The Daily Princetonian has an article on possible discrimination against Asian-American applicants:
Asian applicants may face discrimination in the admission process at many elite universities, according to data from a recent study conducted by sociology professor Thomas Espenshade GS ’72.
According to the data, not all races are considered equal in the college admissions game. Of students applying to private colleges in 1997, African-American applicants with SAT scores of 1150 had the same chances of being accepted as white applicants with 1460s and Asian applicants with perfect 1600s.
The results of the study come three years after Jian Li, a rejected Princeton applicant, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. He alleged in the complaint that he had been discriminated against based on his race when he was denied admission to the University.
Espenshade noted that he did not initially use the word “discrimination” when discussing the results of his study. Though he found a 140-point SAT score discrepancy between accepted white and Asian students, he did not have access to what he called “soft variables,” like extracurriculars and teacher recommendations.
This is not a new issue. Almost twenty years ago, I attended a high school with a large Asian-American population, and many of my Asian classmates worried even back then that their racial background would be a disadvantage in competing for admission to elite universities. Back in the 1990s, a University of California official famously remarked that a race-blind admissions policy at his institution would be unacceptable because it would lead to a student body dominated by Asians [unfortunately, I cannot find an online link to this quote; if readers can find it, please e-mail me]. An admissions policy that seeks to ensure that each racial or ethnic group is represented in rough proportion to their percentage of the general population is likely to disadvantage groups such as Asian-Americans, whose academic credentials lead them to be “overrepresented” in a system with race-blind admissions.
The Asian-American case also highlights the contradiction between the compensatory justice and diversity rationales for affirmative action in admissions; I previously wrote about the tensions between the two here and here. If the goal of affirmative action is to compensate minority groups who have been victimized by discrimination for the injustices they have suffered, many Asian-American groups deserve not only equal treatment but racial preferences. Chinese and Japanese-Americans, for example, were victimized by extensive state-sponsored discrimination — culminating in the internment of some 150,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II, despite the fact that none were ever proven to be enemy spies, and very few showed any signs of disloyalty. It’s true, of course, that these groups are relatively affluent today. But that fact has little relevance to issues of compensatory justice. If you steal from someone and they later strike it rich, that does not diminish the validity of their claims for compensation. Numerous Japanese-Americans lost their property and livelihoods as a result of the World War II internments. Even if they or their descendants are well off today, they could be doing still better if fully compensated for their unjust losses. This analysis implicitly assumes that today’s Asian-Americans are worse off than they otherwise would be as a result of the discrimination suffered by their ancestors. But that assumption is very similar to the one that underlies the compensatory justice rationale for affirmative action for African-American and Latino applicants, most of whom also did not directly experience the bulk of the historic racial injustices suffered by their respective groups.
If, on the other hand, the goal of affirmative action is to promote “diversity” for the sake of ensuring that each ethnic group is represented by a “critical mass” in the student body sufficient to educate other students about their culture, then the lack of affirmative action for Asian-Americans becomes more understandable. Because of their impressive academic credentials, a critical mass of Asian students can be achieved even without affirmative action preferences. However, this conclusion may be overstated. “Asians” are not a monolithic group. Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, and Cambodians all have very different cultures. Indeed, immigrants from one part of India or China often have different cultures and speak different languages from those hailing from other parts of the same nation. Treating them all as an undifferentiated mass of “Asian-Americans” is a bit like saying that Norwegians, Italians, and Bulgarians are basically the same because they are “Europeans.” If diversity is really the goal, university administrators should do away with the artificial “Asian-American” category altogether and start considering each group separately. They should do the same for the many groups usually lumped together as “white” or “Hispanic.” A university that already has a critical mass of native-born-WASPS might well not have a critical mass of Utah Mormons or Eastern European immigrants.
Obviously, I am well aware that the Supreme Court, in its 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger ruled that diversity is a permissible objective for the use of racial preferences in admissions, while compensatory justice is not. In my view, the Court got things backwards. At least in principle, I think it may be justifiable to use racial classifications to compensate large-scale injustices, while I am much more skeptical of the diversity rationale. In this post, however, I want to focus on the ways in which the Asian-American case highlights the tensions between the two theories. Both defenders and critics of affirmative action often assume that the two rationales for it are largely interchangeable and mutually reinforcing. In reality, they have radically different implications for admissions policy.
UPDATE: Since the issue of affirmative action nearly always attracts far more heat than light and often leads to ad hominem attacks on motives, I suppose I should note that I do not intend this post as some kind of indirect attack on the legality of affirmative action. Indeed, I think that private universities such as Princeton should be free to engage in whatever kind of affirmative action they want. With respect to public universities, I think the constraints should be tighter, but I agree with the Court’s ruling in Grutter to the extent that I don’t think all AA at public institutions is necessarily unconstitutional. That said, I don’t have much to say about the general pros and cons of affirmative action that has not already been said umpteen times by others. The more narrow point discussed in the post, however, is one that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, which is why I have raised it in several blog posts, including this one.
803,2 says:
Well said, Professor. Come back to Penn!
Quote
October 17, 2009, 1:59 amBrian says:
For one easy example of a school that uses a solely test-based admission system, look at Stuyvesant High School, a magnet school in New York City. The student body in 2008–2009, according to the linked article, was 67% Asian, 27% Caucasian, 2% Black, 3% Hispanic.
The way Asians are treated in college admission really puts the lie to the stated motives of affirmative action proponents. It’s not about “diversity”, or “making sure that students from all backgrounds are represented”, or “compensating for past injuries”; it’s not even aimed at hurting the historically powerful white majority. It’s only about promoting a few specific races and playing off everyone else’s historic guilt. We will of course ignore the historic hardships of students whose extended families were killed off in the Holocaust, or whose families lost everything in the U.S.‘s panicked anti-Asian frenzy during the same time period; they obviously don’t count.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 2:24 amtvk says:
I think that private universities such as Princeton should be free to engage in whatever kind of affirmative action they want.
Interesting. Surely you would not say the same if we replaced “affirmative action” with “racial discrimination.” Plenty of people equate the two. And really, if you don’t think that affirmative action is racial discrimination in some sense, why be skeptical of it at all, even for public universities? Except for the fact that the 14th amendment prohibits racial discrimination, shouldn’t public universities get to admit anyone they want, too?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 2:54 amJ. Aldridge says:
Affirmative action has nothing to do with the protection of laws of due process in the administration of justice. IOW, denial of admission is not the denial of the equal protection of due process by some affirmative act of the state by statue or through its constitution.
There has never been any constitutional basis for the court to call affirmative action a constitutional requirement.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 3:28 amBruce Hayden says:
I watched the undergraduate admissions this last year, and my impression is just the opposite of that here, in that Asians seemed to be getting a very slight nudge over Whites at the eastern elite schools, and in particular, the small liberal arts schools on the East Coast.
But I think that you also have to take into account that many schools really do look for diversity, and when ten very bright Asians of the same culture from the same high school apply at the same college, often they are likely not all going to be taken, even if academically they are a bit better than the average pool for the college. So, Chinese or Vietnamese from CA are likely going to be disadvantaged in comparison to those of the same ethnic heritage from, say, Minnesota. And, the Asians I knew who got into some very good colleges this year were coming from areas with fairly low (Eastern) Asian populations.
