Referring specifically to Harvard and other Ivys. I have no idea why any public university would consider legacy as a factor.

Edit: I think it's a leap to tie legacy admission from 2 generations ago to racism. Because that's attributing wide spread societal faults to a few specific institution.

I'm not attributing wide spread societal faults to specific institutions. This is simply a question of garbage in, garbage out. The sample of students from 1-2 generations ago is biased towards certain races. Therefore, using that biased data to decide who gets into a university today perpetuates that bias. The exact source of that bias isn't important and doesn't mean the bias doesn't exist.

Legacy is usually a family that donates or at least a well known family so admitting the family member for donations or clout seems to me like admitting a football player on scholarship who will win games but not good academically?

These situations are few and sort of cancel each other out- they don't matter... what matters is how the other people are let in.... and ivy league has a reputation of being very gifted minds (high IQ measured through SAT). Ultimately unis have discretion to some degree... but race happens to be protected. I think it's the large difference in scores by race that cause problems. And if you think it's unfair bc of upbringing.. how is putting them in with way more gifted students the answer--- unless ivy league is now just a signal and not a learning institution? If so it's time is limited.

I actually think these ivy leagues are just operating under woke capitalism- the more elite blacks (the best blacks with the highest SAT scores) they let in the better their clout right now- even if whites or asians have higher scores--- that is bc race is the only thing that matters right now. This transfers to hiring too- so the blacks that go to Harvard today are probably worth 100X any white or asian. At least politically... which is where power resides.

Perhaps that means that the issue is deeper. It isn't just okay to discriminate against whites and asians. Blacks are a rare commodity, at least ones that can succeed at Harvard and the ivy leagues want to make sure they get as many as they can. What though does that tell us of the importance of race and who is being worshiped just bc of their skin color?

Public vs private- I mean they both are tax exempt. One takes more in tax dollars.. so what? Do we have more control over the public school- not really.

Legacy means having a family member, usually a parent or grandparent, who graduated from that school. People benefiting from this are going to be disproportionately white.

I believe students getting in based on donations is the Dean's interest list or some similar term. Unfortunately, racist policies in the past, such as redlining, made it harder for some groups to build up generational wealth so this group is disproportionately white as well. I do agree that this group is probably small enough to be ignored if it was on its own. If it isn't, they should raise their cutoff for the amount of donations it requires until it is small enough.

As for athletics, those are very towards wealthier students. Lots of sports require expensive equipment or facilities to train in that poor students won't have access to. This impacts racial minorities for the same reasons as the above point.

> I think it's the large difference in scores by race that cause problems. And if you think it's unfair bc of upbringing.. how is putting them in with way more gifted students the answer

This assumes that differences in testing are the result of differences in ability. There are lots of reasons why someone might have lower scores on a standardized test or the SATs that aren't related to how smart they are. The children of wealthy parents are going to have access to better teachers, private tutoring in subjects they have trouble with, test prep, etc.

> Blacks are a rare commodity, at least ones that can succeed at Harvard

Why do you think this is the case?

Just over 2/5 of the white students at Harvard at ADLC admissions. These are overwhelmingly white. To make up for that imbalance, you need very biased admissions for non-ADLC students, indeed.

It's not a small number.