April 4, 2014

Do Ivy League schools collude on admissions?

From The Wire:
Why the All-Ivy League Story Stirs Up Tensions Between African Immigrants and Black Americans 
By Arit John
The story of the first-generation Ghanian-American student accepted by all eight Ivy league schools is wonderful, but it also stirs up the tension between black Americans and recent African immigrants — especially when you describe him as "not a typical African-American kid." That's been the reaction to USA Today's profile on Kwasi Enin, a Long Island high schooler who got into the nation's most competitive schools through hard work and, according to IvyWise CEO Katherine Cohen, being African (and being male).

Here's a semi-off-topic question. Leaving aside affirmative action and all that, how unusual is it for a high school student to be accepted at all eight Ivy League schools?

Top colleges would have at least a couple of self-interested reasons for sharing information with each other on who they want to admit and agreeing not to make offers to their peers' favorites. They don't want to get into a scholarship bidding war over the best students; and they don't want their "yield" percentage to be driven down because they make offers to kids who get offers from everybody.

Into the early 1990s, the Ivies, MIT, and some other famous colleges had a price-fixing ring that met every year called the Overlap Group to make sure they didn't compete very hard over individual students.

The Elder Bush administration accused the cartel of violating the Sherman Anti-Trust. The Ivies shamefacedly denied wrongdoing but promised not to do it anymore. MIT, however, went to court, arguing that laws don't apply to elite colleges because, well, we're special. MIT lost in court in 1992, appealed, and then, as so often happens, the incoming Clinton Administration dropped the case they were winning on the ground that elite colleges are on their side.

Then Congress passed a 568 law that provides an anti-trust exemption. The 568 cartel was formed, but, notably, it doesn't currently include the four richest colleges: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton. (Their lavish financial aid perhaps explains a little about why Harvard has gotten so good in basketball and Stanford in football.)

Okay, that's the background. Now can anybody answer: do top colleges get together and collude on who will make offers to the most desirable students? Obviously, all Ivies will want the black male who averages 750 on the SAT, but if they all make him offers, 7 out 8 will get their "yield" percentage dinged on the USNWR charts because he can only accept one acceptance.

So, do top colleges typically pre-arrange that they won't all offer acceptances to all the top candidates, but somehow the cartel broke down here? Or is the Overlap Group completely a thing of the past these days?
At one point the piece reads: 
Being a first-generation American from Ghana also helps him stand out, Cohen says. "He's not a typical African-American kid." 
"Not a typical African-American kid" is being read as an allusion to the lazy black American stereotype. The tension comes from the fact that some African immigrants buy into that stereotype, which gets turned into "Africans don't like black people." This has almost nothing to do with Enin, who is obviously a remarkable young man, and everything to do with how America perceives and portrays black Americans and African immigrants.  
In January, Luvvie Ajayi, a Nigerian-born immigrant, tried to explain "akata," a word some Nigerians use to refer to black Americans that translates into wild animal. (Note: A lot of Nigerians use akata to mean "ghetto" as well. My mom once told me I was dressed like an akata girl because I wanted to wear sweatpants in public.) She argued in a series of tweets, collected by Clutch, that the reason some Africans believe black Americans should be doing better is because they don't know about the history of black Americans but see their own success as a reason blacks should excel as well. "Africans who come to the U.S. are statistically more successful than African Americans and they think 'if I could do it, why not them?'" she wrote.  
American society holds that same view as well. A 2007 study covered by the Washington Post found that a quarter of black students admitted to elite colleges were African immigrants, though they only represented 13 percent of America's college-age black population. The study's authors several theories on why black immigrants do better, including "to white observers black immigrants seem more polite, less hostile, more solicitous and 'easier to get along with.' Native blacks are perceived in precisely the opposite fashion."  
Lani Guinier, a Harvard professor, argued instead that schools were attempting to "resolve historic wrongs against native black Americans by enrolling immigrants who look like them" but had different experiences. "In part, it has to do with coming from a country ... where blacks were in the majority and did not experience the stigma that black children did in the United States," Guinier said. Either explanation creates a divide — as if Africans can only succeed at the expense of black Americans, or vice versa.
     
One example of an affirmative action beneficiary who isn't actually descended from American slaves is the President of the United States.
    

80 comments:

David M. said...

I realize that immigrants from Africa are often the elites of their former countries. On the other hand, being an elite in Africa has less to do with how smart you are, and more to do with who you are related to. Considering that, isn't their relative success in America versus native blacks a point in favor of environmental influences on intelligence, since native blacks have a much higher percentage of white DNA? Or is it just the type of African immigrant that America attracts?

Anonymous said...

In my experience, black Africans residing in the west, over the generations, 'revert to type' and behave even *worse* than so-called African-Americans given enough time.
It's an old familiar pattern. The first generation to settle in the west tries to make an effort to excel, howver by the time the second generation comes around 'blood outs' and the natural proclivities - which are far from pleasant - manifest.
Put it this way - do you really seriously believe that the continent which hosts such societies as South Africa, Congo, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria etc to name but a few, will really produce upright and efficient citizens?

Anonymous said...

My first thought on this was that A, there's definitely communication and collusion about this kind of thing and B, they might have all colluded -to- all admit this one guy, to further the "immigrants = god" narrative and boost the case for #immigrationreformnow. And also just as another fuck you to whitey. Think about how frustrating this story is to a white guy who has a comparable SAT who couldn't even get in to one Ivy. I can imagine the representatives of these hedge funds, err, colleges, all going around the conference call and realizing that they all have the same favorite gotta have him admit in mind. So they figure what the hell, let's all admit him and may the best firm win. Besides it's such a good story (for reasons given above)

Anonymous said...

I have five graduate-degreed employees, two are Nigerian immigrants. I've had a great experience managing these guys. They know their stuff and people like them. They grew up "old school" over there and people over here really notice that.

Jimmy D. said...

I think applying to all 8 ivies is what is rare. It struck me as odd, the type of thing one might do only for the story.

But yeah, collusion to save yield rates makes a lot of sense.

slumber_j said...

Maybe things have changed radically since my day, but I guess I find it odd that anyone would even apply to all the Ivy-League schools--or even more than two or three of them. I hated applying to colleges, so I applied early to my first choice. Once I knew I'd had the good fortune to be admitted, I promptly threw my uncompleted applications to other schools in the trash.

Perhaps now that admissions rates are so much lower, you have to throw a lot more at the wall. Still, I'd guess this kid could have applied early to his top choice (confident that he would be admitted) and saved himself a lot of trouble.

Angry Midwesterner said...

