AA and the CRPC Site Visit, a critical review
Topics: AA
24 Sep 1991
From:
As part of the NSF site visit for all of CRPC today, we had a luncheon
presentation on minority participation in CRPC. The whole exercise struck
me as an wretched exercise in tokenism.
Richard Tapia (from the Math, maybe Stat, department) gave the
presentation. He told us how under-represented minorities were, which
minorities are really minorities, and what we should do about it. Blacks,
especially Southern Blacks, are targetted minorities. Women are not.
They receive second rate consideration since they have already done
well. Likewise, Mexican Americans are a targetted minority, but
Hispanics in general are not. The reason? Because these groups are
more proportionally under-represented.
What is the lesson here? The worse you do the better the treatment you
get. This raises my favorite philosophical question about the whole AA
debate: what is Black? Why do Blacks in general instead of just those
unfairly treated count toward quotas (for the federal goverment)? Why at
Rice do Southern Blacks count more than Blacks in general? Why do
Mexicans but not Columbians count? How finely do we sub-divide
groups? While this enumeration proceeded, I was thinking: 'I am a poor
Mid-Western farm boy; that group is seriously under-represented in
techincal fields, including computer science; therefore I deserve special
consideration'. That is just as valid as any reasoning I heard in defense
of AA.
If this was not silly enough, we had a parade of minority students after the
speech to prove what a good job Rice was doing. Each one had to give a
short history of their education and successes. Most of these people
were only peripherally connected with CRPC. So far as I could tell, only
one of them (Rudy, in Stat) was involved in a poster session, and then
only as a sidekick. What was the point of this? To add to the absurdity of
it, a large number of these minorities were American born Hispanics (not
even Mexicans by heritage!) who could pass as Caucasians in every
respect except perhaps facial features and skin tone(*). Two of them,
Clara & Rudy, I did not even realize were Hispanic until it was pointed out
to me. Does this make any sense in terms of the goals of AA? AA is not
only flawed as a philosophy but inevitably a joke as implemented.
Also, the minority students were each given special spots at the head
tables with the site visitors and CRPC administrators (e.g. Ken). I would
have hated to have been one of them with every looking at me knowing
that I was there as a token and not because of my abilities (I do not know
if that is true in any of the particular cases, but the circumstances
certainly leave that impression to an outsider).
Next, not only is this charade counter-productive, but it is inappropriate
even if useful. This was an important site visit with several million
dollars on the line. There are only two days to communicate everything to
the site visitors. Should we not use this time to present our research and
research goals as best we can? No, we waste it talking about AA instead.
Later this afternoon, I learned that Rice did not do this out of some bizarre
sense of political posturing, as was my first guess, but because the NSF
mandated this presentation as part of the site visit! What is government
doing? Is it sponsoring research or using science as an excuse to
impose the prevaling morality? Is it building roads with our gas tax
dollars or throwing kids in jail for smoking pot? The answer is
unfortunately the latter in both cases.
Chau-Wen, you were for the presentation. Are you provoked enough to
disagree?
* - I am sure there will be disagreement over this, but it is my impression
that people are discriminated against not because of their skin color, but
because of their attitude, culture, and use of the language. Hispanic
Americans that act 'White' seem to be fully accepted into American
society. Blacks that act 'White' are mostly accepted. Blacks that have
African names, talk in Jive, and are concerned only with the Black world
are heavily discriminated against. Women, as a minority, do not fit on
this scale because sexual tensions cloud the pure discrimination issue.
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