Brand-new “Addicted to Race” episode out now (#48)!
by Jen Chau and Carmen Van Kerckhove
A brand-new episode of Addicted to Race is out! If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes. Click here to launch iTunes and subscribe today, it’s absolutely free.
INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL GOLDEN
Every spring thousands of middle-class and lower-income high-school seniors learn that they have been rejected by America’s most exclusive colleges. What they may never learn is how many candidates like themselves have been passed over in favor of wealthy white students with lesser credentials—children of alumni, big donors, or celebrities.
In this explosive book, the Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Daniel Golden argues that America, the so-called land of opportunity, is rapidly becoming an aristocracy in which America’s richest families receive special access to elite higher education—enabling them to give their children even more of a head start. Based on two years of investigative reporting and hundreds of interviews with students, parents, school administrators, and admissions personnel—some of whom risked their jobs to speak to the author—The Price of Admission exposes the corrupt admissions practices that favor the wealthy, the powerful, and the famous.
In The Price of Admission, Golden names names, along with grades and test scores. He reveals how the sons of former vice president Al Gore, one-time Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist leapt ahead of more deserving applicants at Harvard, Brown, and Princeton. He explores favoritism at the Ivy Leagues, Duke, the University of Virginia, and Notre Dame, among other institutions. He reveals that colleges hold Asian American students to a higher standard than whites; comply with Title IX by giving scholarships to rich women in “patrician sports” like horseback riding, squash, and crew; and repay congressmen for favors by admitting their children. He also reveals that Harvard maintains a “Z-list” for well-connected but underqualified students, who are quietly admitted on the condition that they wait a year to enroll.
The Price of Admission explodes the myth of an American meritocracy—the belief that no matter what your background, if you are smart and diligent enough, you will have access to the nation’s most elite universities. It is must reading not only for parents and students with a personal stake in college admissions, but also for those disturbed by the growing divide between ordinary and privileged Americans.
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Duration - 33:11
File Size - 13.7 MB
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Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Jay wrote:
None of this is surprising. University was originally a privilege for the idle rich; not much has changed. Exposing them isn’t going to do much either; they literally don’t care (otherwise they would have stopped it by now), or they care more about alumni money flows which gives them prestige in the first place.
As long as power differences exist, plutocracy will be in abundance.
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 3:50 pm ¶
yori kim wrote:
minus, the article comments was going to give, I have a question:
I am a volunteer at a elementary school (I’m 17) , and this girl I met wants to know if she’s really white, because (just to let you know, she’s against racism like me) her parents are white but, she’s looks Latina (or so she thinks), and she wants to find out if she’s REALLY white, could somebody help me with this ordeal?
and now the comments on the article:
It’s funny that we realize it’s happening and yet, we do nothing about it. I wonder-if I was a BRILLIANT student and (I’m mixed, not white) I entered one of the top university’s, and the majority was white, would I get in? Probably not, it’s shameful that people as ’smart’ as that are still(well, most of them) white supremacists ( though not as bad as it was in the old days).
Posted 25 Nov 2006 at 12:01 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Yori:
Re: your student -
Ask your student what “Latino” or “white” means to her. Point out the diversity of the Spanish-speaking countries - let her know there is every combination of skin color in Latino nations. And ask her why it’s important what she looks like. She may have some real misconceptions about Latinos, even if she thinks that she’s not racist. Ask her if she’s being teased, and let her know that you don’t have to look exactly like your parents, that genes from grandparents and great-grandparents can show up later. If she is being harassed at school, ask her (or tell her to ask her parents) what her ethnicities are - it can be a matter-of-fact response to any stupid questions, such as “No, I’m Italian and Polish, what’s the big deal?”
That was my defense as a black/white mix who didn’t look identifiably either as a kid - I was the preschool/gradeschool ice breaker (i.e. drag the new kid over to me and go, guess what she is! Wouldn’t have minded as much if they had bothered to, you know, tell them my name first. Asian or Hawaiian got picked more than anything).
I learned to spit out my 6 ethnicities all at once to shut them up. By the time they figured out where all those countries were and what races those corresponded to, I was across the playground.
Posted 25 Nov 2006 at 2:36 pm ¶
kim wrote:
Lyonside:
I give it all to you. Extremely comprehensive, cogent, compassionate, introspective.
Thank you.
Posted 25 Nov 2006 at 4:01 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Kim: really? thank you *blush* , but really, it’s just that a lot of people have been down the same road… I feel sometimes like we (collectively, as a society), need to get out of the rut we’re in regarding race/ethnicity… whether it’s academia, or how we teach our kids, or the workplace, or our homes. Seems like it’s the same discussions, in different clothing. Same struggle, different straitjacket, you know?
Posted 25 Nov 2006 at 6:14 pm ¶
kim wrote:
I think the most forward-moving nugget from what you said was in your opening, “Ask your student what “Latino” or “white” means to her.”
So often our psychological ideas of self clash with the self we put forth in the world, due to some effort to “fit” ourselves to ideas of who others think we are, or are supposed to be.
