Please explain how paying attention to an unjustifiable, anti-merit admissions practice with its roots in bigotry actually detracts from looking at how privilege operates in other ways.

It doesn’t. I suppose that’s my point.

Please explain how paying attention to an unjustifiable, anti-merit admissions practice with its roots in bigotry actually detracts from looking at how privilege operates in other ways.

In some ways, I think the exaggerated popular belief in legacy admissions is perhaps another factor that sometimes keeps less privileged student out. If you think, “I’ve got no shot at Yale because everyone in my family went to community college,” then you may not bother applying even though you may actually be very bright. The truth is that vast swathes of bright but unprivileged high school kids are not attending the most prestigious colleges for a variety of reasons, of which legacy admissions are only one factor.

And no, I am not defending legacy admissions. Just trying to work through the issues raised in the post.

So what? They’re still a vestige of a system designed to keep Jews and Catholics out of higher education, and they’re still a pointless exercise in whoring out college slots based on money and nepotism, not merit.

a trend he says is pushing many of his alumni to marry not so bright women.

Funny how that trend isn’t pushing his alum to marry not so bright men.

Re: intelligence and autism:

there’s a hypothesis which gets a lot of press that personality aspects which accompany geekitude are in fact low level autism. when geeks breed with each other, they produce autistic children. the evidence? a high incidence of autism cases in Northern California.

there are several questions to be asked, like, if we define geekitude to be apptitude in computer programming, does the diagnosis trend hold for programmers nationwide? or, if we define geekitude to consist of some collection of social behaviors, does the diagnosis trend hold across careers? or, is the rash of diagnoses in NoCal even real? (that one might be a yes, but I’m not sure.)

re: legacies:

the upperclassmen advisor at my undergrad university once said “One dumb, rich guy can pay for three smart, poor guys.” I don’t know if that’s really how the economics work out, but it’s funny.

I don’t have any hard numbers but consider that the ranks of Christian Reconstructionists (who don’t even believe in daughters leaving the home until marriage) are growing. Consider the questions being raised in our own op-ed pages as to whether girls should be going to places like Yale if they are just going to “opt out” of the professions in the long run. Consider the many subtle biases that may be harbored by western parents regarding girls’ abilities in fields like math and science, or suitability for the professions. Consider that the numbers of immigrants from other countries where girls’ education is more blatantly devalued and whose daughters might fluorish in the Ivy League if only encouraged and permitted to go for it.

or because they lacked the kind of support system that would get them to college at all, let alone Harvard; or because they’re girls, and their parents don’t believe in educating girls

I do not think that’s too common in the developed world.

2) I have an essay bubbling about race and class relations, and how learning to play the game can have incredible effects on a person’s success. There’s an English play from the 1950s called “Live Like Pigs” that resonates eerily with a lot of problems we still have today. Race issues are important, but I think a lot of them can be addressed by answering financial issues first. Education is an incredible tool, and should be available to everyone. And if it’s not, make extra sure that it IS.