.
Hispanics that bundle together = trouble.
Hispanics that hang out in various ethnic groups, including with whites = not trouble.

[Nightplague]

My ancestors (Polish) weren't here during the slavery period, did not participate in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade from Europe, and THERE IS NO OIL IN POLAND. There is just lots and lots of dead victims from the Nazis/Soviets. blah blah

The whole sins of our fathers concept is retarded, and now you're claiming you should be pitied because your ancestors weren't there? What the fuck does it matter? asdf!

ps: Poland is a pretend country anyway

[Lucavi]

My ancestors (Polish) weren't here during the slavery period, did not participate in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade from Europe, and THERE IS NO OIL IN POLAND. There is just lots and lots of dead victims from the Nazis/Soviets.

Who cares about the cops? Don't do stupid shit to get questioned by them in the first place. If you're speeding, um duh, they're gonna pull you over. If you're thumping with your music, rolling on gangsta rims, OF COURSE THEYRE GONNA PULL YOU OVER. First of all, no one likes cocky people, everyone wants them to be knocked down a peg, and that sort of vehicle just OOZES arrogancy. Secondly, if you have that sort of sound system and/or rims in a low-average quality car in a poor neighboorhood, you're automatically suspiscious. You either are doing something crooked, or you make poor decisions, either of which leads one to believe criminal activity is present. There's lots of nice Escalade's and stuff in the rich part of the city here, but no one pulls them over CAUSE THEYRE IN THE RICH PART OF THE CITY. But when you see an otherwise shitty Cadillac car with shiny gigantic rims and a concert in the trunk roll by in a less-than-rich part of the town, um, red flag.

"Thats part of their culture." Yeah, whatever. People in Africa were rolling around with rims, totally! Hell, even MLK didn't even have rims and subs in mind when he dreamed. America is a MELTING POT. Not a "everyone else does their thing and I'm just gonna do my own thing." Cultures are supposed to assimilate and be absorbed into the populace, not try to be as different as possible and refuse to join the other 80% of the population in the mainstream. Same thing with my 2 recommendations for improving A.A. educational results, idolizing gun toting criminals like TI, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent for their rebelliousness and disdain for law enforcement is part of AA pop culture. Fine! Keep it that way! Just keep wondering why the community is always suspected of law breaking by the cops, why kids drop out of school more, and test scores all around are generally lower. Here's some culture: I know black people are really big about respect - but in the mainstream European community you gotta earn it. Its not given by default. If the AA community wants more respect, there should be a group-wide movement to eliminate and exile poorly behaving individuals and role models and focus on improving educational scores and their overall image in the American society as a whole. Prove to everyone they can kick their asses in the business sector just as much as they can in the sporting sector.

Wow. Alright, so acting like an idiot is acting "black", yet acting "normal" is "acting white" in your eyes? Awesome. Intelligence and respect are now white-only qualities by default? Say no more.

Also, really? Don't do anything and cops won't mess with you? Okay. Cool. Awesome.

[Woozie]

Actually, he's not that far from what I see every single day. There are a lot of black people on campus. A lot. And 90% of them are into the whole rap culture. I used to work at the Black Cultural Center, since I'm a minority myself, and all I EVER heard was "Why I gotta study anway?" and "Bitches gonna please me tonite!" I never heard anything good from any black person at that center.

On the other hand, the blacks on campus who hang out with anyone *except* blacks tend to be nicer, act more educated, and don't talk about dem biches suckin their cock.

The same applies for Hispanics.
Hispanics that bundle together = trouble.
Hispanics that hang out in various ethnic groups, including with whites = not trouble.

While everything you say here is true, it doesn't go against the point I was making. The black people who act a certain way do so because they either grew up this way or because they got into rap music or something at some point and are trying to act like the people the idolize. My point was that they aren't doing this because of the fact that they are black. This is why there are some black people on campus who don't act this way (based on your post, 1 out of every 10 in your experience).

Sepakku compared our current black culture with MLK and africans, as if it's the genetics is what determines our culture. If you're on campus a lot, then I'm sure you know of some white people who act "black", and some black people who act "white".

The reason it seems that black people who hang around white people are nicer, as you put it, is because when a black person decides to do something good with his life, he will usually decide to hang around with people who are similar to him. Because there is a disproportionate amount of black people who happen to act according to the culture of rappers and inner city ghettos, then from a purely statistical standpoint, the black guy is likely going to befriend more whites than blacks.

