Your article has no facts. Why don’t you stop spewing your ignorant filth every week and just shut up.

Mike, the public schools are doing just fine. You’re wrong to assume that public schools are good substitutes for good parents.

Ultimately, this isn’t a choice that the rich white suburbs are going to have to make for the poor black inner city. This is a choice that the inner city is going to have to make to abandon their current culture, sell-out, and join the rest of educated America. This choice starts at home.

Nice article, Mr. Hahn. It sure beats that crappy on you wrote a few weeks ago where you called draft dodgers cowards. Nice to see that you’ve finally decided to grow up.

You’re right, minority students do poorly in school, which is why they don’t make it in college, much less TO college.

As far as I’m concerned, I say let minorities get into college, but only after all the academically qualified applicants get in first. Then when the minority students who are not prepared for college-level coursework flunk out of school they’ll have no one to blame but themselves. You want a chance for a better life? Earn it!

“Why don’t you stop spewing your ignorant filth every week and just shut up.”

Why don’t you grow up and write something thoughtful and intelligent…and put a question mark at the end of a question? I’d tell you to shut up, but you’re too busy making a bitch of yourself.

I like the people who criticize articles, but they have to be the first ones at around 2 in the morning. Do you sit up at night and just wait for the new herald to come out? If you want to speak of ignorance Mr. 2 in the morning, you probably won’t have to look much further than yourself.

“Your article has no facts. Why don’t you stop spewing your ignorant filth every week and just shut up.”

Ignorant filth? Compared to what? You? Mike’s article sounds pretty down-to-earth to me. The only mention of ignorant filth here is the trash YOU wrote.

Look, minority students waste all their time in gangs, drugs and killing one another. They are fed this crap about how they’ll never make it, that the white man is to blame, etc. and they actually end up believing it all. And who tells them that? Their own leaders. How’d you like to be a black kid and have some civil rights activist roll into town and tell you that you’ll never make because of some white kid who’s really got better things to do than burning crosses in a black family’s yard? And that any effort on your part to better yourself is pointless? If you’re a black kid, that might make some sense for awhile and you’d be too young to know that you’re being brainwashed. But later on the truth will sink in. That black racist asshole who told you not to try was the real enemy all along, not the white kid sitting on the other side of the classroom with the laptop. So where do you go from there? Keep living the lie and continue blaming ‘Whitey’ for all your problems? Most minorities do.

Now before anyone jumps over to their computer and starts typing a bunch of race baiting crap at me, let me take this opportunity to point out a local effort in the black community that deserves a lot of accolades: 100 Black Men. Now there are some minorities who care about minority kids! Kwanzaa is another successful effort to instill pride and self-respect. Yes, there are people within minority communities who bend over backwards to counter the adversity minority kids face from without and within.

So if all the so-called ‘progressives’ like the one who posted about ‘ignorant filth’ would just open their eyes and see the light at the end of the tunnel, they’d realize they have part of the problem, not the solution. then perhaps they’d start to contribute something meaningful instead of lashing out at someone for telling the truth.

“Minority students may gain in their numbers at the universities across the state, but they will not have the skills they need to succeed. Such a disadvantage will only lead to a higher failure rate among minority students — not because they are less intelligent than their white peers, but because the system sought a quick and easy fix to a problem that may take years — and an entirely new approach — to fix.”

Isn’t intelligence the “skill” they lack, and need in order to succeed? A non-holistic admissions policy minimizes the importance of personal traits and their contribution to interaction among students. The admissions policy you recommend relies upon traditional metrics of intelligence (e.g. grades, test scores) that would supposedly maximize success for students admitted. So by your reasoning, wouldn’t the higher failure rate of minority students result because they’re less intelligent?

No reason to duck behind political correction on this one, Mike. We can tell what you’re really saying.

It’s the GAD (Give A Damn) factor.

The parents don’t GAD so the children don’t GAD. The public schools suck everywhere nobody GAD. The teachers don’t GAD except for their pay and their lucrative benefits.

Great article, Mike. The phrases, “affirmative action” and “race-conscious admissions policy” are both just euphemisms for “lower standards for blacks.” Attempting to achieve some vague concept of racial diversity by lowering the standards for minorities is a superficial quick fix that does not address the real issue: closing the achievement gap between whites and blacks.

In addition to the admissions policy, maybe the Regents should adopt a race-conscious grading policy. Under a race-conscious grading policy, when the under-qualified minority student is admitted and does poorly on an exam, the instructor will know to give the student some extra points to make up for the below average score. Just imagine how much this would help the retention rate of minority students! A race-conscious admissions policy combined with a race-conscious grading policy would allow the Regents to achieve their goal of increasing the number of minorities, and at the same time, improving the minority retention rate!

Public schools do exactly what they’re supposed to do: turn you into a patriotic capitalist sex-starved debt-ridden consumer.

Please, if you think high school prepares you for the work field, you’re crazy. In fact, a bachelor’s degree is the new high school diploma. See you at the drive through!

Jeez … when looking at all these comments above, it becomes obvious why most students of color feel out of place here. I’m just trying to figure out where the white students that attend public fit into this discussion. I mean … most the demographics within public schools in Wisconsin (all of it) are white students. Soooo … are the public schools just failing everyone?

“So by your reasoning, wouldn’t the higher failure rate of minority students result because they’re less intelligent?”

