The Politics of Discrimination

The gender war has come full circle. Or so it seems.

I’m scanning through Time Magazine this past week during a quick break between classes and I find this doozy of a story. It’s entitled, “College Confidential” with a subtitle of, “To close the gender gap, admissions officers often favor boys. Is that a good idea?”

Granted, the way this story portrayed my gender, I should be happy I was even in classes. Apparently, boys are slackers who don’t work hard, girls are more qualified for college, and men are sexist. Here is a smattering of quotes from the story:

“…if girls were once excluded because they somehow weren’t good enough, they now are rejected because they’re too good.”

“The gap persists on campus, where women tend to win more honors, join more clubs, do more volunteer work.”

“…it (may) turn out that girls emerge stronger somehow from having the game rigged against them,” says Haverford dean Greg Kannerstein.

“It’s a gross generalization that slacker boys get in over high-performing girls,” says Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions at Kenyon College, “but developmentally, girls bring more to the table than boys, and the disparity has gotten greater in recent years.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not disputing the figures that the article quotes. I tend to believe what most tests show: girls make up most of the middle of the spectrum in terms of intelligence whereas boys make up a disproportionate amount of the higher and lower ends. This has held true on the SAT and ACT tests for years now. I feel that this would tend to push more women into bachelor degree programs whereas men would get more PhD’s and be more likely to go to trade school, work construction, or do auto mechanic work. This is the choice we get to make in a free society. Outside of a few women having less choice in dating partners, I don’t feel this affects society too much.

My point is much larger: Where have these people been when debating affirmative action?
Asians and whites routinely score higher on standardized tests then blacks and Hispanics and yet are passed on because of their skin color. Miss Delahunty was horrified to learn that her own daughter had been weight-listed at the college her mom was the dean of, prompting her to write a piece for the New York Times entitled, “To All the Girls I’ve Rejected”. She wondered, “Why aren’t (the women) marching in the streets? That’s the part that slays me. It isn’t fair, and young women should be saying something about it not being fair.” Oh really? It isn’t fair? What is Delahunty’s attitude about affirmative action? Is it more important on college campuses to have racial diversity then gender diversity? I think even the most radical feminist would dispute this.

The current gender disparity is going to cross 60-40% women advantage. I would attribute this mainly to gender differences, the way we treat boys in grade school, and overall interest in college. Again, I’m not going to be super upset if colleges want to accept more girls than guys; I believe people should be accepted on merit. However, I don’t want to see UC Berkley passing up on Japanese-American students who graduate near the top of their class with excellent SAT scores in favor of students with lower scores just because they’re the right ethnicity; and then turn around and complain that girls are getting a bad rap because they outperform their counterparts and aren’t being accepted. I choose Berkley because this has happened there on more than one occasion.

If you’re going to discriminate, at least be consistent.