The top of the top colleges typically do not "compete" with scholarship bidding. They typically avoid the "merit scholarships" and do the whole "need based aid" kind of nonsense where they plug your family's income and assets into an equation and churn out how much they will give you in grants and loans. In the case of Harvard and Stanford, they typically do not make any of your aid loans because they have big endowments and high yield rates to preserve. Also, in that case, Harvard is already "cheaper" for the bulk of students attending the school because of a more "generous" equation.
Harvard's basketball team all get scholarships because they happen to be poor kids who barely squeak past their standards.

Anonymous said...

Regular iSteve reader here.

I do "alumni interviews" each winter for my Ivy League alma mater in the Rust Belt city where I live. Two to five of them each year. Us interviewers more than a few years out generally agree that --

1. The quality of applicants is much higher than when we were HS seniors. The top quartile has great academics (e.g., 5's and 4's on multiple APs), strong extracurriculars and/or sports, and interesting perspectives on Life (at 17/18!).

2. Although we don't see any application material -- just converse for an hour -- five minutes in, we can tell who *won't* get offered a spot. That's everyone not in a subjective "top 10%". That's the top 10% of the self-selected Ivy applicant pool.

3. From that "top 10%," we can't tell which ones will get the offers. Most don't.

4. The two "He or she is in" exceptions I have called correctly are a sports recruit and a well-qualified black kid. Second-hand, I've heard of "ins" from extreme wealth, children of celebrities, and students with exotic ethnicity *and* fascinating stories. Can't vouch for those, though.

When I saw the headline "kid accepted by all Ivies," I knew immediately he or she was black. That would be obvious to anyone with even peripheral exposure to the process.

fish said...

That's a headline I want to see.......

Black Student accepted at eight ivy league institutions.... blacks suffer disproportionally as a result.

candid_observer said...

One reason that Ivy League colleges would all make offers to a student like this is that it looks good even to make an offer to a black student, and no doubt becomes part of a statistic they can boast about.

White kids, not so much.

I do think that generally HYP have mechanisms to keep from offering acceptances to the same student, though they may be informal and purely customary. For example, a first rate student from the Boston area will be accepted by Harvard, but rejected by Yale and Princeton, on the presumption by Yale and Princeton that he/she would certainly choose Harvard over them -- unless, perhaps, there is something very definite in his/her background that would suggest otherwise, such as (obviously) a early admission choice of Yale or Princeton, or perhaps some very direct alumnus connection to them.

I've seen some cases like this, where the failure of a truly extraordinary student to get into all three of HYP seems pretty inexplicable otherwise.

Alte said...

I checked the "black" and "white" boxes on the PSAT, and received invitations for visits from Harvard, Duke, and Westpoint, among others. My score was unusually high, but
I didn't respond. I suspected that I'd been "affirmative actioned" -- despite being European and growing up quite privileged. It hurt my pride to think that I'd never know if they'd want me around if I were completely white. I also noticed I'd forgotten to check the "Asian" box, despite Chinese ancestry.

I'm finishing my studies in the German uni system now, where they take anyone smart and industrious enough to complete their hardcore engineering program. If you finish here, then nobody questions how you got in, and that's just what I was looking for.

If you're a black woman in the US college system, everyone assumes you couldn't make it without AA. That was too bitter a pill for me to swallow, considering that my grades, test scores, and IQ are all in the 99th percentile.

Not a fan of AA.

BurplesonAFB said...

And this year's award for outstanding academic achievement while black goes to.. Kwasi Enin

"In part, it has to do with coming from a country ... where blacks were in the majority and did not experience the stigma that black children did in the United States"

From what I can see the kid was born here and should therefore be subject to all the gravest of stigmas.

Anonymous said...

Obviously, all Ivies will want the black male who averages 750 on the SAT, but if they all make him offers, 7 out 8 will get their "yield" percentage dinged on the USNWR charts because he can only accept one acceptance.

It's low risk, since there are so few that score 1500 or higher on the SAT (math plus verbal).

Anonymous said...

In my experience, black Africans residing in the west, over the generations, 'revert to type' and behave even *worse* than so-called African-Americans given enough time.

This sounds made up, since there haven't really been "generations" of African immigrants in the US. Most of these African immigrants being referred to in this post are first generation immigrants.

You can make the argument that they "revert back to type", but you don't need to lie to do so.

Anonymous said...

Just to point out the same thing is going on in Hollywood, where two African actors--Idris would be one and the spelling of the second is beyond my meager racist brain--are getting all the plum roles. No doubt they are talented actors, but hello, is there suddenly some SHORTAGE of African-American acting talent?

Anonymous said...

Bear, woods; pope, funny hat.

Anonymous said...

I have lived in English speaking Africa and understand what you mean by "old school" culture. In those countries being middle class, acting that way and having middle class habits (e.g. educated vocabulary, reading the newspaper, etc.), is something to aspire to.

Anonymous said...

""""In my experience, black Africans residing in the west, over the generations, 'revert to type' and behave even *worse* than so-called African-Americans given enough time."""""


Your experience is completely inaccurate and not reality based. For two reasons.

1. Black Americans, for the most part, have been in this country for roughly over 200-350yrs on average, some even farther than that. BY NOW, they should have been genetically improving beyond the social dysfunction that we've witnessed for over half a century.

2. Thus it is impossible for blacks who originated from the same continent to behave any "worse" than their distant relatives. If it's all in the genes (and for the most part, it is) then the newcomers won't behave any "worse" but roughly the same.
There's no doubt that they will revert to type, but it won't be any worse than what we experience with the native American born already here blacks. They will appear to be indistinguishable from what we've witnessed in society.

Here's the thing: You'd think that on this basis alone, African-Americans would be among the loudest critics of immigration since in this case it is directly affecting them. Whenever kudos are passed out for hiring at the best places, or scholarships being given out to the best schools, which group is generally receiving more of the gifts? Not the native born, and as more and more come latelies arrive and swell their numbers the resentment within the community should begin to increase.

They will of course wait until a white person is back in the White House so as not to appear divisive toward Obama's administration but if the resentment is there, then they should begin to publicly express it. Lani Guinier must be mellowing out in her old age because as a former communist black liberationist she used to talk mroe explicitly regarding public policy as it relates to African-Americans. And yet her views are perhaps widely shared among educated blacks in general: Why are the newcomers taking the stuff that should rightfully be going to us? Why are they taking our stuff?






It's an old familiar pattern. The first generation to settle in the west tries to make an effort to excel, howver by the time the second generation comes around 'blood outs' and the natural proclivities - which are far from pleasant - manifest.
Put it this way - do you really seriously believe that the continent which hosts such societies as South Africa, Congo, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria etc to name but a few, will really produce upright and efficient citizens?

