I agree entirely with David Bernstein's previous post: affirmative action in higher education should not be categorically forbidden, but it should be both more transparent and better designed. As David writes, "it's important to . . . have a theory as to which people you are giving preferences to, and why, rather than just give a preference to anyone who meets rather arbitrary ancestry rules." This is particularly important in light of the fact that different rationales for affirmative action imply very different admissions policies. If affirmative action is based on the "diversity" rationale, which holds that students benefit from having classmates with varied backgrounds, then it might make sense to give affirmative action preferences to white immigrants from countries such as Sweden or Russia. Such people will, on average, contribute more to diversity than native-born American whites. The same goes for black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean relative to native-born blacks.
By contrast, if the justification for affirmative action is compensatory justice - trying to redistribute wealth to groups that have suffered from discrimination in this country - then a very different set of affirmative action priorities is called for. The issue cannot be avoided by saying that we should pursue both goals at once. Given a limited number of affirmative action admission slots, places allocated under the diversity rationale will not be available for compensatory justice purposes and vice versa.
I discussed these issues in more detail in this post, which addressed the controversy raised by the fact that a substantial proportion of black affirmative action admittees at elite schools are African or West Indian immigrants.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Conflicting Rationales for Affirmative Action in Higher Education:
- Preferred Practices for Affirmative Action in Universities:
But if you are going to have affirmative action, you need to be very clear as to why you are doing it. And then, you need to tailor the program to the goal. Diversity programs should attain actual diversity. Compensatory programs should target people who actually are deserving of some competition. Programs that let in a bunch of advantaged blacks and hispanics to join advantaged whites in the entering class aren't serving any goal at all, programs that claim to be seeking diversity but seem to only care about including members of historically disadvantaged racial groups are dishonest, and programs that claim to compensate for past discrimination but define asians who suffered historic discrimination as not entitled to benefits are also dishonest.
And transparency is the key. So long as there's no information as to what admissions committees are actually doing, there's no way to determine if they are being honest.
I think what actually happened was that Bakke was decided and everyone just dressed up the compensatory programs in diversity clothing. Gratz and Grutter were decided and they were dressed up again. What we really need is some honesty about what they want to do and how they are going about doing it.
Defining diversity in terms of not leaving out any substantial population subgroup benefits majority groups as well as the minority groups who are now admitted. Students meet and talk to the other groups, observe them in the classroom, study together, recreate together, all of which breaks down the barriers of prejudice and stereotyping.
Whites and Asians are prejudiced especially against U.S. blacks. But Ilya's observation substantial proportion of black affirmative action admittees at elite schools are African or West Indian immigrants demonstrates that black academic failure is not a result of genetics but of environment, starting most likely with the parents they're born to, which no one of course can control. So methods that assure that no subgroup is left out compensate for the unfairness of being born to the wrong parents.
And diversity defined in terms of who is left out means who is left out from your fellow residents -- immigrants count for diversity if they have been your neighbors before going to school, not that they came to the U.S. solely to go to school.
Not to disagree with the substance of Mr. Esper's comment, I just have to nitpick the above quote. Affirmative action advocates love to claim that the AA admittees are "qualified" and so AA is not compromising quality. This simply cannot be true because "qualified" is a relative statement.
We could define the level of "qualified" to be an 1000 SAT score, or a 150 LSAT score. A candidate with that level of test scores will surely be "qualified" for some colleges or law schools. But that candidate will not be qualified for Harvard. Why not? Because the candidate is not the most qualified candidate for the competitive slot. In a competition for scarce admissions spots, "qualified" and "most qualified" essentially mean the same thing. AA advocates desperately attempt a rhetorical dodge of this unavoidable fact--apparently with some success since even AA opponents and skeptics like Mr. Esper frequently parrot it as their first concession.
AA beneficiaries are not qualified, unless we are going to redefine qualified to non-existence. The question is (and I admit the answer to be difficult): should we admit unqualified people due to some other social goals we wish to achieve?
We could just measure students' IQs at age six, and determine who was going to be on the Supreme Court from that. At the very beginning of elementary education, the principal could line everyone up and say, "You're going to Harvard, you're going to Penn State, you're going to the State Pen."
Perhaps not. If they don't care about it, then they should focus on compensatory justice and make sure that the program is structured in such a way as to best achieve that goal.
I suggest short people.
Short people have been disadvantaged throughout history because their taller neighbors are consistently perceived as being more successful and better suited for leadership than they are.
If we don't give short people a "leg up" how are they ever going to step into the shoes of their taller neighbors.
Response: I must disagree. Given the large body of (un-preferred) white males, if universities simply discriminate against them and allocate the resulting slots to (fill in as many preferred categories as you please) the universities can claim to be pursuing lots of AA policies at the same time.
Affirmative action can be run in many other ways that would be more beneficial to people who need it. The problem is that affirmative action isn't about benefiting its alleged beneficiaries. It is instead about benefiting politicians and university administrators who like to maximize their PR potential by playing the race card.
