Is tolerance intolerant?

[bennyboy]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you, and the nonsense above..is the essence of the problem.

No, it isn't. The essence of the problem is that black kids don't do well on tests or in school, and therefore have a hard time getting into a quality post-secondary institution. It's not a problem that can be solved at the Harvard application point-- it has to start from the ground up.

But it's not just resources-- there's a psychology there. Take a poor Chinese family who's just immigrated. How long is it likely to be before they field a kid getting straight A scores. One generation? Maybe two? Do you think that teachers are trickily marking test answers wrong, but only for black students? Or giving excellently written essays an "F" just for kicks?

As I said before, the perception problem is universal-- WITHIN the black communities. How do you tell some kid who feels like a piece of shit, and whose school is falling apart, that he is a person of value? And if he doesn't feel like a person of valuable, how likely is he to act as though he is one?

Kids need an environment where they are taught, and actually made to believe, that they are as good as, or possibly even better than, white kids. And incentives need to be in place for excellent teachers, excellent students, and so on.

And herein lies the rub-- you can't conflate moral value with academic achievement. You can't, in a university entrance exam, say, "His test scores are very low, but he's been up against it-- go ahead and put him in medical school so we can have more black surgeons!" No. You have to put in place an environment where all people involved have a fair chance at REAL SUCCESS, not an "also participated" trophy. And then you reward success with goddamn ticker tape parades, money, praise, every possible way to establish that sense of worth.

That's the PC problem-- it's all based on fluff. You need substance-- some concrete methods that might actually make a real difference in people's lives. "Wahhhh it's racism, it's not faiiiirrrr" might feel good to say, but it does very little actually to turn failed communities into successful ones.