Anonymous said...

Autoadmits like autistic spelling bee champion and math genius Evan O'Dorney wouldn't apply to every Ivy League school; they'd have already narrowed it down to "I'm thinking about Harvard/MIT/Stanford/Princeton" or whatever.

Similarly, a top basketball player with Ivy League academics *could* get admitted to every school but he just wouldn't apply to all of them but instead consider his options beforehand.


And then billionaires/celebrities like Natalie Portman or Chelsea Clinton *could* get into any school but they just wouldn't apply.


Finally, these days, no white person who isn't a recruited star (math genius, actress, athlete) would get into every school. It's just a comical situation where I can know someone with a 4.0 and 1600 who got rejected by every school (HYP and MIT) in the most competitive tier. Had to settle for Columbia or Brown.


So I don't think collusion is needed to explain the result: only a top black student would both apply to and be accepted by the entire Ivy League.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you raise an interesting point. I was under the impression that an elite academic student was similar to an elite high school athlete: Heavily Recruited by all relevant schools.

Example: As a number one football/basketball player graduates from HS, he is generally heavily recruited by as many NCAA schools as possible. The bidding wars can be quite fierce at times.

Therefore I just naturally assumed that the academic counterpart already existed.

Example: Take a young Einstein who had done more things by age 17 than 99.99% of his fellow students. Say, for example, that this kid had tested near 170 in IQ, AND had actually served on scientific boards and had written basic theses on microbiology, etc. Whatever fits the example here.

I just took for granted that all the Ivies and blue chips would fall all over themselves to include that kind of super Einstein in their campus. An academic (not a sports based) bidding war, so to speak would ensue to attempt to recruit that particular individual for their campus.

But now you're producing evidence that the Ivies don't really want such persons at their schools?

Really? Seriously?

Its not as if the top one percent within the top one percent are that great a number. Well, I'll have to reconsider if the evidence is accurate.

I mean, Kevin Love and Shabazz Muhammad were both heavily recruited by NCAA colleges so I assumed that their Richard Dawkins the 4th counterpart naturally must exist as well; a super high IQ superior quality level who would in turn be heavily recruited by the Ivies.

Unless the Ivies have a touch of snobbery and actually to engage in publicly attempting to "bid" for a student might appear to them to be unseemly and gouche. Either that or they prefer a sure thing: Never appear to publicly beg for a student who easily can be replaced; lock up his services well before the competitors and in private.

Sort of like some elite financial sectors out in the real world where the bulk of the work is done behind the scenes and not out in public.

University bidding for elite student's services:
Sports = public bidding, oftentimes resulting in bidding wars
Business = private bidding (if bidding at all) so as not to appear desperate, gouche, unseemly and thus preserve the university's superior reputation of being above such base and gouche things.

Anonymous said...

"So, do top colleges typically pre-arrange that they won't all offer acceptances to all the top candidates, but somehow the cartel broke down here? Or is the Overlap Group completely a thing of the past these days?" - some things are so scarce that they have to try for them anyway.

Piper said...

Africans who immigrate to the USA naturally represent the far-right-end of the aptitude bell-curve for the source population. The children of African-Americans are naturally distributed around the mean of their own bell-curve. So you have the right tail of the African distribution (immigrants) compared to the mean of the African-American distribution (citizens) and you see a perfectly predictable difference.

Wait a generation or two for reversion toward the mean to operate and you will see that those elite immigrants from Africa don't produce descendants any more elite than African-American citizens do.

HEL said...

Keerist! Racism sure is complicated. It causes African-born blacks to be losers, far worse than American-born blacks, yet when those African-born blacks come to America they do better than American-born blacks, also as the result of racism. Further, you send a bunch of American-born blacks back to Africa and soon enough they aren't too terribly different from blacks born in Africa initially. And African-born blacks living in white-run Africa are more successful than African-born blacks living in African-run countries.

Yet we do not see the same pattern with hispanics, who come here as total losers and get, well, a wee bit better anyway, after a generation. And, to the extent that anyone cares at all either way, it's the more recently arrived hispanics who people tend to have a problem with, not the ones who've been here for generations. And let's not even get started on the apparently salutary effects that racism has on Northeast Asians, but not necessarily so on Southeast Asians. Why do racist whites randomly decide that some racial groups are successes while others are losers? Why sometimes favor immigrants while other times favoring those born in America? Why couldn't we just have declared them all to be wonderful, selfless geniuses?

Man, the white devil works in mysterious ways.

Anonymous said...

"A 2007 study covered by the Washington Post found that a quarter of black students admitted to elite colleges were African immigrants, though they only represented 13 percent of America's college-age black population."


Would you lookie there.

One out of every eight 18-year-old blacks is an immigrant.

Think about that.

ysv_rao said...



In my experience, black Africans residing in the west, over the generations, 'revert to type' and behave even *worse* than so-called African-Americans given enough time.
It's an old familiar pattern. The first generation to settle in the west tries to make an effort to excel, howver by the time the second generation comes around 'blood outs' and the natural proclivities - which are far from pleasant - manifest."


This is not just common with black African but also Pakistanis, Tamils, Armenians, Arabs and the occasional Iranian or Sikh
It is not just so much as reverting to type as the yobbo/gangsta culture encouraging them to stay "real"

Put it this way - do you really seriously believe that the continent which hosts such societies as South Africa, Congo, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria etc to name but a few, will really produce upright and efficient citizens?"

Zimbabwes failures cant be attributed to failed Marxist policies, same as Castilian Cuba and very Confucian North Korea

Nigeria is just another kleptocracy.
South African blacks are the victims of their own perverse triumphalism over the whites.Serves them , Im afraid nothing short of (the after effects) of a unwinnable civil war between armed Afrikaaners and blacks will lead to anything resembling normalcy.
Congo is still recovering from devastating civil wars
Rwanda is doing alright these days actually with a high growth rate.
If Rwanda can pull its act together, why not Congo?

Anonymous said...

"They know their stuff and people like them. They grew up "old school" over there and people over here really notice that."


Worked in the UK with a very bright and personable Ghanaian guy who (I was told - not by him) was related to Ashanti royalty. "A real gentleman" was the general verdict.

ysv_rao said...

In Dubai , I had Nigerian tenants I used to rent out spare rooms to. Good wholesome churchgoing lot. Well dressed and groomed. Used to avoid gangster rap culture like the plague, never even uttered swear words. Oddly they were big fans of Shania twain and Amy grant LOL . They used to blast that stuff all the time
The only issue I had with them is their tendency to invite over their "brothers and sisters" to stay over for weeks and months.