The other thing though that you have to take into account is that not all Asians are created equal. After all, I would guess that more than 1/3 of the people on this planet are “Asian”, with that term taking in peoples ranging from Pacific islands (like the Philippines and Japan) all the way into the Middle East, and includes Orientals as well as Caucasians, both of many different types and races.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 3:51 amPhili says:
“According to the data, not all races are considered equal in the college admissions game.”
You don’t say.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 3:56 amtrotsky says:
Is there any difference between discriminating against Asians — which is what it is — and the old Ivy League quotas to keep Jews from dominating the campus?
I mean, there’s no real anti-Asian sentiment the way there was real anti-Semitic feelings back in the day, but as a practical matter, it’s a new generation of immigrants who just work too hard.
Of course, the winners in the modern affirmative-action game are not an old elite clinging to its privileges. I probably wouldn’t appreciate the distinction, though, if I were an 17-year-old Korean-American who’d busted my butt for straight A’s.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 3:56 amBruce Hayden says:
The Asians could do what the Jews have done in this country. Back when I was in college, many of the elite colleges still had Jewish quotas. Not being Jewish, I was unaware of them, but then I dated a Jewish woman in the early 1970s who had graduated from Brown. She apparently went there because it was one of the few schools of that caliber at the time that did not apparently have a Jewish quota. (And she was not happy when she found that I had a lot of friends in a suburb next to the one she had grown up in that didn’t allow Jews to live there).
Now, Jews have pretty much disappeared into the “White” category, but having some of the same characteristics that we attribute to many East Asian cultures, make up a hugely greater percentage of the students at the Elite colleges than they have in the general population. Which, from my point of view, is just fine.
And, I think that this may come to pass with Asian Americans, being subsumed in a common European/Asian category. Right now, it isn’t happening because Asians are welcomed as “people of color” (versus all of us who are “people of pallor”), swelling the ranks there. And, Asians may still benefit from Affirmative Action in the job market. But that will disappear within a generation or so. And then, I think, they will be willing to join with, and disappear into, a common category with those of (Non-Hispanic) European stock. And, this may be hastened by a fairly high intermarriage rate with other demographic groups (esp. as compared to Blacks).
Quote
October 17, 2009, 4:09 amPhili says:
“I watched the undergraduate admissions this last year, and my impression is just the opposite of that here, in that Asians seemed to be getting a very slight nudge over Whites at the eastern elite schools”
Well, of course over whites. Anything is better than a white. Yellows compared to everything but whites, however...
Quote
October 17, 2009, 4:12 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Asian-American Applicants … School’s Rate says:
[...] the original post here: The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Asian-American Applicants … By admin | category: american school | tags: ais, asian, child, classmates-worried, coast, [...]
TheBadness says:
At the risk of sounding socialist (the horror), lending greater weight to economic background might be a better means of achieving diversity. Deciding the school needs at least X% of students from a given racial/ethnic background just gets messy.
Moreover, for the racially-minded, it still serves as a decent proxy for race (at least in the US). And poor kids of all races currently get shafted by most states’ formal educational systems, as well as by their (relatively) limited access to informal education.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 7:00 amPeteP says:
affirmative action is nothing but government sanctioned politically correct reverse racism.
“Indeed, I think that private universities such as Princeton should be free to engage in whatever kind of affirmative action they want.”
So, you don’t mind it if they say ‘We want to enroll 500 blacks next year, or xx %, etc, in preference over any other race that applies’ ? What if you changed that word ‘black’ to some other color ? Still OK ? Do you feel that private employers should have the same right ?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 7:32 ammikeyes says:
What are the odds that a private university, whose endowment is dependent on alumni contributions, is going to have a radically different student body in the course of one year?** In the long run a private university is more likely to increase its endowment by choosing superior students since they have the best chance of making a lot of money as individuals and are likely to give a portion of that money back.
Penn seems like a good example. Just look at the names of the buildings and you will see that they did not discriminate against Jews the way some of the other Ivy League schools did in the last century. When my son went there he liked to say that the school was “30% Asian American and 98% Jewish.” Penn was founded by Ben Franklin as a response to all the upper class dominated schools in the region. He wanted to educate intelligent boys and give them a chance to compete against the more privileged Easterners. This philosophy seems to have worked out pretty well.
** My own school, Holy Cross, did have that happen. They became co-ed in 1972. Instead of an alumni revolt, however, the graduates were glad that all of their children could go there. So some change is good.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 8:29 amPorkchop says:
Brian says:
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, Virginia (named the best public high school in the country by the U.S. News & World Report rankings in 2008 and 2009) has similar statistics. Asian students constitute an increasing proportion of the student body. The class of 2012 has a plurality of Asians, and the class of 2013 has a majority of Asians at 54.2%. The school’s largest racial group is still Caucasian (at about 54.28%), with Asian students next (at about 35.93%). (At TJ, a calculation to hundredths of a percent is still “approximate.”) If present trends continue, the school will be majority Asian in another couple years.
One of my daughters graduated from TJ in 2008, is Asian-American, and didn’t get into Princeton. She is now happily ensconced elsewhere — the world does not end (at least for most people) when you don’t get into Princeton. While race may have had something to do with her not getting into Princeton, Bruce Hayden has a very good point (actually quite a number of them). There is another factor that applies to graduates of places like Stuyvesant and TJ — a different kind of diversity. With a limited number of places to fill, admissions offices at schools like Princeton also seem to limit admissions of graduates from any one high school. That is an issue even within Virginia, as UVA and Virginia Tech are usually inundated with applications from TJ grads and do not accept all of them.
My daughter is extremely bright, if I may say so, but so were the other 400+ members of her class — it does not surprise or offend us that she wasn’t admitted everywhere she applied, even if in our opinion she was a better candidate than, say, one of her classmates who was admitted to Princeton. Actually, it seems that one of the factors that made a difference was height — the Ivies tended to favor rowers (TJ being more or less dominant in crew in Northern Virginia over the years) — the crew members who were tall enough to continue to row in college generally did a bit better in the admissions process. My daughter was tall enough and good enough to row in the Women’s Varsity 8 in high school, but would not have been competitive in college. One of her taller teammates (who is also incredibly bright) now rows for Princeton.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 8:47 amruuffles says:
Make a Solomon-type Amendment to prohibit consideration of race in admissision decisions at universities receiving federal money. Perhaps unlikely to pass under a Democratic congress, but why wasn’t it proposed between 1994 and 2006?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 9:06 am11-B/20.B4 says:
As this discussion moves forward, please remember that only nonwhites can provide diversity. There are many kinds of blacks, many nationalities of asians, and many shades of brown. There is only one white, and they are all the same.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 9:16 amKen Arromdee says:
So, you don’t mind it if they say ‘We want to enroll 500 blacks next year, or xx %, etc, in preference over any other race that applies’ ? What if you changed that word ‘black’ to some other color ? Still OK ? Do you feel that private employers should have the same right ?
Obviously he does. It’s a standard libertarian idea–private individuals have to be free to do both good and bad things. Whether he likes it is irrelevant to whether it should be allowed. (Though you could make a case that students who go there should not be allowed government-funded student loans.)
Quote
October 17, 2009, 9:16 amjb9054 says:
And so it will come to pass:
There will be white Princeton diplomas, black Princeton diplomas, and Asian Princeton diplomas. They will have vastly different values in the job market, representing different degrees of achievement. So will the diplomas from State U. (1150 vs 1460 vs 1600 SATs, and similar differences in GREs and prof school admission tests).
