| Who is the most underprivileged? 1) A Bangladeshi immigrant whose parents entered the US as economic refugees 2) A Uyghur immigrant whose parents entered the US as political refugees 3) A rust-belt white whose family and community was ravaged by the opioid crisis 3) A descendent of black slaves whose parents were economy oppressed by Jim Crow and Redlining How many "credits" do you give to someone who experienced food insecurity? What about the death of a family member? Do they get bonus points if it was a violent death? If so how much? The more you dig into these subjective measurements, the less it measures the candidate and the more you end up measuring the measurer. Society cannot find right answer to this kind of question intellectually, instead it can only be determined politically. If we go down this path, the the answer we get will be a reflection who the winning political faction is, and what their prejudices are. Today, it is the hyper race-conscious left against Asian Americans. Yesterday, it was white elites against Jews. Tomorrow, who knows? I agree that GPAs, SATs, and economic hardship are imperfect measures of merit. But what's important is that they are systems that can be interrogated for their inner workings. You can arrive at a decent understanding of how and what is being measured. However, the act of "privilege measurement" is so muddy as to be an enormous invitation for prejudice to seep in. |