The Sons of Priam said...

Ah but the kids, and the kids of the kids...

The Sons of Priam said...

Blanket bans.

My heavens, these people did it to "us".

wiseguy said...

Sorta OT: Have you been following college football recruiting? Right now, James Franklin's Penn State has the second highest 2015 recruiting class. Now, it's very early in the recruiting cycle and Penn State likely won't finish that high, but Franklin is doing a remarkable job nevertheless. So, if he keeps up his fantastic pace and uses his talent as well as he did at Vanderbilt, could he be another example of a member of your "mulatto elite?"

Occulus said...

Did you hire them?

Anonymous said...

In Toronto, I've noticed that west-African immigrants and even Haitians despise Jamaicans because they believe that the the latter's bad behaviour casts all blacks in a negative light.

peterike said...

I don't care if every immigrant from Africa was Kwasi Enin, I still don't want them in my country.

African immigrants, though they only represented 13 percent of America's college-age black population.

ONLY? It is just me, or is anyone else absolutely terrified by that statistic?

Anonymous said...

I can think of only one significant black immigrant group that is also non-African---Jamaicans. They also far excel native American blacks.

Anonymous said...

I found Africans and West Indians to hate, hate, hate US blacks, due to perceived laziness.

ogunsiron said...

Jamaicans in the Usa have a much better rep than Jamaicans in Canada, it seems.

I think that's because the ones in Canada are heavily descended from extremely low skilled menial laborers who were imported in masse in the 50s and 60s while Jamaican immigrants in the Usa probably come from another stratum in that island's population.

In the Canadian Haitian population, from what I can see,
the kids of the illiterate peasants are doing very bad, as expected. The children of those haitian doctors and university professors who were so well regarded in QC in the 70s ? They're not as accomplished as their parents are, for sure, but they seem to do relatively fine.
The reverted, but not to the same IQ mean as that of the general haitian population.

I was once chatting with a young nigerian lady who accepted HBD. She was deadly afraid of reproducing because she couldn't bear the thought of her kids reverting close to IQ=75 even though she must have been around IQ=110-115 herself.
But that woman's dad is a medical specialist, her mom is very well educated, her uncles and aunts seem educated and successful and even at the grandparents level there is achievement.
I don't think that particular girl is facing a regression to iq=75 for her offspring. It just seems off.

Anonymous said...

The two "He or she is in" exceptions I have called correctly are a sports recruit and a well-qualified black kid.

...

When I saw the headline "kid accepted by all Ivies," I knew immediately he or she was black. That would be obvious to anyone with even peripheral exposure to the process.


Yes, exactly. Most students with perfect SAT scores or valedictorians or some combo of very high SATs and very high class rankings are rejected by most of the Ivies. The Ivies even boast about rejecting many or most perfect SAT scorers and valedictorians in their promotional literature.

You need very high SATs and grades and strong extracurriculars to have a chance of getting into the Ivies. It's no guarantee and it's largely the luck of the draw. Without them, you have no chance, and with them, it's no guarantee. The only exceptions are, as you said, athletic recruits and blacks.

Anonymous said...

I seem to recall that applying to American universities (at least at the graduate level) is very expensive. It cost $50 per school to submit an application back when I was doing so, and that was in - wait for it - 1988. I'm Canadian, not African, but I couldn't afford it, so I decided to stop.

What could it cost now, I wonder?

Any African student who could afford to apply for 8 Ivy League (or other) schools must come from the very top of the elite class in both brains and money.

Something else to consider: American high schools have deteriorated so drastically that people coming from outside your system may shine in tests and so forth as a result of better preparation. After all, the SAT is not quite the same as an IQ test: it is intended to measure actual learning levels and not merely native intelligence.

Alias Clio

Renault said...

At Harvard, the only students I ever met who weren't 1st or 2nd generation African or West Indian were all on the football or basketball teams.

Seriously. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if they made up ~80% of the black populations at elite schools.

Dave Pinsen said...

"I do "alumni interviews" each winter for my Ivy League alma mater in the Rust Belt city where I live. Two to five of them each year. Us interviewers more than a few years out generally agree that --

1. The quality of applicants is much higher than when we were HS seniors"


High enough that they know when to use "we" and not "us"?

Dave Pinsen said...

One of the incongruous details of the NBC drama Parenthood is that it portrays UC Berkeley as filled with slacker white kids. It's probably almost as tough to get into Berkeley now as an Ivy.

David said...

Going for "somehow the cartel broke down here."

Maybe he is so valuable and exceptional from the affirmative action standpoint that the universities involved were willing to gamble. It may be their view that being chosen by him might outweigh any risk to their yield percentage. Dunno.

I found it interesting that this story was juxtaposed on Fox News with another story, this one about a black family who won three back-to-back major-payout lotteries in one month. (Story here.) One begins to get suspicious, doesn't one?

peterike said...

The top quartile [of applicants] has... interesting perspectives on Life

What this means is spending lots of time promoting some sort of Progressive ideas. If you want your kids to get into the Ivies, have them do volunteer work around gay rights, immigration reform, start campaigns of writing letters to prisoners, go to third-world hell holes and dig ditches. Anything like that. ROTC experience or Christian missionary work won't be considered an "interesting perspective" on life.

David said...

>I was once chatting with a young nigerian lady who accepted HBD. She was deadly afraid of reproducing because she couldn't bear the thought of her kids reverting close to IQ=75 even though she must have been around IQ=110-115 herself.
But that woman's dad is a medical specialist, her mom is very well educated, her uncles and aunts seem educated and successful and even at the grandparents level there is achievement. I don't think that particular girl is facing a regression to iq=75 for her offspring. It just seems off.<

It could be that she herself was the regression to the mean--the mean of her family, that is.

It depends on who she marries. She might grab a liberal Jewish guy and put these worries off on her great-grandchildren. She might even grab a smart black guy.

Good breeding is not the exclusive reserve of any particular people. This girl is probably just worried about her looks (doesn't matter how a girl actually looks, they all worry about their looks) and HBD is a sort of excuse she uses.

Alte said...

It's not just in the colleges. Check out the number of Africans and Carribeans in public office or working for the federal government. My parents are extremely socially isolated, for this reason, since my father is from an old, Southern family.

Americans are going to regret promoting black foreigners over natives because they're increasingly Muslim. It's a culturally insane policy.

Anonymous said...

The students from the Eastern Prep schools and the top private schools and a few top public high schools groom students for the best possible college they can be admitted to. And the admissions counselors simply wouldn't allow it. They know they can only get one or two students into any Ivy (or whatever their particular quota is.

It is not exactly like secret handshakes but it is fairly close.