Then there will be white, black, and Asian MD degrees, and JD degrees, and teaching certificates, and CPAs, and engineers, ad nauseam.
Then when you are in the Emergency Room, and you see two doctors working there, you will be justified in saying a silent prayer that you get the white one, or the Asian one, because everyone knows that black doctors are not as smart.
Then having a black public defender will be prima facie evidence of ineffective counsel when appealing a conviction.
Is everybody happy now?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 9:32 amMatt says:
Attempting compensatory justice for events increasingly receding into the more distant past becomes challenging because Blacks and Hispanics are not monolithic — and the parts of each group that affirmative action is designed to target are probably those benefiting least. At Ivy campuses now, a near or true majority of Black students are children of recent African immigrants, quite possibly descendants of slavers as much as slaves. Hispanics in the Ivies tend to be whiter and more affluent than the general group. More targeted policies would be better at effecting compensatory benefits to groups historically disadvantaged by the United States.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 10:13 amerp says:
It’s disgraceful that college admission (and everything else for that matter) isn’t based on a racial/ethnic neutral test with the top candidates receiving admission. Let every candidate sink or swim on his/her own merits. If the top spots in elite institutions are all Asian. Congratulations and welcome.
Trying to artificially create “diversity” is like trying to even out a wobbly three legged stool by taking a little off each leg. It usually ends up by the stool sitting on the ground with all its legs cut off.
Only when we are all Americans and not mere hyphens, will there be true diversity.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 10:14 amcaliforniamom says:
As a mother of kids in high school I see how affirmative action has made race relations worse, not better. The Asian and white kids work harder to overcome the discrimination in college acceptances they know will come. They resent the black and Hispanic kids who will get a leg up solely based on skin color (after all they all go to the same high school and live in the same neighborhood), and they know it’s just not right. All the National Merit winners were Asian or white, by the way. One day our leaders may wake up and see that creating resentment based on race among those who will be the future leaders is not a healthy thing for our country.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 10:25 amtroll_dc2 says:
Maybe some wealthy Asian-Americans might take a look at Brandeis, Yeshiva, and other such places and start up their own institutions of higher education.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 10:37 amjcm says:
Why is diversity a good?
Because it gives students a better education through an environment closer to the real world. So minorities are used to boost the education of whites. Diversity or students are not an end but a mean .
Why is color blind admission a bad?
If you allows the better based only on SAT you will have in the Universities the people that will be able to profit
from it and will give the better product to society. Who cares about the skin color of the person who discovered a cure for cancer or a vaccine for malaria?
So you were admitted in the University for been ... so not because you are smart and hard working . Are you proud?
You are now a lawyer . How do you know if you are a good lawyer or you got your grades only because you are ...
You have a point asian from Japan are not the same as iranians. And hispanic are not a unity either.
Hispanic don´ t see them as the same people. They share the same religion, heritage and language. They were even closer from each other than the 13 colonies but there is no US of Colombia.
They are racial diverse , look at the Yankees. from A-Rod to Posada to Cano or Rivera.Bbtw: Texeira is a portuguese surname, does he count as Latino? Some time a go the Census Bureau said that they will include the option of race for hispanic. Many of them see themselves as whites. And I will surprised if they dont use the option. Racial , class and national prejudices are pervasive in Latinamerica.If you have time to waste , watch venezuelan soap opera , especially from Venevision( a network owned by a exiled cuban supporter of Chavez) You wont see ever an afro-descendant but as house maid. You will watch more racist jokes in 5 minutes than in your whole life in the USA. Or see ESPN in spanish and you will heard the mexican soccer commenter attacking the national team for allowing nationalized players. They want a mexican born players only policy . Do you rally want to allow venezuelans in the University because they are hispanics and discriminated. Most venezuelan in the USA are high class people , specially people that made money thanks to relationship with the government , current and past. Most of them despise american people. You wont see an afro-descendant as part of the government. There was one and he was the target of racist jokes by the President You really think you owe anything to them?
In conclusion hispanic cant be the basis of affirmative action unless you qualify it by race and income. Or you will be given to the one that already have and taking away from the has not
Disclaimer: Im Venezuelan, born in the USA. I have spanish, african, native, german and french blood. In nor white neither black. And I dont live in the USA so the Castañeda precedent does not apply to me
Quote
October 17, 2009, 11:01 amBill says:
Ironically the Daily Princetonian reported three years ago about the federal civil rights complaint filed by Jian Li against Princetion. Li acheived a perfect score on the SAT and was denied admission.
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2006/11/13/16544/
Quote
October 17, 2009, 11:02 amSeamus says:
At least in principle, I think it may be justifiable to use racial classifications to compensate large-scale injustices, while I am much more skeptical of the diversity rationale.
But if we serious about justifying affirmative action on the basis of compensatory justice (rather than simply as a racial spoils system), we’d have to stop giving a leg up to children of recent immigrants from Africa, whose ancestors never suffered from slavery and its aftermath. Immigrants like, say, Barack Obama, Sr. (We’d also, by the way, have to distinguish between the recent flood of immigrants from East Asia and the descendants of East Asians who came here in the late 19th century and suffered the racial discrimination of that era. But they don’t seem to be getting that many benefits, anyway, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.) The diversity justification makes it easy for us to act like the person mixing up a bag of M&Ms, who just looks at color and says, “It looks like we need to add a few more of color X to make the mix come out right.”
Quote
October 17, 2009, 11:12 amq says:
Since AA is used in the majority of schools, the biggest benefactors are middle-class and affluent blacks and Hispanics while the biggest losers are poor Asians, especially Asians who have been historically poor and uneducated (e.g. Hmongs). But despite this obvious social injustice, you will rarely see AA supporters advocate for admissions based on economic factors rather than racial factors. Why? I think it’s because racial AA supporters only care about having schools signal racial diversity. Even I have to admit I would feel uncomfortable if all of America’s colleges were dominated by Asians, which would likely be the case even under economic AA. And who cares about the welfare of the poor and the detrimental effects of unequal educational opportunities when the elites’ feelings are at stake?
This is why racial AA advocates will never split the races into finer categories. Because poor whites look like WASPs and Hmongs look like me. This is why Professor Somin is correct when he states AA policy clearly does not reflect any concern about compensatory justice.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 11:21 amConstantin says:
Asian Americans will get a fair shake from the diversity racket when a higher proportion of them start voting reliably for Democrats. That’s really the short version of this story.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 11:38 amruuffles says:
Approximately the same percent of Asians voted for Obama as did Hispanics.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 11:44 amU.Va. Grad says:
You’re barking up the wrong tree: I feel confident saying that Ilya wouldn’t care in the least if Princeton called it “racial discrimination” instead of “affirmative action.” As Ken Arromdee notes above, it’s relatively standard libertarian thought that private entities are free to discriminate however they please, and that it doesn’t matter whether it’s called “racism” or “affirmative action” or whatever. The government, on the other hand, has constitutional constraints on what it can do. Thus, it’s not at all inconsistent to say that private universities can practice whatever discrimination they like, while public universities must operate within constitutional limits.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 12:17 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
Again, if we’re really serious about diversity as an essential component of education, we need to bring back anti-miscegenation laws to protect our long-term supply of ‘diverse’ people.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 12:19 pmRSF677 says:
Ilya’s proposal to base admissions on more narrowly tailored ethnic groups may create more diversity, but it would just shift the most disproportionate discrimination from Asians to another ethnic group. I would imagine that any admission office looking for a more diverse array of white students could most easily solve this problem by dramatically reducing the number of Jewish admissions. I’m not in favor of this solution, but when a group makes up 2% of the population and 25% of undergrads at many elite institutions this seems like the logical consequence of such a policy.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 12:21 pmChrisTS says:
A number of commenters mention applicants’ SAT scores, but these are not the sole consideration in college placement. In fact, insofar as SAT scores are not good predictors of success in college, they should not be relied upon (as many colleges have begun to recognize).