Except that they don't tend to study together or recreate together which is the majority of time in college. When given the opportunity to self segregate, that opportunity is taken by all students. I remember bringing my son to an elite college for his freshman year. I was pleased to see a racially diverse student body (I assumed that they were all going to have the intellectual rigor for this school) but within two hours I spotted recruitment by single race groups using language of separation to get those freshmen to join the local single race society. This school also had a seperate college type of dorm system which was voluntary including a single race dorm that had been demanded by this group.
Just to play the victim game a little more, white males are now a minority in most colleges and universities.
What is more important is that "affirmative actions" an outright discrimination against immigrants. Immigrants who came to U.S. after slavery an segregation laws have been abolished, have no responsibility for paint and suffering that blacks have experienced in the past. Accordingly immigrants either should have their own portion of slots in Harward, or all kind of "AA" programs should be eliminated as unconstitutional.
It's like the football team. You might have some complicated, ad hoc theory about the relationship of athletics and academics, or you might eschew self-examination and do whatever keeps the alumni money rolling in. I recommend the latter course, and I think it's safe to say that most university administrations share my view.
You might break down stereotypes, unless, as in colleges, the administration and the student community act to emphasize stereotypes.
My daughter was in student government when in college. One thorn in their side was the result of and the anticipated expenses for social events sponsored by The Black Caucus.
My son, on the other hand, was the only white guy playing basketball in the Black Caucus intramural league (note; not the U's intramural league, a separate league).
Both have said, unhappily, "I try not to be prejudiced...."
I submit this is not the declared goal of "diversity".
The wife, who was black, worked for the admissions office and was a grad student. She was put on the lego admissions project. Basically the school took black students who they though could do the work but didn't have the scores or the grades even with the 20-point admission boost for being black---and put them into groups and gave them a box of legos.
The idea was that written testing is biased and the black mind works better in group settings. The group was observed working together with the blocks, and of course they all passed.
That project soured both of my neighbors on AA, the inherent racism of the 'group' excuse for the test was the icing on the cake.
different from every nation on earth. The Declaration
of Independence and 14th amendment are unique documents
that at least promise that people are individuals, not
members of castes, classes or races to whom special
treatment will be apportioned. Absolute color-blindedness
is like freedom of speech and the 1st amendment.
One group might feel hurt by another's freedom of
speech, or another group's equal treatment under the law.
But even white males have exactly the same rights when
applying for a job or to college as anyone else.
Either everyone has civil rights or nobody has
civil rights. This is what Shelby Steele calls
the "discipline of equality." It is no accident
that Justice Ginsburg cited international law when
defending the U. Mich. points system for race.
AA fits in perfectly with the Libertarian/Multiculturalist
axis agenda of destroying the U.S.
So, suppose one believes that the best justification for AA is a general, historical, and often on-going discrimination against X group. It's hard to argue that publically or make it part of your AA policy, because the S.Ct has already held that won't pass Constitutional muster.
I don't mean to start a debate here about what the best rationales for AA actually are -- rather, my point is that current Supreme Court doctrine limits what can be stressed, at least by the actors in charge of formulating the policies.
Nice rant, how do you get around the legacies of Jim Crowe &slavery that lead to the systemic destruction of the hopes of blacks and Native Americans. Despite all the flowery language the reality is that a person born in America will -- save rare circumstances -- move only one rung up or down on the socio-economic ladder from where they were born.
Those whose ancestry includes american style slavery and serfdom won't be competing on the same equal plane as you and your kin. AA merely attempts to correct those chances by allowing maybe a person who works hard to move up two rungs on the ladder.
I would love to see this discussion turn in to something other than a black - white thing as the biggest group HURT by AA isn't whites, it is those of Asian descent.
This was a hard thing for me to wrap my mind around, but white immigrants benefited from slavery and segregation as soon as their boats landed. Even if they were considered a "dumb polak" or a "greasy Dago," at least as white people they were assumed to be "one of us," and not some apelike subhuman.
Are you implying the U.S. should open the floodgates to all of Asia? Much better to have our current practice of taking their superbrains with their families only. But looking at considerations of fairness:
1. Africans were kidnapped and taken here. Asians came of their own free will.
2. African-Americans have been here for 300 years. The Chinese Exclusion Acts and the quotas of 1925 kept legal Asian immigrants out of this country till 1965.
3. There is no shortage of East Asian and South Asian ethnics in universities, graduate, and professional schools.
So I would dare say that if the only African-Americans in this country were extremely smart people from Nigeria, Ghana, and Cote D'Ivoire, who had come here since 1965 to go to graduate school, there would be scant discrimination against them, and no need for affirmative action.
I know you are making a point, but I think using insulting terms is a mistake.
Even though you have good intentions, it can be seen as an insult and usually causes a race to the bottom.
I also think that the experience of a white person being discriminated against in admissions is quite different from the experience of minorities and women, because in the former case there is no intimation that the victim of discrimination is somehow inferior, while in the latter case there is.
That said, given the context of racial and other prejudices in the United States, and the requirements of the Constitution, I think that affirmative action should not survive strict scrutiny. Diversity, far from being a compelling interest of the state, is often a beard for admission based on race and color, while the "remedial" theory of affirmative action is based on the principle that two wrongs make a right, plus generational shifting -- not a very inspiring principle from a moral point of view.