In addition, no student from an even larger pool of public high schools would bother applying to both Harvard and Cornell.

Finally, the admissions committees have an idea, through interviews, campus visits, etc. who is likely to have their school as a first choice. This includes all early admits.

Finally, the second and third tier of the Ivy league cannot tolerate being a safety school. Brown is famous as the first Ivy to aggressively turn down obvious Harvard/Yale/Princeton admits.

There is no way they openly collude, but by the end of the grueling admission process, they have a pretty good idea of who really wants in and who is just tossing in another application. Like an extra campus visit. Or an alumni party for admits.
Especially with the common application. That has raised application numbers and makes some of the selectivity figures somewhat misleading. No one would fill out 15 applications that were unique and took several hours each to complete. And the schools didn't want to write all those recommendations without computers and cut and paste.

Finally, the few places in the Ivy's that are open to ordinary top 1% students are often looking for quirky things, like a french horn player, or someone that wants to major in Classics.

Harvard admits 1700 for 1200 openings. If you throw out early admits and the private 'secret handshake' schools, and the obvious acceptances, there selectivity isn't THAT great.

And finally, the ivy's have different vibes. Princeton and Yale have a different ambiance. It would be more reasonable to apply to Yale/Penn/Brown. Or maybe Princeton/Williams/Dartmouth. Or, for someone that wants a city, Harvard/Columbia/Penn. (I know ... Williams isn't Ivy.)

And, finally, No school will ever top Harvard/Yale/Princeton -- so at some point, they don't give a fuck. Maybe US News will throw in Cal Tech or MIT into second or third place. That's a shrug.

moonshot said...

I guess as an old Radcliffeian (Radcliffette?) & quasi-legacy admit Guinier may have figured out the game before the rest. Can't we just add another 5 million blacks to the Harvard faculty to solve this problem? It's not as if they don't have the spare cash--"We choose to go to Ye Ivy League."

Anonymous said...

@ Dave

Regarding Berkeley --- where are the Asians on Parenthood Berkeley? There are so many Asians they can self select social groups by sub ethnicity, language, birth country &c.

Big 10 Schools, to some extent, lump all foreign students together .... like 'generic foreign student clubs' &c.

no one said...

finally, the ivy's have different vibes. Princeton and Yale have a different ambiance. It would be more reasonable to apply to Yale/Penn/Brown. Or maybe Princeton/Williams/Dartmouth. Or, for someone that wants a city, Harvard/Columbia/Penn. (I know ... Williams isn't Ivy.)

Wow, that's fascinating. Do tell us more about the "vibes." I think I recognize some of those tips from XOXOHTH

Anonymous said...

""""You need very high SATs and grades and strong extracurriculars to have a chance of getting into the Ivies. It's no guarantee and it's largely the luck of the draw. Without them, you have no chance, and with them, it's no guarantee. The only exceptions are, as you said, athletic recruits and blacks.""""


Finish the sentence. There is a third exception and they're usually surnamed Goldberg, Feinstein, Burns, et al. They tend to comprise a large percentage of caucasians. One would tend to wonder why this is the case. Oh, that's right, payback for alleged past discrimination from 75yrs ago or something or other.



Also, the Ivies generally do not make a sustained habit of turning away Barbara and George Bush, Bill Gates, Natalie Portman.

It could almost be wondered that if a popular culture celebrity a la Paris Hilton had actually the foresight to complete her GED and had actually dared to attempt to apply to Harvard, what would the final result have been?

Bottom line: Regarding the Ivies'/blue chips' admissions, don't bet vs legacies or celebrities.
Sure, they can brag about turning away too many 4.5GPA perfect SAT eggheads but then they'll humblebrag about including in their student bodies Brooke Shields or Natalie Portman.

The annual fundraising goals of alumni giving funds still need to be met.

Anonymous said...

What this means is spending lots of time promoting some sort of Progressive ideas. If you want your kids to get into the Ivies, have them do volunteer work around gay rights, immigration reform, start campaigns of writing letters to prisoners, go to third-world hell holes and dig ditches. Anything like that. ROTC experience or Christian missionary work won't be considered an "interesting perspective" on life.

Yes, this is very true. They like to accept precocious progressive activist type students. In fact, this tends to be the "hook" for most of the accepted students who aren't athletes or black/Hispanic. They have high scores and grades, and started some organization that helps immigrants or something.

Anonymous said...

""""Harvard admits 1700 for 1200 openings. If you throw out early admits and the private 'secret handshake' schools, and the obvious acceptances, there selectivity isn't THAT great.""""



1,700 total freshman in any given year. As Steve has previously remarked, this number has remained fairly constant for nearly 40 years.
NOT 17 thousand but 17hundred. Do you know how selective that is in the real world of HS graduation numbers?

Many of the Div 1 NCAA schools are 10-15 times that number. Some of them are over 50,000 in total undergrads, that's like almost a small city. You do realize that Harvard's total graduates over the last 25yrs doesnt reach 50k according to these comparisons and yet some of the football powerhouses total undergrad populations currently average that number?

Its like Honda sells about 500k-750k total units globally per year and Rolls Royce and Bentley COMBINED sell about 6k globally TOTAL.

That is quite selective. They are "a fit audience though few."

The Ivies are offering the gateway to the big time. Doesnt matter what the grades are, what counts in the relevant circles is that you attended an Ivy, preferably Harvard or else Yale/Princeton.

Its the prize, a piece of the gate that leads to the right circles in adulthood. That is, if you're intent on going down that particular route.


Anonymous said...


Yes, this is very true. They like to accept precocious progressive activist type students. In fact, this tends to be the "hook" for most of the accepted students who aren't athletes or black/Hispanic. They have high scores and grades, and started some organization that helps immigrants or something.



Not fully accurate. This is slowly becoming a cottage industry. Homeless advocate and WWG supporter? That's soooo early 2000's.
WWT will soon become a 'cutting age' or the next new big thing to be on the cusp of.

The Peace Corp stuff is so 70s. Old hat. But do notice that the kids who actually start these types of organizations generally do not come from poor or lower middle class areas. They're still part of the top 1%. Most likely they would've had a shot at getting into the Ivy since many of them are legacies.

It takes a certain amount of Tiger Mom perception to notice the next new big thing and proclaim yourself to be the leader of it before everyone else and generally those types of ambitious kids have ambitious parents; those ambitious parents who want Jr into the ivy aren't living in Hunstville or watching Duck Dynasty.

One could ask the question: Is it because Nelson Vanderbilt Gates the III started a WWT club....or is it because his father NVGates Jr donated 55 million to the Ivy's giving fund?

Which talks louder, WWT or the Green?