Most higher ed institutions want ‘diversity’ of many kinds: of talents, of skills, of interests, as well as of economic and ‘ethnic’ background. Such diversity reflects the world in which our graduates will live, and it makes for a more lively and stimulating environment. The desire for a homogenous student body is long past on most campuses. Even faculty, who want the ‘best students,’ do not want students from the same socio-economic or ethnic group; most do not want students of a single religious perspective.
We are no longer educating gentlemen for the life of the gentlemen’s class.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 1:43 pmCato The Elder says:
Insofar SAT scores are the best single predictor of undergraduate success, they should be relied upon, of course.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 2:17 pmDjDiverDan says:
Last I checked, the 14th Amendment still provided, in relevant part, as follows:
Assuming that the Affirmative Action you are talking about is something beyond outreach programs, to ensure that minorities know about opportunities and apply for openings in a public college or university (with admissions still to be determined on a racially blind basis), then you must be approving of granting some college or university applicants an advantage in admissions based solely on their race (or religion, or gender, or national origin). Please explain to me just how that squares with the required “equal protection of the laws” under the 14th Amendment. Frankly, there are only two ways I can imagine to square the kind of AA you are really talking about (and the kind which the majority approved in Grutter v. Bollinger) with the 14th Amendment.
The first way is the same way Justice Brown did it in Plessy v. Ferguson -“separate but equal.” You can either accept “separate but equal” (and necessarily reject Brown v. Board of Education, which finally rejected that as a tenable Constitutional position in Equal Protection cases), or reject AA which grants advantages based upon race, gender, religion, or national origin. You just can’t have your cake and eat it too.
The second way is to pretend that the Equal Protection Clause doesn’t really mean “equal” and doesn’t really apply “in all cases” — that whenever you (or any majority of the Supreme Court you can muster) view the justification important enough, and the need great enough, you are free to just ignore the “equal” part, and put in any fudge factor sufficient to achieve your goal.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 3:24 pmSuperSkeptic says:
The compensatory justice rationale is discredited and unsupportable, which leaves only the diversity rationale by default. Even if one accepts Grutter and the diversity rationale, it should be obvious to everyone that there is no “fair” way to implement any such scheme except for straight quotas. Now the debate has merely shifted to characterization of the classifications to accurately define the ethnic groups (which is patently impossible absent DNA — and maybe even impossible then). This is a waste of time. Let’s get on with the quotas or not. Anyone who supports AA, have the courage of your convictions.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 3:31 pmsecond history says:
This is another reason to remove government from public education. I agree that private universities should be able to decide who gets admitted (legacies, anyone?). The public university system should also be abolished. The University of California system received only $3.2 billion (15%) of a nearly $19 billion budget from the state in FY 08–09. This effectively makes UC a private university system, and the money saved by the state by fully privatizing the system should go to deficit reduction or tax reform.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 4:04 pmtvk says:
U.Va. Grad., perhaps you accurately state Ilya’s beliefs on this matter, but I tend to think not. It may be that the end of libertarian logic is the result that private entities may racially discriminate to their hearts’ content. But most people are pragmatic enough to retreat from advocating a world where Princeton could hang out the “No Blacks need apply” sign.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 4:24 pmSuperSkeptic says:
But nobody but the children of the rich will receive an education? Have you no heart?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 4:31 pmPerseus says:
I don’t want a group of significantly inferior students in order to indulge some aesthetic taste for diversity as if the university were some sort of oriental bazaar for faculty (who desires, of course, come first and foremost) and students (and speaking of religion, I don’t hear much talk among faculty about needing a critical mass of conservative Christians). It does little to advance the educational process (and does much to hinder it), and it distracts from the critical task of the university, which is to expose students precisely to that which they are unlikely to encounter in the course of their everyday lives–the views of the best (and diverse) thinkers.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 4:38 pmB-Rob says:
One race neutral explanation for lower admission rates: “concentration concentration”. For example, at my alma mater, a lack of lab space meant that anyone professing an interest in “pre-med”, or listing a prospective major in bio or chemistry went into the “pre-med” pile. That pile, in the end, had a lower admission rate than the general pool because of the limited number of lab slots. So when a public school superintendent mentioned not liking my school because they did not admit one of his best students ever, an Asian female, I said “Let me guess. She was premed, wasn’t she?” Yes, she was. Which is another reason why I, personally, would NEVER instruct an Asian student to identify as a premed or a science major if the school doesn’t require admission into an individual college.
Anecdotally, my ex (who interviewed for one of the HYP schools) noted that Asian students typically had far fewer extracurriculars than non-Asian students. No football or soccer, no drama or speech and debate team. They tended to play piano or violin on their own, never guitar in a rock band. When you see very similar applicants over and over again, how do they distinguish themselves? Compare that, however, to a classmate of mine who was Korean-American and starting fullback on his western Pennsylvania football team. Or my counselee, an Asian female who played hockey and soccer. Hello Ivy League!
What I would like to see is the admissions rate of Asian students with non-science and non-premed backgrounds; the admission rates of Asian students who played varsity sports; and the admission rates of Asian students who were actors in high school. If those subsets have the same or similarly low admission rates, then you know that it is anti-Asian discrimination.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:10 pmB-Rob says:
Ruuff, you just violated the first rule of conservative thought: don’t let facts get in the way of a great talking point. It does not matter that Obama got about 70% of the Asian vote in 2008 because the talking point relies on conservatives BELIEVING that Asians get screwed by Dems because they vote R.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:16 pmbgates says:
the talking point relies on conservatives BELIEVING that Asians get screwed by Dems because they vote R.
Whereas in fact Democrats are just racists.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:28 pmB-Rob says:
Simply not true. I went to one of those fancy East Coast schools. The Whites from Florida, Alabama and Oklahoma were QUITE DIFFERENT from the dominant DC-Boston corridor Whites. If you were White and applying from a school in Montana or Miami, you had a much better shot at being admitted than if you went to Choate or came from NYC, regardless of race. The kid I know who probably got in the easiest was the straight A linebacker from Alabama who was Black; he roomed with a British rugby player — you just don’t see many of those kinds of applicants in your pool.
There are many different kinds of diversity that colleges try to achieve: geographic, racial, religious, interest, extracurricular, intended major, etc. Race is one among many elements of diversity, so the obsessive concentration on race by the conservatives makes me think there is some other “issue” here for them . . . .
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:29 pmB-Rob says:
Yeah, the Dems are racists. That’s why both minorities and college educate Whites vote overwhelmingly for Dems. They are just all so confused as to who the real racists are . . . .
Seriously, as long as the GOP and the conservatives have so few minorities on their side, they might not want to go around accusing the other side of being “racist.” I would dare you to survey a random sample of 1,000 Hispanics and Asians and Blacks and ask which party they think is more racist, and why, but I think we all know what the answer would be, don’t we?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:35 pmsbron says:
“Indeed, I think that private universities such as Princeton should be free to engage in whatever kind of affirmative action they want.”
