Assets in 529 Plans Hit Record High, Report Says

Anything put on a pedastal, is at risk of getting knocked off. With states going after pension funds, is there any way some entity could go after 529 plans – either directly or by changing their structure, benefits, or uses?

Mr. Kahlenberg makes a good start, but there are many other costs with affirmative action as well.  Here’s my list:   It is personally unfair, passes over better qualified individuals, and sets a disturbing legal, political, and moral precedent in allowing racial discrimination; it creates resentment; it stigmatizes the so-called beneficiaries in the eyes of their colleagues, students, and themselves; it fosters a victim mindset, removes the incentive for academic excellence, and encourages separatism; it compromises the academic mission of the university (for example, for research and teaching) and lowers the overall academic quality of the faculty; it creates pressure to discriminate in evaluations and promotions; it breeds hypocrisy within the school; it encourages a scofflaw attitude among college officials (racial discrimination in faculty hiring is much harder — probably impossible — to justify as a legal matter than in student admissions , as discussed here: http://209.123.244.94/polArticles.cfm?doctype_code=Article&doc_id=1872&Keyword_Desc=Best%20of%20NAS ) ; it mismatches individuals with jobs and institutions, guaranteeing failure for many of the former; it papers over the real social problem of why so many Native Americans, African Americans, and Latinos are academically uncompetitive; and it gets states and schools involved in unsavory activities like deciding which racial and ethnic minorities will be favored and which ones not, and — grand finale – how much blood is needed to establish group membership. Q.E.D.: Racial preferences ought not to be used.

The US might want to consider Canada’s concept of “visible minority”. It has its own problems, but it would address concerns like the Warren case, since she is clearly not a visible minority.

I completely agree that affirmative action is an imperfect way of tackling issues of unfair and unequal advantage in our country. I also concur that no one should falsely claim membership in a group in which they do not belong. But that’s where the black and white (no pun intended) boundaries of this issue end. Richard’s solution seems interesting – affirmative action based on economic opportunity, not race. My comment is in support of that solution but also to highlight the messy nature of racial and ethnic classifications in response to many of the comments made.

First of all, to even hint that people shouldn’t be able to say they belong to a group because they don’t ‘look’ like they do, completely negates the progress that this country has made toward not discriminating people based on how they look. The fact is, you cannot accurately describe a person’s racial background by merely looking them (which, by the way, is what Canada’s “visible minorities” policies are all about). It would be a mere guess. As much as many like to oversimplify cultures into ‘black’ and ‘white’, or color-based dichotomies, color is an extremely poor way of describing people because no one is purely black, white, or even brown. That sounds ridiculous if you just say it out loud, so to raise debates based on that flawed logic is just ridiculous.

Moreover, another weakness of this discussion is the failure to understand that those who create the labels are not usually those who use them. For example, for people of South American heritage in this country (I am one), particularly those who are first generation immigrants, face a true difficulty in selecting to be identified as Latino, Hispanic, or as the debate increasingly suggests, Brown. Amalgamating a group of people (about 16% of the population in this country) into a single one would be the equivalent of grouping American, English-speaking individuals as the same as English people from the United Kingdom. It is just silly.The race category complicates this further. Being Hispanic or Latino denotes an ethnicity, not a race, and in most South American countries, race as a categorization of self does not exist. In fact, the equivalent term (transliterated) is ‘raza’ which is a politically-used term to connote ‘the people’. Therefore, it’s difficult to identify oneself many times as ‘White’ or ‘Black’ because that just doesn’t exist in many countries and many may just not know what to respond.

Finally, in response to Richard’s use of the phrase ‘weak minority membership’, who decides who belongs to a group and who doesn’t? How Native American do you have to be to consider yourself Native American? Is President Obama White enough to be considered White? Or Black enough to be considered Black? This also alludes to a point Richard made about inter-racial marriage. It is just difficult to categorize people in these ways, period end of sentence. Had Elizabeth Warren been active in a Native American group, why shouldn’t she be able to identify herself as such? Granted that is not the case, but it serves as an interesting thought experiment because self-identification is for the self to decide, not the collective.

No one should be allowed to exploit the system, especially when affirmative action may benefit people who would not otherwise have equal opportunities, not to mention the disrespect it entails to members of the group in question. But, let’s not ignore the messy and imperfect nature of self-identification, and through it, of racial and ethnic classifications.

