@earl-of-trumps said
Mentioning economic background may be useful on financial aid forms but not
on admission forms to gain entrance to an institute of higher education.
We all know what is going on and talking in code words in just another way to
employ race as your real criterion.
oh, well. at least you know our plaint is for real.
You'd make a great lawyer. Do you specialize in loop holes?
Research has shown that students of color who are subjected to pervasive discrimination actually have biological and psychological responses which inhibit academic achievement:
"A recent study from Northwestern University corroborates Agostini’s experience, suggesting that the stress of racial discrimination may partly explain the persistent gaps in academic performance between some nonwhite students, mainly black and Latino youth, and their white counterparts.
The team of researchers found that the physiological response to race-based stressors—be it perceived racial prejudice, or the drive to outperform negative stereotypes—leads the body to pump out more stress hormones in adolescents from traditionally marginalized groups. This biological reaction to race-based stress is compounded by the psychological response to discrimination or the coping mechanisms youngsters develop to lessen the distress. What emerges is a picture of black and Latino students whose concentration, motivation, and, ultimately, learning is impaired by unintended and overt racism.
Emma Adam, a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern and the study’s senior author, said prior research had established racial differences in levels of cortisol—a hormone that increases when the body is stressed—between black and white youth, and linked this to the impact of discrimination. In the current research review, she and her co-authors set out to connect the dots. “We had observed these [dissimilarities] and knew that sleep and stress hormones have strong implications for cognition … we also knew that there was a strong racial gap in academic attainment.”
Two sources of stress encountered by black and Latino students and examined in the report are perceived discrimination—the perception that you will be treated differently or unfairly because of your race—and stereotype threat, the stress of confirming negative expectations about your racial or ethnic group. According to the paper, among this population of students, perceived discrimination from teachers was “related to lower grades, less academic motivation … and less persistence when encountering an academic challenge.” The study also found that the anxiety surrounding the stereotype of academic inferiority undermined students performing academic tasks."
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/10/how-the-stress-of-racism-affects-learning/503567/
The detrimental effects of racism are real and ignoring them just perpetuates their continuing harm. Any college admission program that willfully ignores such effects is being, at best, negligent.