There is something sick about libertarianism if its adherents believe racism is acceptable just because it is practiced by private entities.
Most of the pressure for racial preferences, at least in the Southwest, stems from Latino politicians and their white Democratic allies. In fact, the former president of the Univ. of Calif., Robert Dynes, publicly expressed the hope that an increasingly Latino electorate would overturn that states’ proposition 209.
The battle against racial preferences could have been won in California, if it hadn’t been for the massive influx of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many of whom are illegal, aided and abetted by Libertarians. But here’s the interesting part. About 50% of K-12 students in California are now Latino. How long will preferences be tenable, if they are eventually used once again by the majority, in this case Latino, to discriminate against white and Asian minorities?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:42 pmConstantin says:
(1) That’s why I wrote “reliably.” How about going back before 2008–when many minority voters had one-time reasons for voting for Barack–and then get back to me. Gore won amongst Asians 55%-45%, for example.
(2) “Hispanic votes” include Cuban-Americans, who are excluded from many AA initiatives for the precise reason I stated.
(3) Asian Americans make up about 2% of all voters. Blacks and Hispanics account for > 15% combined. The numbers aren’t sufficient for politicians to pander to Asians, at the expense of the more reliable Dem voting constituencies.
Thanks for the snark, though. Jon Stewart would be proud.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:45 pmEconRob says:
“I think that private universities such as Princeton should be free to engage in whatever kind of affirmative action they want.”
What about private companies, Country Clubs, etc. should they be allowed to practice AA? If the goal is to increase whites? Are you saying racial discrimination is fine if it increases blacks? Whites? Asians? Plus “private” universities take plenty of public money.
The whole notion if racial preferences is obnoxious and creates on going resentment.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:48 pmgeokstr says:
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:51 pmToquam says:
Jews probably started facing cap-quotas by the 1920s, but that was typically Antisemitism, often open.
I doubt there’s nearly the same animus today for Asians — more fear of some perceived “tipping.”
Anecdote keeps saying that all us males get a boost, as the ladies might flock away from a school more than, oh, 55–45 female to male. The best med schools are already pushing that cap.
Myself, I’d favor lots of freedom for both public and private schools, but strongly encourage publishing the data (e.g., do preferred admits flunk out/ fail to graduate at exorbitant rates, and perhaps also try to measure dumbing-down doctors into racial studies majors).
I’d say that lies and evasions are almost are harmful as perceived discrimination.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:54 pmDas says:
I’ve often thought that Asians could bring down the whole matchstick house of Affirmative Action by just checking the “Black” box under ethnic affiliation on the college application. In what sense are Asians not black? They are in most cases closer to being “black” than they are Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, etc. None of those countries would recognize them as such. A good lawyer could make a strong case that America qua America is a kind of African-American country. Our popular culture and speech patterns are very much derived from black America. If Asian students were to check the “black” box the onus would be upon university officials to prove that said Black/Asian student is not really black and that is a fight the university does not want to engage. Better to take it at face value and move on. Neither the university nor the US government is ready for a constitutional battle over who or what is really “black.” The US government does not want to go back to the days of declaring this or that person 3/5 of a man. Besides, the definition of black is very much up for grabs and an Asian student chosing this path would have much on his side — again, the federal government will simply not be drawn into a fight over a definition of blackness.
Asian students, just check “black” on your college application; better to go down swinging if the university is racially pre-set against you from the start.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 5:58 pmDas says:
I’ve often thought that Asians could bring down the whole matchstick house of Affirmative Action by just checking the “Black” box under ethnic affiliation on the college application. Tell me, in what senses are Asians not black? They are, in most cases, closer to being black than they are Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, etc. None of those countries would accept them as citizens as such. A good lawyer could make a strong case that America qua America is a kind of African-American country. Our popular culture and speech patterns are very much derived from black America.
If Asian students were to check “Black” the onus would be upon university officials to prove that said Asian /Black student is not really black and that is a fight the university does not want to engage. Better to take it at face value and move on. Neither the university nor the US government is ready for a constitutional battle over who or what is really black. The US government does not want to go back to the days of declaring this or that person 3/5 of a man. Besides, the definition of black is very much up for grabs and an Asian student choosing this path would have much on his side – again, the federal government simply will not be drawn into a fight over a definition of blackness.
Asian students, just check “Black” on your college application. You have nothing to lose but the university’s racial pre-sets against you from the start!
Quote
October 17, 2009, 6:11 pmGuaman says:
Let’s get right down to the essence of the matter here. Racial or ethnic discrimination is wrong, it is illegal for government to do it under our contract with them. Decisions made on merit and merit only are just and promote the betterment of all. This is fundamental to the espoused principles of the American Republic.
I’ve gotten rather tired of professional talkers and people with agendas twisting words to sway others from simple objective truths. This shouldn’t even be an issue within a rational and just society and if this is not a rational and just society, the highbrows would better serve their egos and the common good by moving it that way instead of being advocates for favored outcomes.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 6:16 pmbeen_there says:
To: troll_dc2 at 10:37 Oct. 17
Asians already have their own universities — they are located in Asia. Their education system is VERY competitite and not diverse. They will stop PC folly when our country becomes an economic failure (the plan of regressive liberals, mostly Dems).
Quote
October 17, 2009, 6:27 pmAmused Observer says:
Several thoughts come to mind. First there is absolutely no way a public institution can square AA with the 14th amendment. If it’s not colorblind it’s not equal protection. Second, diversity is a weak attempt to get around disallowed racial quotas. Third, if a kid with a perfect SAT score can’t get in, what is the point?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 6:31 pmbeen_there says:
Das at 6:11 PM. Excellent strategy! Why not? We are all descendants of Lucy, right?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 6:32 pmwillis says:
Universities go to extremes to admit minority students other than Asians, so affirmative action is not for the purpose of overcoming discrimination. Admitting competent students should assure a reasonable cross-section of all cultures, but obviously it does not work for the black culture. Admitting underperforming blacks as ambassadors of their culture reinforces or perhaps creates negative perceptions of their culture by their colleagues. I suggest attacking the problem by improving the schools and communities that continue to produce inferior academic performers. Perhaps looking to AA cultures for guidance in this endeavor could be productive.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 6:41 pmObserver says:
I’ve always found the “critical mass” argument rather absurd. Its takes X Blacks in a freshman class of 1,000 to provide a critical mass(which usually appears to be as close to the national demographic slice as they think they can get, so say about 10% or 100 students). Its takes Y Hispanics (again a similar formula, so about 100 students) to provide a critical mass. And it takes 2 Native American (cause that’s all they can get). So bull.
The whole thing is blatantly unconstitutional and corrosive to everyone involved.
Each individual should be evaluated on their own merit, and let the best man or woman win.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 7:02 pmObserver says:
I’ve always found the “critical mass” argument rather absurd. Its takes X Blacks in a freshman class of 1,000 to provide a critical mass(which usually appears to be as close to the national demographic slice as they think they can get, so say about 10% or 100 students). Its takes Y Hispanics (again a similar formula, so about 100 students) to provide a critical mass. And it takes 2 Native American (cause that’s all they can get).
The whole thing is blatantly unconstitutional and corrosive to everyone involved.
Each individual should be evaluated on their own merit, and let the best man or woman win.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 7:03 pmAnonymous says:
It’s not anti-asian racism, it’s “social justice.” (Old Russian proverb: What do you do when your neighbor has a goat and you don’t? Kill the goat.) Why do better when you can hold others back?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 7:51 pmPerseus says:
Maybe that’s because race is far more important than the other types of diversity in determining admission.