I'm not disagreeing that black people tend to act in the ways of rap artists and such, I'm saying that sepakku's apparent view on the matter (the impression I get when he compares us to MLK and Africans) is flawed. We call it black culture not because there's some sort of cause and effect relationship between our skin color and this culture, but because, for a variety of reasons, it happens to be the cause that most people of this culture are black, and a pretty decent percentage of blacks happen to be of that culture.

Trust me, black people who are trying to do something with their life hate the wannabe thugs on college campus more than white people do lol.

Trust me when I say this, those same black people you see hanging with white people also love to hang around black people too. When I find another black person who's actually trying to do something good with their life, we automatically connect. We're usually happy that we happen to find another black person who doesn't think he's the next T.I.

[Woozie]

Also, I want to add that I really hate how certain types of actions are associated with acting "black" or acting "white", which is another reason I disagreed so strongly with Sepakku's post. Like I said, he seems to associate skin color with culture, instead of background and personal experiences with culture.

This is why I put "black" and "white" in quotation marks when I refer to the culture. I believe these to be misnomers. Any black person on these forums will tell you how annoying it is when black people accuse us of being less black or more white because of how we act.

Obligatory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glOv4MIyNSE

I was going to post the Chris Rock video, but I'd rather go with this one this time.

[Heavencloud]

The biggest problem I have with FA/scholarships that go specifically to poor people is how much money seems to be wasted on them. I'm not saying some make use of it - I'm sure they do - but I KNOW 3 people (all white btw) that I work with in my part time job that have received financial aid and fucking failed out of classes. I'm just astounded at how so many are given a chance and make the choice to refuse to try and waste the state's dollars on their seat in a class. I just look at them and think... You're going to be working here at this shit job the rest of your life :/

(One girl got $2000 in FA for CC and she failed out of English... why can't I get that money for my A?)

My parent aren't rich or poor but they don't do terribly... hence why I'm starting at a CC (not a bad way to go anyway though, my CC has a very high credit transfer rate). Middle class life is kinda sucky but I know it could be worse so I'm content somewhat.

[Zhais]

I could've gotten a full ride to my school, had a 28 or 29 on my ACT (can't remember anymore).

They didn't tell me this until my junior year....

[Woozie]

The biggest problem I have with FA/scholarships that go specifically to poor people is how much money seems to be wasted on them. I'm not saying some make use of it - I'm sure they do - but I KNOW 3 people (all white btw) that I work with in my part time job that have received financial aid and fucking failed out of classes. I'm just astounded at how so many are given a chance and make the choice to refuse to try and waste the state's dollars on their seat in a class. I just look at them and think... You're going to be working here at this shit job the rest of your life :/

(One girl got $2000 in FA for CC and she failed out of English... why can't I get that money for my A?)

I see a lot of people who go to college just to get the money and then drop out of school for no good reason. There should be some sort of process in place so that if you drop out without some good reason there's some sort of penalty. I mean, technically there already is (you can't go back to school until you pay back the money you received, unless you had a good reason, in which case you can file an appeal), but obviously that's not a strong enough incentive for someone who didn't care about school enough to keep going.

[Nightplague]

I see a lot of people who go to college just to get the money and then drop out of school for no good reason. There should be some sort of process in place so that if you drop out without some good reason there's some sort of penalty. I mean, technically there already is (you can't go back to school until you pay back the money you received, unless you had a good reason, in which case you can file an appeal), but obviously that's not a strong enough incentive for someone who didn't care about school enough to keep going.

Here you have to pay back the grants aswell if you take the money but don't go through with the programme. It's ok to fail the tests, obviously, but if you don't even get a grade they'll demand all money back and no support the upcoming semester.

[Lucavi]

I see a lot of people who go to college just to get the money and then drop out of school for no good reason. There should be some sort of process in place so that if you drop out without some good reason there's some sort of penalty. I mean, technically there already is (you can't go back to school until you pay back the money you received, unless you had a good reason, in which case you can file an appeal), but obviously that's not a strong enough incentive for someone who didn't care about school enough to keep going.

The cycle of karma generally makes up for that down the road though, as those people "typically" end up not making as much as those who stuck around in college.

Unless they are rich and white and get hook-ups into lucrative careers anyway, but that's supposed to be a glitch in the system, nothing more.