Gilbert Ratchet said...

"I seem to recall that applying to American universities (at least at the graduate level) is very expensive. It cost $50 per school to submit an application back when I was doing so, and that was in - wait for it - 1988. I'm Canadian, not African, but I couldn't afford it, so I decided to stop. "

I'm Canadian too, and only applied to one Ivy (in 1989), for precisely that reason. Once I got in early admit, I junked my other applications.

But I do recall that Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans got their application fees waived, in order to encourage them to apply.

And haven't they switched to a common application? You don't need to fill out multiple forms for each college, you just need to fill out one, and tick the boxes for the schools you're applying to. So if you don't need to pay for it, there's no harm in ticking all the boxes.

I understand that the common application has been at least partly responsible for the ever lower admit rates of the Ivy League over the past 20 years.

Anonymous said...

One of my best friends in high school (and currently) is the daughter of a cultured and very bourgeois Nigerian doctor. The whole family is accomplished and successful. There were, in fact, only a handful of blacks in my very large "super-zip" high school class, and my friend was one of them.

My impression is that immigration from exotic locales involves a strong selection bias. A doctor who immigrated a number of decades ago from a place like Nigeria presumably would have come from the educated upper classes in addition to being intellectually and culturally advanced himself.

Of course, as time goes on, elite immigration gives way to chain migration, to say nothing of illegal immigration and "refugee" settlement. Even so, I think that one reason Africans in America seem to do better than native blacks is the fact that they are in many cases skimmed from the top stratum of a continent with hundreds of millions of blacks. I mean this in a genetic sense, although the inheritance of old Victorian values by colonial middle classes may play a role as well.

In any case, it's immensely frustrating to watch respectable public figures wield Occam's butterknife. Instead of trying to divine how racism manages to hold back these blacks but not those blacks, they should consider the possibility that (some) African immigrants and American blacks may not be interchangeable.

Anonymous said...

@ anonymous .....

change selectivity to enrollment rate or yield.

yes ...... I agree they are selective as hell

http://theivycoach.com/ivy-league-admissions-statistics/

Also, there seems to be a trend to filling more and more of their class with early admits.

Another method to keep your yield rates high.

About 1.5 million Juniors take the PSAT. The top 1% become finalists/semifinalists. That is 15k / year.

A lot of National Merit finalists don't go to the most highly selective schools.

If you get admitted strictly for academics, then you have to be in roughly the top 1%.

Yes they are extremely selective.


Anonymous said...

@ Dave Pinsen, 4/4/14, 4:39 PM --

> High enough that they know when to use "we" and not "us"?

Obviously ;-)

ben tillman said...

Here's the thing: You'd think that on this basis alone, African-Americans would be among the loudest critics of immigration since in this case it is directly affecting them.

They don't have the means to express their opinion loudly. They oppose immigration, but they have no way of making their voice heard.

Anonymous said...

I thought the anti trust issue was the Ivy League was fixing it so applicants only got accepted to one school.

I am too lazy but it might be interesting to keep up with Kwasi Enin to see how he fares. The theory is that affirmative action takes what would be a top student at the U of Iowa and sets him up to fail at Harvard.

Anonymous said...

"yet when those African-born blacks come to America they do better than American-born blacks, also as the result of racism. " - Our doors aren't open to Africa just yet, so the average african, as others have noted, represents the far right end of their tail curve. Were average compared to average American born blacks would handily trounce African born blacks.

"Would you lookie there.

One out of every eight 18-year-old blacks is an immigrant.

Think about that." - they are however working to get chain migration going. and that 13%? that is higher than the percentage of foreign born overall in this country.

Anonymous said...

"They don't have the means to express their opinion loudly. They oppose immigration, but they have no way of making their voice heard." - Quit voting for the guys that want to push more of it. Though that really isn't an option, they've made their deal with the devil, can't let go of the tiger,etc.

dcite said...

"In my experience, black Africans residing in the west, over the generations, 'revert to type' and behave even *worse* than so-called African-Americans given enough time.

This sounds made up, since there haven't really been "generations" of African immigrants in the US. Most of these African immigrants being referred to in this post are first generation immigrants.

You can make the argument that they "revert back to type", but you don't need to lie to do so."

It's not necessarily "made up." I recall Nigerian immigants in Baltimore in the early 1970s (v. polite, civilized acting and far superior to the vast majority of black Americans there) who had teenaged children. Who could themselves now be grandparents. Depending on where you live you could well observe several generations of persons descended from blacks who came here in the 1960s and 70s. They have been willingly and eagerly coming to the dreaded white countries for quite a while now, despite all the "oppression" they claim they must endure.
That said, they probaly wouldn't revert to any "worse" type. And if they do, it's only because they are encouraged to do so by other blacks (of course), and also by the deranged whites who feel they owe the world a living even if it means their own demise.

Anonymous said...

>>>ben tillman said...
Here's the thing: You'd think that on this basis alone, African-Americans would be among the loudest critics of immigration since in this case it is directly affecting them.

"""""They don't have the means to express their opinion loudly. They oppose immigration, but they have no way of making their voice heard.""""""



Way way way hold hold hold it. Slow down a sec.

They do have the means to make theirvoices heard. Jesse? Al? And several others in the race racket? They have ready access to publicity any time they choose.

So one has to assume that the entire structure of hustlers don't see it as directly affecting them.

IF Jesse Jackson ever got wind of what was going on, that African immigrants were siphoning away th top level jobs and educational slot from native born blacks, and he felt strong enough to want to take up the issue, he would. And per Jesse's style, quite loudly.

I mean, come on. Jesse Jackson? When's the last time he didn't make his voice heard on some penny anne issue that he though would either: directly benefit himself? Or, there was some residual effect that would accrue to black people in some nebulous general sense? (e.g. If he's publicly out front and center on this issue, it looks good for him and strengthens his cred with the community at large).

Same goes for Sharpton but in his case its unlikely that he could ever fully grasp the situation as well as the consequences.

But getting a microphone and a public forum to express themselves on this issue isn't the problem. But first the leaders have to see it and understand that in the long term it won't be good for native born blacks in general.

Jonah Cheng said...

I highly doubt these universities collude on admissions. Is it ethical or even legal for adcoms to talk about candidates? The fact is, few people actually apply to every single Ivy League school.

Many of the blacks at good schools are African African and many of the Hispanics are Conquistadors. You rarely ever meet DeAndre from the hood or Jose from the strawberry fields.

Anonymous said...

>>Jonah Cheng attempted:
'''Many of the blacks at good schools are African African and many of the Hispanics are Conquistadors. You rarely ever meet DeAndre from the hood or Jose from the strawberry fields.""""