What a searing indictment of admissions standards if playing guitar in a rock band is considered a plus factor.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 7:52 pmGaryC says:
A different approach would be to allow multiple credit. That way, Tiger Woods would count as black, Asian, and white. Wade Connerly’s children would count as Native American, white, and black. Multiracial candidates would be the Holy Grail of admissions offices.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 7:58 pmmemomachine says:
Hmmmmm.
*shrug* I simply respond that I’m “black”.
I may have been born in South Korea but what the hell. What are they going to do? Take a blood sample?
And if anybody challenges my “innate blackness” then I’m going to scream bloody racism and hire a lawyer.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 8:02 pmJeannette says:
Here’s my family’s absurd situation: my mother has 17 grandchildren. She’s half German, half Irish (the product of a 1933 “mixed marriage”). Her grandchildren are subject to three or four different admissions standards to universities. Four are all white, four are half African-American, one is half Native American, and mine are part Filipino (Asian). All but one were/are raised in two-parent families, with some college education in their parents’ backgrounds but my children are subject to higher admission standards than their cousins. Since our last name sounds Spanish (and my half-Filpino, half French-Canadien husband looks Hispanic), we’re tempted to let the kids lie on applications, or at least try to “pass” as whites.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 8:12 pmAllende says:
Lowell High School?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 8:51 pmjoel says:
Imagine if all the better schools in CA were 80% Asian. Why would the whites tax themselves to support such elite schools? Would Asians tax themselves heavily to educate white, not Asian, students?
Our diversity is our undoing.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 9:41 pmDas says:
The whole concept of diversity seems misplaced as applied to university in the first place. The university is there to insure a steady sameness of middle class prosperity — that is not a bad thing. The middle class is pretty much the same world-wide: putting off the fun to be had today for future goals, study over play, application over larkishness, dedication over laziness or impulse. These turn the wheel of the world and university is all about making turners of the wheel — I don’t mean to sound flip or dismissive — again, these are all good things. I just don’t understand what universities mean by diversity when their goal is to produce the same type of human being.
I suppose universities get around this by saying that they want the university population to reflect the population of the country. Well, OK. But there really is no such thing as a static population of the country or rather it is a fluid thing. Is that the population of the country at an NFL game or at the opera? Would that be the population of the country of a downtown street at 5:00pm or on a Sunday morning? Workaday America is probably America at its most integrated, after work much less so.
Thre is something so ham-handed in taking national population/ethnic breakdowns as a guide for diversity. It leads us into the growing and kooky area known as disproportionality. Does the government need to start integrating black barbershops? “Woodworkers Monthly” probably hasn’t had a black face on its cover. The Chinese Baptist Church up on Beacon Hill should be shut down. Call the diversity police...
Quote
October 17, 2009, 9:57 pmMarty says:
Problem with compensating for large scale injustices is that the people who actually suffered them are quite a bit older than those applying to schools or for jobs—the worst-abused are long dead and anyone who personally suffered from de jure discrimination is now well into their 40s.
Until recently, my wife taught at a community college in a large urban area, with a predominantly minority student body. She would ask her class to name a single instance of discrimination they had ever suffered, with the excception of being pulled over for “driving while black” which she would concede was an issue in a few wealthy suburbs. She asked this of literally hundreds of students and never once did anyone even try to offer anything... and no, she was not a threatening or intimidating presence. Even if she was... not one response???
Quote
October 17, 2009, 9:57 pmmurgatroyd says:
memomachine wrote:
Perfectly reasonable! In the terminology of the grievance industry, you “self-identify” as black. If you self-identify strongly enough, you’ll even be able to criticize people like Clarence Thomas for not being “authentically” black.
Joel wrote:
I would! The rationale for the UC system is that the entire state is better off by having a well-educated population. After all, educated people of any color with jobs pay more taxes than ignorant unemployable people. And as things stand, I’m unrelated to 99.99 percent of the students who attend the UC system — what does it matter to me what color they are? I view myself as an individual human being, not some instantiation of a racial group.
This is astonishing. Do you believe that everyone, white or asian or black, is blatantly racist??
Huh?
Quote
October 17, 2009, 10:51 pmMarty says:
memomachine—
I may be wrong or I may be correct but the rules have changed, but I recall back in the late 1970s or 1980s there was a lot of argument about percentages and proof—real Nuremberg Laws stuff–and in the end the Feds said it would all be based on self-identification.
So, as the psychiatrist said to Emo Phillips when Emo told him that he was feeling suicidal, “Go for it!”
Quote
October 17, 2009, 11:13 pmSG says:
There is something sick about libertarianism if its adherents believe racism is acceptable just because it is practiced by private entities.
Why is it that people can understand that having free speech means that Nazis get to march in Skokie, but seemingly can’t generalize that principle. That some use their freedom in undesirable ways doesn’t mean that freedom is undesirable. Defending freedom doesn’t mean approving of every action that free people perform.
Or do you agree with those who say that the ACLU are terrorists because they have defended terrorists.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 11:37 pmjust another lurker says:
To point out something that has not been mentioned here, and is almost never mentioned: yes, the higher education establishment is deeply committed to affirmative action programs for all sorts of ideological reasons. But there’s also an immediate practical reason.
All federal grants require the receiving institution to affirm that they practice AA. So if a university indeed opted out they would lose their NSF/NIH etc funding. This would basically shut down most major research universities.
Until Affirmative Action is discontinued at the level of national government there will be NO CHANGE in the practice by the universities.
Quote
October 17, 2009, 11:51 pmsgi says:
Here’s a solution to this mess.
Everyone who wants to go to an elite university should just learn to work as hard as Asians. Assuming of course that hard work is why Asians have such high test scores.
Otherwise, there are other universities, colleges, and technical schools, other careers, that would produce the desired outcome.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 12:40 ampdh says:
Private, non-government funded schools of any level should be able to admit based on whatever criteria they choose. Race, grades, spin the bottle, this is critical to capitalism. Unfortunately it will never happen.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 1:07 amKen Arromdee says:
That solution doesn’t work because it requires the cooperation of the university (and the government). Otherwise they’ll just prefer non-Asians who don’t work as hard to Asians who do.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 1:10 amJ. Aldridge says:
According to Bingham, the constitution always had the words “equal protection of the laws”: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law,” not no white person or freeman.
As Bingham pointed out, the clause reads no state shall deny to any person the “equal protection of the laws,” and not the “equal protection of its laws.”
Isn’t truth wonderful?
Quote
October 18, 2009, 1:13 amBrian G. says:
I believe in equality for people of all races and sexes but the fact remains there are way too many Asians taking up spots at universities that could be best used to increase the diversity of these universities. It is not like these Asians aren’t going to get into other schools.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 2:21 ammurgatroyd says:
Jeez! That had to have been an intentional troll. What a magnificent example of “I’m not a racist, BUT ...”
I believe in equal opportunity for people of all races and sexes but the fact remains there are way too many underqualified, poorly prepared people taking up spots at universities that could be best used to educate people who would make better use of the opportunity. It is not like these low achievers aren’t going to get into other schools.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 2:50 ambbbeard says:
The pretense of “diversity” as a justification for racial quotas is a sham. This is all just part of the kabuki theater of American politics. Not to be cynical or anything.
