Low-income junior high-schools of course needs more money from the government than the high-income schools to combat equality issues. Because let's face it, it's the low-income people that struggle and always will, money IS power.
College admissions were based that way. And it disproportionately benefited white students, and affirmative action policies were implemented to combat that.
Think of Affirmative Action similar to weighted GPA's.
College Admissions attempted to take a population and normalize them to a pair of datapoints (GPA/SAT/ACT). Affirmative action policies attempted to weigh lower scores higher, factoring in historical biases.
A (white) friend explained it like this: Think of playing a game of monopoly and if you're white you start with 2x the money, and given 1/4 of the properties on the board. If you're black, you start with 1/2 the money, and the all prices are doubled. How likely is it for a black person to win?
Telling people that if only they had a different skincolor that maybe they would have made it. Making the focus on something you cant change is just poison.
If you fix the economic divide violence goes down, substance abuse go down, happiness goes up, and the major beneficiaries are minorities and the ones that will be hit the hardest are the majority group, no racism necessary.
The data on US household median income by race is well published data, and shows Black household income lags behind white household income. So yes, while I cannot tell exactly your financial situation, I can make an educated guess with some degree of certainty that if you are white, you were more likely to grew up in a household with higher income.
Educational attainment is also correlated to race as well. For whites 25 and older, 65% have had some form of college, compared to 55% blacks.
And is ONLY with race information. Add a zipcode, that certainty increases.
People are upset with Affirmative Action, because it is picking winners based on race. However those same people fail to recognize factors in their lives that have effectively picked them as winners. That is what society is referring to when they speak of "privileged."
> If you fix the economic divide violence goes down, substance abuse go down, happiness goes up, and the major beneficiaries are minorities and the ones that will be hit the hardest are the majority group, no racism necessary.
I think you've made my point--the economic divide correlates with race. You cannot fix the divide without first acknowledging that racism largely is responsible for it, and continues to further it.
You can link a source here, as I'm skeptical that this is actually true. That said, many minority students at elite institutions were already attending elite high schools on scholarship - so there is a kernel of truth there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_Action_Around_the_...
"They tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g. black millionaires), often to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g. poor whites)"
Affirmative action is important even to wealthy black families, if the goal is to mirror the mechanical flow of wealth in America's white families.
If we're just comparing anecdotes, as someone who attended one of these "elite" universities, this didn't seem to be the case at all.