Ah, yes, but you do meet Bernie, Lennie, and David no matter the social gathering or situation.


But, seriously, at present there simply aren't that many African-Africans (this term is somewhat redundant, a la DUH) to fill the diversity quotient.

Also, based on Derbyshire's real world experience via "the talk", a well educated is going to be rather hard to find. Always amazed and impressed when you do spot one but unfortunately they do not speak for the majority or even a significant percentage of the group's total. DeAndre, DeMarcus, and Deshawntreeshah are what is mostly encountered, especially on the evening news.

But then again, how many total blacks (no matter the origin) are there on Ivy campuses? As students, that is?

Less than 2%, if that. Excluding of course athletics.

E said...

@dcite: I'm a child of Ghanaian immigrants who came in the 70s. I think overall us kids are doing ok or above average but as you say it depends.

I went to what is probably still considered the worst public high school in Northern Virginia, TC Williams. I did ok but know of Ghanaian Americans who fell into drugs, teenage pregnancy etc.

The kids who fell in hard with African Americans tended not to do well. Those of us that didn't fall in with them did better.

I suspect Kwesi's social circle consists mostly of White people. That's key.

Gene Berman said...

David Pinsen:

Couldn't resist the "us", couldja? Barely did, meself. But I'll stay aside and let you go after the "gouche."

Jonah Cheng said...


Anonymous writes: ¨I am too lazy but it might be interesting to keep up with Kwasi Enin to see how he fares. The theory is that affirmative action takes what would be a top student at the U of Iowa and sets him up to fail at Harvard.¨

Kwasi made a 2250 on his SAT. That's average or above average in the Ivy Leagues. Judging by his SAT score, he is more than capable of handling the work. He will not be an academic superstar by any means, but I highly doubt he gets discouraged and drops out or ends up majoring in African American studies.

Gene Berman said...

David Pinsen:

Granddaughter accepted by Berkely (Xd by Harvard, Princeton, MIT). But her field is Astrophysics, so maybe the slackers will be less pervasive in that field.

Gene Berman said...

Anonymous @ 7:59 PM said:
A lot of National Merit finalists don't go to the most highly selective schools."

My sister got a perfect score on the test but received no aid whatsoever.

Although the foundation itself distributes funds to many of the finalists, it is expected that the funding firms are to "take care of their own" in cases where the firm employs the parent.

My father was such an employee, a foreman--an hourly employee (with 7 kids). All funds alloted to the purpose were distributed to kids (all of executives who were able to prove "need"). My dad had the lack of foresight to have no debt whatever, the others had plenty (mortgages, summer homes, cars, etc.) He couldn't qualify in the "need" department, so she ended "working her way" at Penn State.

Anonymous said...

Had to settle for Columbia or Brown.

Oh the tragedy of it all. His life is ruined.

Finally, the second and third tier of the Ivy league cannot tolerate being a safety school. Brown is famous as the first Ivy to aggressively turn down obvious Harvard/Yale/Princeton admits.

For a time, I interviewed applicants for my "third tier" Ivy League alma mater, Brown. Several were brazen enough to tell me that their first picks were Harvard or Yale. They were rewarded for their, er, honesty with rejections from Brown.

Later I deduced that most of the lot were also rejected by their first picks since they ended up at such "fourth tier Ivy-wannabe" institutions as Tufts, Williams, UC Berkeley and UVA.

I should note that they mostly had outstanding academic credentials, seemingly far in excess of what my generation had decades ago. However, they were almost universally lacking in manners and social graces. Most sat down without being offered a seat first and few thanked me for my time once the interview was over.

Of course, there was a spectrum to this lack of grace. I found that Jewish applicants appeared the most cocky and entitled (and, oddly, they had the worst academic credentials). Immigrant Asian youngsters, as opposed to American born Asians, seemed to have the best manners as well as students (mostly white, some Asian) who attended Christian schools.

I did not get any blacks, but had a handful of Hispanics. They were generally under-qualified, but most were accepted. I was concerned that they were ill-equipped to deal with even Brown's famously relaxed academic environment (i.e. "the New Curriculum" without core requirements, courtesy of Ira Magaziner, '69 class valedictorian).

Annoyingly, most applicants answered the question "what do you plan to do with your Brown education?" with variations of "I want to make the world a better place for underprivileged children." A seemingly honest few answered that they intend to go on to law school or business school.

ben tillman said...

Kwasi made a 2250 on his SAT. That's average or above average in the Ivy Leagues. Judging by his SAT score, he is more than capable of handling the work.

But remember what La Griffe pointed out. You can expect that such a high score from a Black is partly due to sampling error.

ben tillman said...

They do have the means to make theirvoices heard. Jesse? Al? And several others in the race racket? They have ready access to publicity any time they choose.

Self-promoters Jesse & Al do not equal "Blacks". There are 40 million Blacks in this country, and by your own reckoning 39,999,998 (less "several") of them have no voice. So how do you figure you have made a critique of my assertion?

Moreover, if Jesse & Al started banging the anti-immigration drum, they would quickly wear out their welcome with the mass media, which is not owned by members of their own race.

ben tillman said...

Brown is famous as the first Ivy to aggressively turn down obvious Harvard/Yale/Princeton admits.

This amuses me as I applied to only Brown and Princeton among the Ivies and turned down Princeton to attend Brown. Of course, this was some time ago.

countenance said...

The cartel was in effect here, but for the opposite reason:

They made sure they all admitted him, for the social-racial concern.

Anonymous said...

>>In his usual way, ben tillman said...
"""Self-promoters Jesse & Al do not equal "Blacks"."""""


Ah, Ben, Ben. You just don't get it, huh? In the world in which they deal with, perception equals reality. The traditional media powers that count or rather, still do play a strong hand in the process of the national debate, tend to see these types of "leaders" as authentically black and after decades of public confirmation both Jackson/Sharpton are pretty well ensconced as leaders. They're still comfortably perched upon the throne of black leadership.

Whether we like it or not, either Jesse (in particular) and to a certain extent Al as well, if either one wanted to call the President or a particular Congressman or a specific policy maker, do you really suppose that they'd get either a: 'Press 1 for English' OR 'Hello. This is a recording. You have reached the official office of....'

Is that really what occurs regarding Jesse and Al's call to the President or the other depts heretofore mentioned?

Uh, no, their calls get taken. They're put on one to one with the big bosses. That's how the world works.



""""There are 40 million Blacks in this country,""""

And about a dozen of them are playing in the Final Four tonight, even as we speak....and of course the first black back in the day was...Oh?? You have a point here? Didn't sound it, thought it was another history lesson.