It is an absurdity to think that the most challenging and disorienting thing about the “real world” for the earnest young graduates of elite universities will be the skin color of the new hire in the adjacent cubicle. Allow me to suggest that a far more challenging reality is that most people these graduates will have to deal with are either stupid or willfully ignorant. If we accept the premise that universities must impose racial quotas so that the campus will “look like the real world”, we are led to the inescapable conclusion that universities should seek to enroll people of all intelligences and aspirations. If the university experiences a deficit of “D” students who intend to follow their fathers into the truck-driving sector of the economy, does it not then follow that they must — if they truly believe in “diversity” — shower scholarships and relaxed admission standards on such students in an effort to recruit them?
How on earth did we get to the point where intelligent people think “diversity” is synonymous with “range of pigmentation”? Apart from intelligence, what about religion? What about politics? What about the diversity of learning styles? Do universities attempt make sure that Lutherans are not under-represented? Or that their incoming freshman are not weighted too heavily toward verbal rather than mathematical skill?
The point is that the race-mongers will only accept skin color as a defining characteristic, because that suits their purpose. The full meaning of “diversity” is lost on them because they have convinced us, and the universities, and the corporations, and the government that it is not just permissible, but mandatory, that we continue in perpetuity to judge people by their skin color.
The system is perverse and immoral. I find Ilya’s suggestion that the solution to “the Asian problem” is to subdivide us further into finer-grained racial groups absolutely repugnant.
BBB
Quote
October 18, 2009, 3:06 amRicardo says:
The most well-known professors at the most prestigious Asian universities often have PhDs from American universities.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 3:56 amnaman says:
If you’re really concerned, look for a “multi-racial” option. That option seems to be standard now. BTW, I have cousins who are also 1/4 filipino and have a spanish-sounding name, and they’re blond haired and blue eyed. As the saying goes, you really can’t tell a book from it’s cover.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 4:48 amTom McLaughlin says:
“Approximately the same percent of Asians voted for Obama as did Hispanics.”
Well, then. Maybe high SAT scores really aren’t a good measure of intelligence.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 7:27 amVisitor Again says:
I am a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara, class of 1965. When I went there, the undergraduate enrollment was about 4,500. There was not a single black student among them. During the 1963–64 school year, the elected student body council tried to authorize a scholarship for a single deserving black student, but was instructed by University counsel that it could not because the fourteenth amendment prohibited such racial discrimination.
It was okay that a state educational institution did not have a single black student enrolled, but it was not okay for the students at that state institution to ensure that a single black student did attend. I thought then that the law works in mysterious ways.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 10:53 amIsrael says:
B-Rob: “1,000 Hispanics and Asians and Blacks and ask which party they think is more racist, and why, but I think we all know what the answer would be, don’t we?”
Of course it is the Republicans because that is the line that Hollywood, most forms of media, and people like B-Rob have repeated until it has become “the truth.” I am Hispanic(Mexican), age 56, and my life experience has taught me that no one group or people has the market cornered on racist beliefs or behavior.
I grew up in south central Idaho and currently live in Idaho. If I have to tally up the racist encounters that have been personally directed at me in my lifetime, well surprise! They have come overwhelmingly from individuals that identify themselves as liberal/progressives. It doesn’t come dressed up in white robes but in the form of insulting condescension and patronizing behavior on the part of someone demonstrating how “enlightened” they are. I can’t recall the last time some redneck gave me grief, but the other is quite regular.
Asking a 1,000 people of what they believe to be popularly “true” does not make it the truth.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 11:38 amStephen S. Rappoport says:
The underlying problem with affirmative action is that it is a typical American shortcut for dealing with a difficult problem insofar as it focuses on outcomes rather than on opportunities. The problem in question is that few black children are properly prepared for going to even a so-so college or university. This is due to circumstances that begin before the day when they first enter kindergarten. So many of them have not been prepared by their parents or guardians even for that stage; they do not know the alphabet, they do not know numbers, they cannot identify colors or shapes, and so forth.
The achievement gap begins right then, and it takes a lot of time, effort, and money to address it. Most school districts simply do not have the resources to make up for the failure of the parents and guardians. Too many of them have failed at their duty to prepare their children for school. You can be upset about this, but when someone who is supposed to be responsible for a child is unemployed, undereducated (and perhaps even illiterate), unmotivated, abusive, alcoholic, drug-using, and so forth, there is a limit to how successful a school can be at educating that child, especially when the child has never met anyone who went to college (besides his teachers) or has been successful in pursuing lawful activities. Yes, we have charter schools, voucher programs, remedial efforts under No Child Left Behind, and the like, as well as some special institutions like Girard College, and yet the problem is so vast that there just is not enough money to address it. Over half the kids who start school in Philadelphia drop out before graduation.
Kids who have never been read to at home, whose real teachers are similarly situated peers, who confront violence every day, who do not get nagged to do their homework, who have no opportunity to develop a sense of the future–how can they possibly be prepared to go to even a so-so college or university? Yet if nothing is done for them, how will they escape being economic and social losers? That is why we have the affirmative-action programs that we do. These kids should be in community colleges, many of which have extensive remedial programs. (In fact, a large proportion of community-college students are older, having been out in the world and having their eyes opened.)
But AA is cheaper, it allows institutions to seem more virtuous, and its victims are dismissed as people who could always go elsewhere. That it tends to benefit people who could compete anyway, that even these people tend to do less well in school than others, we don’t like to talk about things like this. So AA addresses a real problem–poorly.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 12:14 pmtroll_dc2 says:
I have inadvertently outed myself. When I was instructed to leave my name, I posted my real name instead of my screen name. But I prefer to use the screen name, which I use whenever I post. So under my real name I wrote the comment posted at 12.14 pm today. Sorry about that.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 12:17 pmpep says:
Please explain how a race-blind admissions process would prevent an institution from using these same “diversity” criteria.
It wouldn’t of course, but the criteria are sufficiently vague and nonquantitative are are there only to provide cover for overt discrimination. We all know it, as do you, so please at least have the integrity to stop the dissembling.
As to allowing private schools to discriminate, doesn’t that then allow an innkeeper to prohibit blacks? How is a hotel any less of a public accomodation than a university and its dorms?
Sooner or later, this whole mess will collapse of its inherent logical inconsistency. Do you really want to be the last one defending this nonsense?
Quote
October 18, 2009, 12:27 pmChester White says:
“Back in the 1990s, a University of California official famously remarked that a race-blind admissions policy at his institution would be unacceptable because it would lead to a student body dominated by Asians [unfortunately, I cannot find an online link to this quote; if readers can find it, please e-mail me].”
This is a story I have always heard told about Ronald Reagan when he was governor. Someone pointed out to him that the California University system (or maybe it was just the top ones like Berkeley) was going to be all Asian soon and his response was supposedly, “So what?”
My favorite Reagan story; hope it is true.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 12:30 pmChrisTS says:
Perseus:
Neither do I. Did anyone suggest we should want ‘significantly inferior’ students? My point was that we might be willing to have some who appear to be the academic cream of the crop go elsewhere in order to have qualified students with other talents/gifts to offer.
The desires of Faculty certainly ought not to ‘come first.’ That is why I noted that Faculty think it is important for students to be prepared for a diverse world.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 2:43 pmChrisTS says:
geokstor
I cannot speak for anyone else. I assume that diversity of interests encompasses diversity of ideas.
(As to ‘opinions,’ if these differ from ‘ideas,’ I assume these too are covered by ‘interests.’)