 Roger:  All of the reasons you cite in opposition to Affirmative Action are the reasons that gave cause to institute Affirmative Action in the first place.

So, after more than two hundred years of affirmative action for white males which has provided to any person considered a white male a substantial and unfair advantage over persons from other groups in our society, how would you propose that the “playing field” be made level?

I agree with Kahlenberg that a policy and practice that recognized and addressed socioeconomic disadvantage is a good way to promote opportunity to those who might otherwise be denied opportunity.

However, I remain firmly convinced that the real solution will require major sacrifice and commitment by all members of our society because the roots of disadvantage are found in the inferior, inadequate and unequal educational opportunities provided to our children.  This unfair system has a remarkable characteristic that just does not seem to be random – it is highly correlated with race and socioeconomic status.  Any examination of schools that are deemed inadequate will reveal that concentrated poverty and race (being Black, Hispanic, Native American in particular) combine to create disadvantage, while concentrated affluence and race (being white) combine to create advantage.  If we correct for that injustice, we will be much better positioned to eliminate consideration of race, at least insofar as access to higher education is concerned.

OK, so I was born into a French Canadian community in Northern Ontario, but my mother moved from there when I was six weeks old and did not maintain strong cultural ties with that community.  The result was that I grew up in an anglophone city (Toronto), didn’t learn French very well and became a monoglot English user and university professor of English.  Now, you are allowed to tell me I’m not French Canadian, right?  That’s how it works? 

Every time I read a discussion of Affirmitive action and racial preferences, my mind wanders back to an old Greyhound bus slowly crawling along mountain roads in WV. At one stop,  a small coal camp hamlet, a young man got on the bus, and he sat beside me. He was a bright sounding lad, and soon began talking about books he’d read. It turns out, we were both on that bus for the same reason: heading to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to be tested for admission to the first class at the US Air Force Academy. I noticed the ragged but clean clothes he was wearing, and the black shoes held snugly together with black electrical tape, and the tape and shoes were highly polished to conceal their wear. He had never been to a big city before, and keenly anticipated this great adventure. He was the brightest guy I met that year of my 18th birthday, and I often wondered what happened to that deserving, bright lad. I hope he made it into the academy; I didn’t owing to a poor performance on the eye test (I got glasses soon after). 

There are a millions stories like this one, amongst a race of people almost toally ignored by their government, save for a brief effort by Eleanor Roosevelt back in the 1940s. I am speaking of an area and a people commonly referred to as Appalachia, and the denizens as “hillbillies”. There are 30 to 40 million such people living along that mountain belt from up-state NY through, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia thence weaving through North Carolina and Tennessee, ending in northern Alabama.

Will such poor, undereducated white folk ever get a preference like the blacks, Latinos and Native Americans? Sadly, I think not, because of the color of their skin.

Whites still get more than eighty percent of management level jobs in the private sector, are still half as likely to be laid off, have more than ninety percent of gov’t contracts, and more than eighty five percent of tenured faculty positions with Affirmative Action in place. Not only is your comparison off, but horribly so. Only fifteen percent of the tribes in indian country are wealthy, and I’d recommend you take that nonsense you’re peddling to Pine Ridge. For many lives, life on the reservation is far from the paradise America’s uninformed media portrays.The people of Appalachia do present a class problem in this country that perhaps best reflects the glaring gap in wealth and social inequality furthered by the failed economic policies of the past, but it is far from a racial issue as you try to assert.

The federal government has done a lot more for the people of Appalachia than “a brief effort by Eleanor Roosevelt back in the 1940s”

The Appalachian Regional Commission was created by Congressional act in 1965 as part of LBJ’s “War on Poverty”.  It continues to receive a healthy appropriation.  The ARC region includes 420 counties in 13 states extending from southern New York and Pennsylvania through northern Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama.  Millions of dollars have been spent through both the ARC and special appropriations in areas of transporation (I-26 in NC and TN, the Cumberland Gap Parkway, etc.), education (WV with fewer tha 2 million inhabitants received its 3rd medical school in the 1970s when Marshall Med School was built with federal funds and Tennessee received its second at East Tennessee State from the same act, known as the Teague-Cranston Act.  SC got its second medical school from this act.  It is located in Columbia in the Piedmont at the edge of the Appalachians), cultural heritage expenditures supporting several projects and programs at universities such as WVU, Appalachian State, Western Carolina and East Tennessee State, as well as direct economic development aid such as loans to entrepreneurs and grants to business incubators in the region.