Do continue though.




""""and by your own reckoning 39,999,998 (less "several") of them have no voice."""""


Uh uh, tut tut tut, come come now. My reckoning does not play a part in any of this. For real world and practical purposes, we know that blacks as a whole and in the aggregate, whatever any of them say as individuals say, whenever push comes to shove, they line up behind their leaders and they seldom ever (in public) go vs whatever public stances that their self appointed and approved leaders state in public on any given policy, especially whenever race is involved (and let's get real, in about oh...99% of the time, race is involved one way or the other)

Observe how blacks vote in elections. Why, over 90% for a particular party. Pretty much a clear majority.

Translation: Blacks have a COLLECTIVE voice, which they give via proxy to either their LEADERS or to the party of which they VOTE for.



""""So how do you figure you have made a critique of my assertion?""""

See above. Twas quite rather easy, actually.

Anonymous said...

>>ben tillman redux:
""""Moreover, if Jesse & Al started banging the anti-immigration drum, they would quickly wear out their welcome with the mass media,""""""


Nope, not at all. They've a trump card in their pockets. They're card players.

Smart card players know when and where to play their most important trump.

Any ol' ding dong can go outside and scream racism. The smartly subtle ones know how to do it with flair and style.

EXAMPLE: If Jesse and Al really decided to get on board the immigration issue and frame it in specifically racial terms, "unrestricted immigration is racist cause its taking jobs and welfare ER...benefits away from us!" And they beat this drum with a consistent beat and the notes coming out were clear, loud, and consistent, the media in fairly due time would begin to consider this aspect of immigration.

Such mega capitalists as Mark Zuckerberg can't afford to look like a cheapskate AND a racist at the same time.

Besides, as I said, Jesse and Al are only two examples. There are other leaders that speak on a national basis. If they all got together and actually made it look more legit than their usual rants, (got some statistics to make it look more credible, etc) over time their arguments would be viewed more credibly.




"""which is not owned by members of their own race.""""

Directly, no. But THE CARD ITSELF, that particular issue, oh YES IT IS most certainly.

WHO....pushed for the innocence of Travyon Martin? WHICH voice was one of the loudest and strongest in the court of public opinion?

More to the point: HOW...has the court of public opinion been framed post-Zim. trial? In other words, the way Zimmerman is viewed today, right now, WHICH individual is directly responsible for framing him in that light???

Answer: Al Sharpton. How'd you so quickly forget that?? Most of the doubtful seeds were sown and literally hatched by Sharpton (and others) in framing the public opinion re: Zimmerman. Most likely Sharpton knew that Zim would walk. He had a more devious goal in mind: Every time ordinary folks hear his name, they'll think "yeah, but maybe he was guilty of murdering a kid, who knows??'

In that instance, he was successful.

Don't ever, ever say that the successful card players can't still teach the media a thing or two about how to get your message across in a very efficient manner.

Bottledwater said...

Answer: Al Sharpton. How'd you so quickly forget that?? Most of the doubtful seeds were sown and literally hatched by Sharpton (and others) in framing the public opinion re: Zimmerman. Most likely Sharpton knew that Zim would walk. He had a more devious goal in mind: Every time ordinary folks hear his name, they'll think "yeah, but maybe he was guilty of murdering a kid, who knows??'

Sharpton is influential in framing the debate within an existing narrative pre-approved by elites, but opposing immigration is outside that narrative so he would suddenly face far more powerful opposition.

Anonymous said...

>>Bottledwater kindly observed and then pointed out...
Answer: Al Sharpton.

""""Sharpton is influential in framing the debate within an existing narrative pre-approved by elites,""""""

Yes he is. However the race card goes beyond the elites and they can't always control the card issue 100% of the time. Really, no one can 100% of the time, and so, the only sure thing whenever doubts and confusion exist during such a time, the clearest, most coherent voice(s) that beat the drum the loudest will be heard and get their way on the issue.




""""but opposing immigration is outside that narrative"""""

Because it would never occur to the likes of Sharpton to frame it in a race card debate. Jesse Jackson, however, is slightly more aware and has a bit more on the ball than does Sharpton on various issues (or rather he attempts to at times). Jackson, if it honestly occured to him to frame the isuse in terms of race, then he would. But, he would make sure to line up the ducks in a row before starting out like a dingaling ding dong imbecile.


Anonymous said...

>>Bottledwater redux:
""""so he would suddenly face far more powerful opposition."""""


Again, and again. No one wants to be thought of as a Racist. For Jackson, assuming he would line up his ducks first, and then calmly, cool and collectively (with the veneer of learned opinion behind him to support his rantings) he could easily frame the debate away from labor and toward race. Remember; H1B Visa capitalists, most of them white, they would lose the race issue.
He could borrow a bit from Spike Lee's infamous interview w/NY Magazine last month during the Oscars about Brooklyn neighborhood's letting in all kinds of folks and why that's not right.

And thusly Jesse could gain the upper hand along these lines in a cool, calm, coherently consistent tone:



"Everyone, people. Listen up! Notice how today we're arguing about who we're letting in or not? I have a question. How come, when tons of folks wanted to come into America, back in the day [19th cent, Ellis Island] they had to wait in line? They had to pass a physical and wait their turn in the line?

Who said we should let these come latelys just cut in front of the line?

Now, you know, my folks HAD to wait in the line cause they were on the boat vs their will. But I'm not talking about that today. I'm asking,....how come some people wanna not wait their turn in the line?

And maybe, too, it's getting crowded in the country these days. That's what the environmentalist always tell us, that too many folks are filling up the room of America. I mean, do we really need more folks when we got more than enough for now?

I'm NOT saying, that some businesses don't want to hire black folks [e.g. Facebk, tech industry, etc] BUT...how come we're not being hired at the employment line?

Is this Silicon Valley, or Silly DIlly, Underhanded double-dealing BACK Alley? Is this the right way or the wrong way to treat those already living here and have been here for a long, long time?

Why are we so in a rush to fill up and crowd the room of America? Quit crowding the room, people! It's already filled and overflowing.

Instead of shoving more people into the room, why dont we start hiring more brothers and sisters to do the jobs right here in America with what we already have? Stop crowding the room! Quit crowding out black people from the table of the technological blessings!

A major slogan: "Quit crowding the Room!" And "Technology means no diversity!" (e.g. tech industry hates black folks).

IF Jesse continually and constantly kept this up with other leaders on a nationwide basis, he would gain control of the issue. Race is part of the H1B visa's achillies heel.

Perhaps in Pol. Correct times white americans couldn't bring these issues up but black leaders certainly could without fear. Wouldn't be easy but it could be done.