You are not being massacred, and the 'war' is mostly based on willing misunderstanding, misattribution and the popular extolling of anger preachers.

Either my children will be rejected from universities even if they have perfect SATs and grades on the basis of their race or they will not. There is not much to misunderstand here.

Think you're focused on the wrong issue there. The most likely reason your child is unlikely to get into a good university is because good universities have consistently chosen not to increase class sizes in line with the number of qualified students apply, as a result your child is way less likely due to pure statistics to get in. That's because the schools are social institutions not academic ones.

The ratio of qualified students to good uni seats has always been overloaded. In the context of 'culture wars', the 'number of seats added' is not really a culture war issue. Also, there are tons of great universities in the US.

In 'culture wars' we have to have some way of allocating sets to 'the top schools', and it could be just 'SAT', family connections, entrance exam, race, class, etc.. Some groups feel slots should be allocated base on race, some feel otherwise. That one is actually a little bit complicated because although SATs do provide some basis of objective rigour, it's probably the most easily 'gamed' thing and to the extent it's 'gamed' it has little meaning. Do we really want to limit top uni entrance to the 0.1% of HS students spend all of their time preparing for 'A Big Test'? That might be a little bit counterproductive ... but then that 'test' was also one of the more objective metrics.

So it's complicated and a ripe area for 'culture war'.

16% of candidates to Harvard were accepted in 1992, this year that has dropped to 4%. So even if there is a problem with the selection criteria it’s likely marginal compared to the real issue which is the refusal of the top schools to actually meet demand despite clearly having the funds to do so.

" refusal of the top schools to actually meet demand "

Doesn't work that way.

Every student probably wants to go to Harvard, demand is unlimited. If they lowered the standards for example, there would be more applicants.

The number of applicants varies by all sorts of factors. Students probably have started applying to far more schools than otherwise. There are more total uni students, even if the number of seats across america has grown commensurate, the number of applications to Harvard will still go up.

Finally, Harvard probably wouldn't be Harvard if it were 10x bigger, moreover, they have no obligation to do so. They can do as they please, there are tons of good schools in America.

This is not the issue we face with selectivity and race/class/gender, that's a lot harder and it's a problem they cannot avoid.

How many schools did each candidate apply to in 1992 and in 2021?

In some contexts it is considered a bad look to tell people facing discrimination for their unchosen group membership that people of all groups face the same issue and their concerns about the issue are equally valid.

Allow me to explain the metaphor. When two sides shoot at each other that is called a war. When one side shoots the other that is called a massacre. Hence if another side starts shooting at you and isn't willing to negotiate, massacre or war are your two choices.

In "cultural war", this would correspond to one side trying to keep moving their positions forward. The either side either puts up a fight or they don't.

You've explained further proving that the original statement was wrong. Nobody is shooting at anyone.

And there's no culture war, because war involves death, bombs and stuff. Right, language, we find it useful to use concepts that don't literally apply because they might help us see similarities.

In that case, you don't need literal shooting and trenches. You can talk of wealth redistribution, where "we'll take from A and give to B" is an attack on A. It doesn't involve guns immediately (though it will if A doesn't "voluntarily" give up the goods), but it's useful as an analogy. What the commenters seem to imply is that, if A does not fight back (again, not literally with guns, but politically), they'll be massacred (again, not literally), their interests will not be considered at all.

If you wrote this ironically, then it is masterful. If not, it's tragic irony, as just got massacred by the other "side".

Yes, this made me laugh. “No, no way there is any issue with decisiveness, identify politics, or generalization of groups. The only issue is in fact with group B.”