Quote
October 18, 2009, 2:46 pmChrisTS says:
pep:
I was not offering these kinds of ‘diversity’ to cover for anything. I was responding to the implicit suggestion that colleges should only seek out the most academically worthy of applicants. I tried to suggest that this is harder to do than folks who reference the SATs think, and then noted that there are reasons for colleges to want ‘diverse’ student bodies — where ‘diverse’ means many things.
Please have the courtesy to not impute to me an intention to dissemble about anything.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 2:53 pmChrisTS says:
P.S.
While I certainly got the gratuitous insult, I cannot parse this:
Quote
October 18, 2009, 2:54 pmtroll_dc2 says:
I am not the only one who says that parents matter. See this article in today’s Washington Post by a hgh school teacher.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 4:06 pmPerseus says:
But, of course, that isn’t how AA works, especially at more selective universities where admissions standards are significantly lower for preferred minorities (e.g., see Gratz v. Bollinger).
This particular member of the faculty dissents from the professoriate’s reigning dogma, which is that the faculty decide that ‘diversity’ as the faculty define it is important for students. And that agenda is primarily social and political in nature, not academic.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 4:11 pmbbbeard says:
B-Rob:
Well, this “Asian” knows perfectly well which party threw “Japs” into camps in WWII. This “Asian” knows perfectly well which party set up the racial spoils system that keeps Asians from “dominating” the elite universities. And this American knows that his Asian heritage has been hijacked for political purposes by the party currently in power.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 5:06 pmjosil says:
I favor managed diversity in college admissions, as well as acceptance in college courses and college sports teams. So, for example, the decrease in Asian admissions could be compensated by their increased participation on college basketball and football teams.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 6:32 pmChrisTS says:
Perseus:
My comments were not about AA. They were about looking beyond SAT scores (or GPA) in admitting applicants.
And, I’m sorry you do not think our students need to be prepared for lives very different from those that could be expected for the young gentlemen of yesteryear. That was my argument.
I think you have me confused with someone else.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 7:24 pmPerseus says:
No, I don’t think that preparing students for living in a world of ‘diversity’ is a particularly important task for universities. I have yet to see any great academic advantages to having students of ‘diverse’ ethnic backgrounds (and including them as a result of affirmative action creates problems). The advantages are primarily social, and as I said, those can just as easily be acquired during the course of their everyday lives before and after college.
Quote
October 18, 2009, 10:21 pmtheobromophile says:
Late to this party, but....
In any zero-sum game, giving a preference to one group will disadvantage another; such is the root of the anger behind affirmative action. (While colleges may be able to admit a few more people, their numbers are relatively limited; moreover, a lot of the cachet of a top-notch school is its selectivity.)
That said, re: Asians and the 1600 SAT scores: it’s possible that supremely accomplished people of any race could come off as grinds. Colleges — even DIII schools like my alma maters — need athletes, musicians, dancers, and people who are going to be active on campus and make it a vibrant place to be. The stereotype, true or not, of Asians is that their activities tend to be limited to academic extra-curricular activities (e.g. French club, math team) or music. So I’m skeptical of straight-up SAT comparisons, at least for undergraduate admissions.
Quote
October 19, 2009, 4:20 pmtheobromophile says:
Sorry for the double-post, but it appears as if ChrisT and I are making a similar argument.
College admissions officers will readily admit that there is some element of luck to the process: admissions officers will keep track of things like how many states and countries are represented in the incoming class; types of instruments that admitted students play; sports; other extracurricular activities; potential majors (complete with a formula for estimating how many students, given their proclivities, will end up in each type of major); economic and family backgrounds; and even high schools. Thus, students whose interests and background happen to align with a need that a school has stand a better chance of getting in.
Reality is that a university which ignores those things and happens to admit a racially diverse class full of upper-middle-class piano-playing future French majors from the tri-state area is going to have problems. Those problems are not just logistical (e.g. empty science labs and too-full French classes); they also relate to the experience that those kids will have (e.g. no soccer team, no one with a radically different background, no one who lives far away and can drag them out to the Montana countryside for fall break, etc.).
Quote
October 19, 2009, 4:26 pmq says:
You and others have made similar arguments: that Asians are not engaging in the “correct” extracurricular activities and therefore colleges are justified in choosing academically inferior students because of it. As an Asian, I find this to be both inaccurate and borderline racist, peddling on the bogus stereotype that Asians are only preoccupied with academics.
Even assuming colleges actually need a diverse set of interests, it’s silly to presume Asians as a group are not as interested in sports, music, dance and other arts relative to other racial groups. They are, and if college admissions care that much about such extracurricular activities, then Asians would be that much interested. Extracurricular activities, unlike race, are easy to self-select into; it is true that Asian students and their parents are very concerned about college admissions, and thus any admission requirement that focuses on an activity of the student’s choosing rather than an immutable quality will attract Asians. My own experience tells me that Asians engage in all forms of sports and art programs, that many of them will join clubs focused on community service, that many of them will run for student office. Look at a yearbook of any high school that has a large Asian student population and this will hold true. In my own high school, Asians had more extracurriculars on average than any other racial group, and no, we did not all do orchestra.
Asians do understand that extracurricular activities help college admissions, but nothing can absolve the fact that being an URM trumps any other choice an Asian can make. A diverse set of interests may be good for a college, but by allowing race to have such a large factor in admissions, it’s clear “interest diversity” is not the goal they seek. Above all else, they value racial diversity, because that is the best way to signal diversity, since skin color is, unfortunately, the first thing people see. On its own, racial diversity may be good in assuaging our fears of homogeneity, but I do not believe they balance the social injustice of burdening poor Asians and whites in favor of middle-class Blacks and Hispanics.
Quote
October 19, 2009, 5:19 pmChrisTS says:
Theo:
Yes, I think we are making similar points. I admit that as an academic I hate the emphasis on intermural sports at some of the big Us. But having musicians, artists, physicists — as well as students from different backgrounds and geographical locations — is important for many reasons. As you note, not ending up with only students in fields X and Y is a significant one.
And, yes, q, that includes racial/ethnic diversity. We encourage our students [my college] to go abroad or at least spend a couple of weeks in another country for the same reasons: it opens their eyes, broadens their horizons — however one wishes to express it.
Quote
October 19, 2009, 7:05 pmChrisTS says:
Theo:
P.S. This reminds me of what Bard had to start doing a few years back. An excellent school, but they had so many applicants for arts and writing and so few for sciences that they had to do a little ‘affirmative action’ — including special scholarships — for students interested in science.
Excellent candidates, some no doubt ‘better’ on paper than those admitted for the sciences, had to be turned away.
Quote
October 19, 2009, 7:08 pmKey says:
q:
My high school was >70% asian. what i noticed about my asian peers was that the extremely high performing asian all did essentially the same thing...they all played the piano or the violin and they all were members of the same 2 or 3 academic clubs. it’s no surprise that schools are going to turn down a large number of individuals who on paper look exactly the same.
the students themselves were different and had widely different personal interests. but they all bowed to parental pressure and did the same activities and went into a standard premed major.
that’s not to say that all asians did this. my school had very active extracurriculars and being 70% asian all clubs had a large asian component. but 1) white and hispanic students were generally more active and 2) the asian students in non-academic clubs weren’t as high performing as others. they were much more well rounded but, on average, had lower gpas and lower sats.
Quote
October 19, 2009, 7:22 pm