The assistance given to development of transportation, educational and economic infrastructure to Appalachia has been extensive over the last 45 years must be acknowledged.  As someone born in 1947 in Damascus Virginia at the lower end of the Blue Ridge and having worked in northeast Tennessee from the late 1970s until 3 years ago I believe that this money has been well spent.  In 1965 33% of the citizens of Appalachia lived in poverty.  In 2008 the poverty rate was 18%.  In 1965 223 of the counties in the ARC area were economically distressed.  In 2008 only 96 were in this category

I find the Appalachian people put to interesting political use.  The dominant ethnicity is white Scotch-Irish or Anglo Saxon.  The common perception is that we are, or were, mostly hillbillies (whatever that means – I admit to playing and singing in a Bluegrass band so I guess I fit part of the definition).  It is still thought by some that there is extensive poverty throughout Appalachia and there is very severe poverty in certain parts of the region – e.g. eastern Kentucky, northern Mississippi, too much of West Virginia) and that is sometime used as an example to support two political concepts – federal money can’t help people out of poverty (see figures above) and poor white folks don’t get any of the help afforded to other ethnicities, particularly poor black folks. 

where’s your proof?

was he on the tribe’s membership roll?

what are the rules for claiming affirmative action advantage?

This is just another example of “Michael Moore” d.a. thinking. And why academia ought to be defunded — so much d.a. thinking.

I don’t understand your comment.

Rick, the short answer to your second post is that the Supreme Court has rejected it — that is, it has rejected as a justification for racial preferences the existence of general, societal discrimination, as opposed to specific acts of discrimination by, in this instance, Harvard Law School.

Have a look at the creep that is her opponent, Cmdr, before issuing opinions. Yes, I just did but I have looked at his track record. Too bad I don’t live in MA but my son and his lady do and, like me, they never miss a major vote and few minor ones.

 So “Commander Casey.” You’re living off Defense Department handouts and government pensions. And now you’re whining about affirmative action. You da man!

M, you do not have “facts.” Your “facts” have been disputed by many authorities.

I know this, first-hand. I know that those who complain constantly about “fairness” often GRAB the EARNED property of others. And will never be satisfied in their demands. They have a choice — fix their own problems or try another country.

And S, try reading the Constitution. Look up “common defense.” Try to think. Good luck — you may have a brain that works.

How about we just institute a South African style passbook system, complete with DNA data?  Then the liberal elite can decide who gets a job or seat in college based on a weighted point total of what their ancestors suffered over the past millenium.

Priceless….”I am a famous, or at least well-known, World Class Professor”!  Sure you are….and why do you then hide behind a a pseudonym?

Chuck Kleinhans

 Roger – again, fair point and bravo to your side for citing Harlan’s dissent.  However, I have to believe that your side does fully subscribe to Harlan’s dissent given his clear and direct expression of racial prejudice against the Chinese in his written opinion.

Let me be clear – I don’t endorse racial discrimination against individuals, nor do I suspect you do.  What I do struggle with is the challenge of addressing the structural discrimination that exists in our society that too often links both race and socioeconomic status.  Have you read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow?  It seems we cannot separate easily race and class.  Addressing one without addressing the other seems to me to fail to get to the heart of the matter.  Any suggestions beyond saying we should not engage in affirmative action?

You obviously did not go to an Ivy-level college. It shows. Congrats.

Yeah, ARC’s positive effect. Even if it hired DEADWOOD and helped financially cripple the USA. Duh.

Apology accepted, Rick.  I’ve enjoyed our exchange. (The reference to a CHE firing is just a tongue-in-cheek reference to the the Naomi Schaefer Riley matter.)

As I said before Chuckie, you are a slanderous twit. I am hoping dear old Mavprof comes after you again:)

Richard Kahlenberg’s solution to the corruption of affirmative action is to invent yet another category—class— for its application.  The Liberal mind is a wonderful thing to behold.

Hey, OweBama’s pals said it best — “G.D. AMERICA!”

President Romney, you’re inheriting a huge mess. Good luck.

E. WARREN’S FRAUD

Q: How many days did she spend on-rez?

A: NONE

She’s a FRAUD, a PHONY, and UNQUALIFIED.