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I had a similar experience when I was in grad school, I’m a white guy with middle/lower middle class parents. invariably the people whom were getting (I assume, i didn’t see their records) affirmative action benefits were overwhelmingly attractive women from more privileged backgrounds. It was one of the lived experiences which completely turned me off on the left and on academia more generally
This is what got me in law school. I was one of the poorest students in the class, had never met a lawyer until college, and really struggled to keep my head above water, but received essentially zero institutional support. Meanwhile I had to watch the privileged children of biglaw attorneys and Wall Street bankers get handed cushy paid internships, specialized career counseling, additional academic support, and special access to important alumni because of their "underprivileged" minority status. It's really hard to have positive feelings about social justice when you're watching your friends who are already richer, better educated, and better connected than you get literally tens of thousands of dollars worth of free shit because of the color of their skin, and then still have the audacity to ask for (and receive) extensions on their final exams because they were traumatized by some cop being an asshole a thousand miles away.
I've seen too many children of Yale graduates benefit from affirmative action to support affirmative action.
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I’m curious. Why do you think they were getting AA, rather than benefiting from elite backgrounds?
I went to a not-terribly-selective school in the Midwest. There were two big contingents that suggested “privileged background”: Greek life and foreign exchange. You could see either wearing branded clothes, throwing around money, and generally not taking the school part as seriously. But I’d have a harder time picking out anyone I’d assume was getting AA.
Well, unless you count sports.
Because people who benefit from elite backgrounds generally have the benefits that make them deserve it.
When your parent is able to homeschool you and groom you into an elite, you generally end up with the skills to get where you need to without any direct support from them.
But I suppose my definition of elite is the genuine American Aristocracy rather than someone's dad owning a car dealership.
If you had to ballpark...how large a percentage of the American population is the aristocracy?
Depends on where you are, the truly idle rich in my area are probably the top 2 % , but they are clustered here so likely less than 1‰ globally.
So - as a rough ballpark estimate - around the top 0.1 percent in America? That makes sense. Doctor tier salary is doing very well, but you wouldn't call them straight-up aristocrats...maybe either jumped-up tradesmen or managers or very bushleague aristocrats, not the real deal. IMHO you're not rich until you've got $15 million in the bank (and so don't have to work unless you want to) and you're not rich rich 'till you're making five million a year.
I put it more at around 3 million invested so it throws out a good yearly salary in returns. Otherwise unburdened and you can do whatever you want without too much hardship, at least enough to get free housing from someone who matters.
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