Yes, this is a fact that can’t be minimized just because you wish it wasn’t so.

“If the school systems from which most minority students could potentially come are not successful in teaching their students, then it is easy to see why there are so few minority students in the state university system…There must be a change in how students are taught in the classroom.”

The key word here is “teaching.” Kids are not commodities to be schooled or “taught.” The whole public school system cannot be reformed. It has too much interest in itself. Give kids more options and show that their time is valued. Kids don’t need to be schooled—if given enough private time, and the right bumps here and there, they do miraculously well educating themselves.

Why do we have such a reading problem in the States? We spend so much on it. Yet back in the 1800s, nearly everybody was reading.. 5th graders were reading what would be considered college material today. We are intentionally dumbing down our kids. We waste all their time in school, and we keep them in perpetual adolescence, addicted consumers to the latest toy or gizmo.

The only solution is unschooling. Even if you are the perfect public school student, you aren’t going to be prepared for university academics. You’ve been taught that you’re value depends on your grades and your self-esteem from your teacher. What happens when you get your first 30% on a calculus exam? Time to drop out, right?

Being well-schooled is very different from being well-educated. Look at how the top-tier private schools run. They actually cost next to nothing, despite their high tuitions. What they teach doesn’t cost much: personal responsibility, public interaction, leadership, creativity, and community. They don’t have computers in every classroom. They don’t fool around with “typing” classes. And they aren’t afraid of talking about religion.

Give kids respect and their own personal time. You’ll be surprised at the power of the individual.

I just wonder how parents are suppose to give a damn, when no one showed them the resources, like suburban parents or upper middle class individuals are continuously shown in their high schools, that would allow them to push their kids to college.

I think it’s really insulting to say that minorities should be let into this university only after the academically qualified candidates are let in. All the “minorities” that are here are all academically qualified - go ask a PEOPLE scholar, POSSE scholar, Chancellor/Powers Knapp Scholars, all the Indian (whose parents are from India) students on this campus and everyone else what their GPA was in high school and their ACT/SAT score and I guarantee you it’ll be similar to or most of the time higher than a white student’s score. God forbid that a black, Latin@, Native American, Indian, Southeast Asian should actually succeed on this campus without being judged by the color of their skin.

The article is well written and well reasoned. Making any kind of choice due to skin color is discrimination, pure and simple. Why is that so difficult for some people to understand?

“it’ll be similar to or most of the time higher than a white student’s score.”

The “Indian (whose parents are from India)” and Asians no doubt about it, but telling me that the average “black, Latin@, Native American,” have higher ACT/SAT scores is just pure BS.

Yeah, suburban kids are coddled by rich suburban parents and teachers until they are ready to be handed off to White Bread University.

The inner city parent, not giving a damn, stares at the wall all day, ignorant to the world around them. They say, “child, I don’t give a damn what you do. Education and learning are fine, but so is drug dealing and making babies. I wish I had gold teeth… what was I saying?”

C’mon, everyone gets what they earn. Being born on the wrong or right side of the tracks does not PREDETERMINE your life. If you PERSONALLY give a damn (GAD, from a previous post), you will find PERSONAL success. The ultimate blame lies with you.

“The ultimate blame lies with you.”

Truer words were never said.

First off, I respect your point of view. However, I feel that just from your article and some of these comments, that UW needs to immplement this policy. You have people posting what they think a typical minority thinks and acts like(which further demonstrates a lack of diversity). I came to UW through the Posse scholarship-and no, posse does not only give its scholarship to disadvantaged minority kids. Rather, they search for people that try to learn and understand other people’s perspectives. And from yours, I feel that you are one sided. You do not know(nor do the people posting generalizations know) what it is like to grow up in the inner city and attend a second or even third rate high school. And no, I did not have to play catch up. I worked hard and recieved a a GREAT GPA. Although I agree that public schools need to improve, I do not agree with the fact that it is only minority students that have problems catching up. You regret to mention that there is also a majority of white students who attended high schools that do not place them on a college track. So, wouldnt that suggest that maybe it is not the difficulty of the education, but the environment minorities are placed in? If I was a high school student interested in Madison, I would not expect a warm welcoming. Maybe this reaction is what you seek or maybe you are just reinforcing the implementation of this policy. You may think that a this new policy is fundamentally racist, but on a campus that is approx. 96% white, I think a little culture would do no harm. I think UW students need to know that when they go into the world, that consist of more then 100 people, they are going to be confronted with other cultures- not just white. Oh yeah, I think for your next piece, you should interview posse scholars, people scholars, or any minority you might just so happen to run into and do some real investigative journalism. One does not need to ponder so long to realize why companies say UW is lacking culture… p.s. to the person that said, “As far as I’m concerned, I say let minorities get into college, but only after all the academically qualified applicants get in first.” - to be considered academic is to encompass knowledge of culture- reading a book about the ghetto does not count…So I guess that you will be one of those people who miss out.

love, UW Madison’s Minority, Minority student :-)

Well put 8:52.

good job 8:52

UW-Madison needs some culture, and by the looks of the previous comments, no one has any

It’s no wonder few students of color choose to attend UW-Madison. To be surrounded by a bunch of ignorant, bigoted, racist white people 24/7 must be quite draining and distracting. I wonder where the ignorant white bigot who wrote this column and the others that commented anonymously got their “schooling”; obviously they didn’t get an education in anything except white racism. They are pathetic!