Thread by @michaelharriot

They recruit the top Asian, Black and a brown students, whose work subsidizes the academic reputation fir the rest of the mediocre, rich white students.

This is not an opinion. The data shows it.

Why the idea of an Ivy League or a collegiate meritocracy is a scam

A thread.

https://twitter.com/Russian_Starr/status/1396190131443441665

First, I’ll admit that the notion of the supposed “academic meritocracy” is one of my favorite subjects.

But we have to agree on some things before we can even walk into this discussion.

1. Harvard & Princeton don’t have a secret kind of math or biology that they teach students.

2. The most prestigious institutions are the ones with the most money. Universities are just businesses whose product is students.

3. So an institution’s “profit” isn’t measured by making the smartest or most well-equipped student, it’s producing the RICHEST students, because rich alumni fund endowments.

Look at the richest schools. It’s the oldest, whitest institutions and a couple of places in Texas. Why?

Oil Money. That’s it.

Thats why the best schools are the schools with the richest alumni.

Here are the 2021 rankings:

1. Princeton
2. Harvard
3. Columbia
4. MIT
5. Yale
6. Stanford
7. University of Chicago
8. Penn
9. California Institute of Technology
10. John’s Hopkins

According to The NY Times, 4 in 0 kids whose parents are in the top .1% “attend an Ivy League or elite university, roughly equivalent to the share of students from poor families who attend any two- or four-year college”

Hold up, let me switch to all caps & say that again:

THE KIDS WITH THE RICHEST PARENTS IN AMERICA ARE AS LIKELY TO GET INTO ONE OF THE RICHEST, MOST ELITE SCHOOLS AS A POOR KIDS IS TO GET INTO ANY COLLEGE PERIODT.

So, maybe rich kids are just smarter.

That is possible. But since we know WEALTH is more inherited than intelligence, it’s possible that this whole myth of merit is a scam.

Or maybe white people are just smarter.

STOP LAUGHING!

We know that white school districts receive $2,226 less per student than majority-nonwhite districts.

Majority-Black school districts offer fewer AP courses and advanced academic course, and even have, on average, fewer books in the library.

Even the POOREST white school school district is funded better than the RICHEST nonwhite district.

I didn’t do this study.

edbuild.org/content/23-bil…

Again, I need to make this clear: This is not a POVERTY issue. Poor white children get more access to educational opportunity(academic classes, smaller class sizes, standardized testing prep, tutoring, money and EVEN BOOKS) than the WEALTHIEST Black kids.

I’m not talking about SOME black kids coming from these underfunded, underresourced schools. MOST DO. And it’s only because , years ago, WHITE PEOPLE CREATED SEGREGATED NEIGHBORHOODS

So when you see a Black, Latinx or Asian kid at Harvard or Yale, they have usually achieved MORE than the white students because they started from an unequal background. Again, I’m just stating the facts

Now that we got those facts out of the way, let’s talk about “merit”

Because I can hear someone bitching affirmative action and “If America is racist, why do they do so well academically?”

Sure Jan, good question, simply put, Asian kids get are more likely to attend a white school. Also, this notion is based on a racist perception of “Asian”

Now here comes the “affirmative action people.”

Now here is where the affirmative action folks get it wrong. They truly believe that unqualified Black people get into college in place of deserving whites.

But when they say “merit,” they mean SAT scores, AP scores…

and all that stuff we just proved white people have more access to.

But that’s not how most colleges work. Colleges don’t say: “we’re gonna take the highest SAT scores.” They say, “We want good students and THE MINIMUM SAT score must be 1300.”

So when a Black kid from a poor school & a 1400 SAT gets accepted and a white kid from the best school with a 1450 is rejected, white people scream reverse racism. In reality, the white kid with every available advantage only performed slightly better than a disadvantaged person

It’s like running a 100-yard race against an opponent who had to run 110 yards — just because you got to the ribbon first doesn’t mean you are faster.

But here is the thing that no one will tell you. You know who gets MOST affirmative action?

White people.

But a lot of white people truly believe that Black people go to college for free. Seriously, that’s really a thing people believe because White people made it up in their head and decided it was true.

MOST scholarship money goes to whites but overall, its distributed evenly

White women disproportionately receive get “minority” set-asides and MOST of the people who get into college without meeting academic standards are white

And then there’s the white privileged loophole called ALDCs, people who get exceptions to be admitted. They fall into four categories.

Athletes
Legacy Admissions
Deans Interest List.
Children of Staff/Faculty

Now, see football & basketball but forget that MOST division 1 college athletes are white. They play golf, baseball, lacrosse, soccer etc.

How is legacy admissions not affirmative action? You got in because you were born with certain genes. Children of Faculty makes sense

But the Dean’s Interest list is finna blow your mind. It’s basically people who know someone. If your aunt donates millions, she can get you on the Dean’s Interest List. And these people often don’t have to meet ANY ACADEMIC REQUIREMENTS

A few years ago, someone at Harvard did a study on ALDCs and found out that TWO OUT OF FIVE white people at Harvard got in through ALDCs

Not 2-in-5 ALDCs were white FORTY PERCENT OF HARVARD’S D’WYATTS GOT IN THROUGH WYPIPO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION!

theroot.com/report-two-out…

The rich white kids with with generational wealth endow their alma maters with money and resources. Stats show that Black, Asians, Hispanics and Middle Eastern Students donate to colleges at lower rates than whites.

So why do Elite Universities recruit minority students so hard?

Well that goes back to the original premise.

Elite universities are filled with the richest of the rich who lived their entire lives with better funded schools, more books & more resources…

AND THEY STILL NEEDED A LOOPHOLE TO GET ACCEPTED!

So who the fuck is providing the academic excellence these schools enjoy?

The Black and Brown kids.

And you know how I know?

1. Name an institution in the history of America that has given access to Black people without requiring something in return.

2. After writing about ALDCs, I wondered if the mediocre white kids were actually keeping qualified Black & Brown students out.

Nah, I’m lying. I don’t really wonder about shit.

I asked the dude who did the study.

This is what he said:

It’s a scam.
It always has been.