Friday, February 15, 2008

White Gentile Males are now UNDER-represented in the academy

They have been edged out by women, Asians and Jews

Back in the early years of the last century, American Academia was dominated by white gentile males (hereafter, WGM's). Members of racial minorities were hardly to be found, either among the professors or among the students. Women were severely underrepresented, compared to their numbers in the population as a whole, and were excluded altogether from some of the most elite schools. Jews were subject to quotas that kept their numbers far below what they should have been, based on academic merit alone.

But by the 1970's, all that was just a memory. The anti-Jewish quotas fell in the 1960's. Standards for high school g.p.a.'s and test scores were relaxed for minority applicants, sometimes dramatically, in an attempt to achieve "parity" with their representation in the overall population. Though a few schools remained all-male, they hardly threatened women's academic opportunities: women were already well on the way to their present day relative over-representation in the undergraduate population.

Still, today, the perception remains that WGM's continue to enjoy an unfair advantage in the academic world and that affirmative action remains as necessary as ever to counterbalance that advantage. But is it true?

Let's look at one major facet of this issue - and the facet which, I think, has the most to tell us, not only about where we are now, but where we are headed in the future: undergraduate admissions. Even after all the civil rights gains of the last few decades, are WGM's still over-represented in the ranks of undergraduates at our most prestigious colleges and universities?

Coming up with the relevant numbers on this took me some doing, and the results are compromised by the fact that I had to rely on three different sources that are imperfectly coordinated. Still, I was able to come up with some rough and ready estimates - and I think they might surprise you.

First source: the National Center for Education Statistics breaks down student populations at individual schools by gender and by race/ethnicity. Second source: Hillel, the Jewish student organization, provides estimates of the numbers of Jewish students on most campuses. Third source: Wikipedia has general information on the demographics of the United States.

Using those sources, let's work through a particular example: my own alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley. According to the NCES, 32% of Berkeley's undergraduates are "White non-Hispanic" (rounding to the nearest percentage point). According to Hillel, about 10% of Berkeley's undergraduates are Jewish. So, defining "gentile" simply as "not jewish," about 22% of Berkeley's undergraduates are white gentiles. According to the NCES, again, Berkeley's undergraduates are 46% male. So the percentage of WGM's at Berkeley should be about 46% of 22% - i.e., about 10% (again, rounding to the nearest percentage point).

Unfortunately, there's a complication: 9% of Berkeley's undergraduates are listed by the NCES as "Race-ethnicity unknown." So this 10% has to be divided by .91 to get WGM's as a percentage of all students of known race/ethnicity. Result: 11%.

Finally, how does that compare to the representation of WGM's in the U.S. population as a whole? According to Wikipedia, the U.S. is now 74% white. Deducting 2% for the Jewish population, and multiplying by .5, WGM's would seem to make up about 36% of the U.S. population today. Dividing 11 by 36, one concludes that the representation of WGM's at Berkeley is about 31% of their representation in the U.S. population as a whole.

Compare that to the underrepresentation at Berkeley of non-Hispanic blacks, which has been the subject of so much controversy since Proposition 209 abolished affirmative action in California schools. According to the NCES, 3.5% of Berkeley undergraduates are black. According to Wikipedia, 12.4% of Americans are black. Dividing 3.5 by 12.4, one concludes that the representation of blacks at Berkeley is about 28% of their representation in the U.S. population as a whole.

So WGM's at Berkeley are represented at about 31% of parity, blacks at about 28%. Now isn't that interesting? Would you have expected that result?

Berkeley, of course, though especially interesting to me, is an exceptional case in all kinds of ways. So I used the same procedure to come up with figures for all of the top twenty schools in the latest U.S. News and World Report ranking - which, though far from perfect, will do well enough to be going on with. And here are the results (For each school, I first list the percentage of WGM undergraduates compared to all undergraduates of known race/ethnicity, and second their percentage of parity with WGM's in the U.S. population as a whole):

1. Princeton: 24%, 67%
2. Harvard: 15%, 42%
3. Yale: 16%, 44%
4. Stanford: 16%, 44%
5/6. Penn: 9%, 25%
5/6. Cal Tech: 29%, 81%
7. M.I.T.: 29%, 81%
8. Duke: 24%, 67%
9/10. Columbia: 12%, 33%
9/10. Chicago: 21%, 58%
11. Dartmouth: 25%, 69%
12/13. Washington U. of St Louis: 19%, 53%
12/13. Cornell: 18%, 50%
14/16. Brown: 14%, 39%
14/16. Northwestern: 18%, 50%
14/16. Johns Hopkins: 24%, 67%
17/18. Rice: 22%, 61%
17/18. Emory: 11%, 31%
19/20. Vanderbilt: 30%, 83%
19/20. Notre Dame: 22%, 61%