So often, a straight-forward, introspective approach is lacking in all those arenas you mentioned, and the garbage, the dissonance, gets carried forward.
Your approach comes as close to a clean starting point as any I’ve ever heard. And the best part is it can be undertaken at any age, at any point in life; so that ‘one begins where one is,’ and moves on from there, right in that moment.
-Ciao
Posted 25 Nov 2006 at 9:39 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
>So often our psychological ideas of self clash with the self we put forth in the world, due to some effort to “fit” ourselves to ideas of who others think we are, or are supposed to be.
That’s a universal truth right there - we all have masks. But for some people, the mask is skin color, and the only way to take it “off” is to change how other people look at the mask.
Posted 26 Nov 2006 at 10:50 am ¶
Nina wrote:
I always knew about the “other” affirmative action (I knew the child of a BIG donor at an Ivy League school who was allowed to take a semesters’ worth of credits over the summer –a complete violation of the rules- all because she spent the previous semester too “involved” in sorority activities). But I was surprised to hear the numbers cited in the interview. Golden states that in many elite universities, 1/3 of the freshman spots are reserved for kids of alumni, big donors, celebrities and faculty! Wow. I dare all those anti-affirmative action voices to find a university whose student body is made up of 33% persons of color-the supposed only beneficiaries of affirmative action. I was also shocked to learn that at Harvard and probably many other schools, a legacy child in need of financial aid is immediately removed from the preferred list since the parents are not considered successful enough if they cannot afford the Harvard tuition outright. I guess Ivy League graduates who become teachers, nurses, or work for community based non profits are unsuccessful since they will never make enough money to afford the exorbitant tuition. Shame on them for choosing professions that will truly benefit their communities instead of storming Wall Street or going into plastic surgery. I hope this book opens a lot of eyes on issues of affirmative action. I am impressed at the access Golden had to so many admissions offices and the true stories he incorporates. Maybe that will help to garner interest and attention. Unfortunately I think this book will be cast aside like so many other books that highlight white and/or upper class privilege.
Posted 27 Nov 2006 at 6:59 pm ¶
Donna Darko wrote:
Bush’s SAT scores were 1206 (566 verbal 640 math). The average for freshman in the class of 1970 was about 1375 (he was in the class of 1968). Here’s what Atrios said about legacy affirmative action:
“And, while we’re on this, the number of African-Americans who have been given bonus points and been admitted to this list of elite schools can’t possibly come close to the number of legacy admissions.
Princeton: 12.4%; 11.6% (different years)
Yale: 13.4%
U. of Penn.: 10%
Brown: 7%; “about 10%” (different years)
Columbia: 6%
Cornell: 13%
U. of Chicago: “just over 5 percent”
Bucknell: 5.6%
Boston College: 12.1%
Holy Cross: 10.7%
Wake Forest: “about 8%”
Johns Hopkins: 12.4%
Notre Dame: 23%; 22% (different years)
Ithaca College: 1.8%
U. of Virginia: 12.6%
U. of Rochester: 5.4%
Amherst: 10%
Middlebury: 5%
Colby: 4%
Villanova: 7%
These legacy admissions are, at least at the moment, strongly racist in *effect* if not intent, as past admissions and discrimination practices by these schools ensure that a disproportionate number of white applicants are “legacies.” The racist policies of the past still have their legacy (ha ha!) today.”
Posted 27 Nov 2006 at 9:37 pm ¶
Yori Kim wrote:
thanks Lyonside, that was very helpful to me, I asked her some of the questions to help her, and no-she wasn’t really teased she only thinks she looks ‘latina’ because whenever somebody asks her were she’s from they ask her if shes hispanic, and now (apparently) she found out that there is a possibility of her not being white (or something like that), because her grandparents are orphans, yes its all very confusing and no-we shouldn’t honestly think about race as something so important, it doesn’t matter what people think of you, its what you think of yourself.
thank you so much-Yori.^-^
Posted 03 Dec 2006 at 9:38 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Yori - thanks for the update. Hey, she found out something about her grandparents she didn’t know before, which is actually kind of cool. Depending on her age, she could start researching that a little. Court records and Ancestry.com are good starts. She also has the ethnicities from the other 2 grandparents to investigate. This could be a really positive thing for her.
Race isn’t important, but knowing where your roots are from (and how that affected your family) can be important.
My MIL was raised with no formal religion at all (not that common in 1940s Puerto Rico). It all makes sense, though, when you piece that with the rumored Sephardic Jewish background in her family. If the religion was suppressed and then lost, her family likely would be hesitant about formal religion.
Posted 04 Dec 2006 at 9:20 am ¶
Yori Kim wrote:
thnx, that’s very interesting because I was growing up not knowing (or caring) were I was from, then when I gradually got older I asked my parents why I looked different from them, and then they took me for the ‘talk’(no not the sex-ed talk :P) and I found out were I was from turns out when I thought I was white, I was actually: british-jamaican(my mom’s side) and filipino-korean-japanese(on my dad’s side).
Oh, by the way she 12 and in grade seven-thanks for the sites!
–
Yori
Posted 04 Dec 2006 at 5:06 pm ¶