Summary: WGM's appear to be underrepresented, compared to the overall population, in all twenty schools. In seven of those schools, they are represented at less than half of parity. In ten out of the twenty (Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Penn, Duke, Columbia, Washington University of St. Louis, Brown, and Emory) they are even more underrepresented than blacks - who also remain underrepresented at all twenty schools. So, believe it or not, it would seem that, at America's top schools today, white gentile males are about as underrepresented as African Americans. Run the numbers yourself, if you doubt me.

Source






Retired Teacher Reveals He Was Illiterate Until Age 48

John Corcoran graduated from college and taught high school for 17 years without being able to read, write or spell. Corcoran's life of secrecy started at a young age. He said his teachers moved him up from grade to grade. Often placed in what he calls the "dumb row," the images of his tribulations in the classroom are still vividly clear. "I can remember when I was 8 years old saying my prayers at night saying, 'please, God, tomorrow when it's my turn to read please let me read.' You just pretend that you are invisible and when the teacher says, 'Johnnie read,' you just wait the teacher out because you know the teacher has to go away at some point," said Corcoran

Corcoran eventually started acting up to hide his illiteracy. From fifth through seventh grade he was expelled, suspended and spent most of his days at the principal's office. The former teacher said he came from a loving family that always supported him. "My parents came to school and it no longer was a problem for me reading because this boy Johnnie the -- native alien I call him -- he didn't have a reading problem as far as the teachers were concerned. He had an emotional problem. He had a psychological problem. He had a behavioral problem," said Corcoran.

Corcoran later attended Palo Verde High School in Blythe, Calif. He cheated his way through high school, receiving his diploma in June 1956. "When I was a child I was just sort of just moved along when I got to high school I wanted to participate in athletics. At that time in high school I went underground. I decided to behave myself and do what it took. I started cheating by turning in other peoples' paper, dated the valedictorian, and ran around with college prep kids," said Corcoran. "I couldn't read words but I could read the system and I could read people," adds Corcoran.

He stole tests and persuaded friends to complete his assignments. Corcoran earned an athletic scholarship to Texas Western College. He said his cheating intensified, claiming he cheated in every class. "I passed a bluebook out the window to a friend. I painstakingly copied four essay questions off the board in U.S. government class that was required, and hoped my friend would get it back to me with the right answers," Corcoran said.

In 1961, Corcoran graduated with a bachelor's degree in education, while still illiterate he contends. He then went on to become a teacher during a teacher shortage. "When I graduated from the university, the school district in El Paso, where I went to school, gave almost all the college education graduates a job," said Corcoran. For 17 years Corcoran taught high school for the Oceanside School District. Relying on teacher's assistants for help and oral lesson plans, he said he did a great job at teaching his students. "What I did was I created an oral and visual environment. There wasn't the written word in there. I always had two or three teacher's assistants in each class to do board work or read the bulletin," said Corcoran.

In retrospect, Corcoran said, his deceit took him a long time to accept. "As a teacher it really made me sick to think that I was a teacher who couldn't read. It is embarrassing for me, and it's embarrassing for this nation and it's embarrassing for schools that we're failing to teach our children how to read, write and spell!"

While still teaching, Corcoran dabbled in real estate. He was granted a leave of absence, eventually becoming a successful real estate developer. It wasn't until he was 48 years old that he gave reading and writing another chance. He drove to an inconspicuous office with a sign he couldn't read. He studied and worked with a tutor at the Literacy Center of Carlsbad. Assigned to a 65-year-old volunteer tutor, Eleanor Condit, he was able to read at a sixth-grade level within a year. "I'm just an optimistic hopeful person that believes in the impossible and miracles," said Corcoran. Carlsbad City Library literacy coordinator Carrie Scott said people of all walks of life go through the reading program, including teachers.

Corcoran is now an education advocate. "I believe that illiteracy in America is a form of child neglect and child abuse and the child is blamed and they carry the shame, if we just teach our people how to read we'd give them a fair chance," Corcoran said.

He has written two books, "The Teacher Who Couldn't Read" and "Bridge to Literacy." He is also the founder of the John Corcoran Foundation. The foundation is state-approved as a supplemental service provider for literacy in Colorado and California - providing tutoring programs for over 600 students in small group settings, and individually in homes through an online program.

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