Practically, affirmative action creates more resentment than benefit, because for every person helped by it, several feel victimized.
The proponents of affirmative action would be better off if they declared victory and went home.
Is avoiding white and Asian resentment a compelling state interest? I would submit eliminating de facto segregation in universities and professions was more compelling.
Take two hypothetical examples. Johnny's mother was terribly affected by bigotry against her because she is black, so she became an alcoholic. Johnny is black. Joey's mother was terribly affected by her father's mental illness growing up, so she became an alcoholic. Joey is white. Both Johnny and Joey are retarded because of fetal alcohol syndrome. Johnny is absolutely unquestionably a victim of racism, while Joey is just as unquestionably not a victim of racism.
1) So how would giving Johnny a place in the freshman class a Berkeley in any way further the cause of compensatory justice?
2) Admitting retarded people to elite universities would certainly increase their diversity, no matter what their skin color -- so how can you argue that neither Johnny nor Joey should be excluded from elite colleges?
Of course things like FAS are obvious, but there is a whole spectrum of the damages arguably caused by racism, and the point is that they are real damages. A student who attends terrible schools for 13 years may very well be a victim of racism, in that the schools are terrible because of the actions of people with racist motivations. But you complain about the racist motivations without recognizing that the damage done to the intellectual development of the victims of the racism is real damage and can't just be waved away by sticking the student in an elite college when he turns 18. "It's too late for that, man."
Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.
Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.
Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.
A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.
—Boston Globe, 9/28/08
Or to put it another way. It might be better to be surprised by American diversity than the "yeah duh" reaction that folks from other countries have different cultures.
Diversity is a meaningless, hopelessly vague concept. It's open to manipulation by any member of any ethnic group who just wants what is "fair" to them. It seems designed more to engender ethnic conflict rather than prevent it. Publicly recognized aggrieved minorities will always benefit at the expense of forgotten minorities. This is not a quirky flaw that, as Professor Somin suggests, can be readily fixed. It's intrinsic to the vagueness of diversity.
History has shown that we should not discriminate against individuals on the basis of race for very serious reasons (even for some national security justifications, as we unfortunately learned after Korematsu). Diversity is not a serious reason, by comparison.
A proper balance by gender and an inclusion of minorities of all stripes (asian as well as black, latino and native), roughly reflecting their percentages in the larger society, arguably have benefited higher education as well as society.
Holding Asian-American students at elite universities to "roughly their percentages in the larger society" would require seriously disfavoring them relative to white students. Are you actually in favor of this? And if so, what purpose do you feel it would serve?
But note that the irony of "diversity" as an argument is that it implies that AA exists for the benefit of whites, not minorities.
Established elites seek to reproduce themselves and to keep outsiders out. And that they have the power to advance their own interests because of financial and political power (see quote from Boston Globe above).
Affirmative action is a social good. For contrast, consider the problems France faces with its discriminated against, French-born citizens of Arab ancestry. France pretends that everyone is French, everyone is equal, and there is no discrimination and thus no need for affirmative action. But the fact is that French-born citizens of Arab descent are not represented in the professional classes, and that young people with educations from these communities are disproprotionately unemployed. This situation is clearly very bad for society as a whole.
And, yes, I would argue that differences in natural ability between the children of wealthy white people almost always completely irrelevant in terms of whether or not they get into selective colleges.
Whether there is a "shortage" of East or South Asians in universities is pretty irrelevant to the specific East or South Asian who gets excluded from a university because of his skin color. The fact that some OTHER East or South Asian got into a university does nothing for him; each one isn't interchangeable, and they don't receive a collective education, but an individual one.
Nobody alive today was "kidnapped and taken here." Their ancestors were kidnapped and taken here, but those are different people; black people are not interchangeable, either. (For the same reason, nobody has been here for 300 years.) While immigrants did, and do, come of their own free will, the vast majority of college applicants were born here -- not of their own free will. And Asian immigrants to the U.S. predate 1965. (Who do you think were interned in the 1940s? Who built those railroads?)
Even if that's true -- and that overstates notions of white racial solidarity -- how is that a "benefit" to the immigrant? "Well, I'm not admitting you to my university -- but don't feel bad, because I like you better than a black person"?
How do you explain Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century? Or Asians in recent decades?
I could go on, but the point is that I don't think it clarifies anything to point to immigrants as proof that there's no need for affirmative action.
Actually, the best evidence is that what we refer to as "intelligence" (a problematic construct to begin with, but anyway...) is only 50% heritable.
I find the rationale advanced by the supreme court in Grutter at least somewhat persuasive. I do think there is a benefit from having a diverse group of individuals in a given setting.
But I'm also troubled by the application of this in the Zero Sum environment of college admissions. It seems to me that no matter how you frame it, taking race into account will occasionally result in a situation where one individual is given a spot merely because of their race.
But from the comments, it also appears the schools I've attended, (A well ranked private liberal arts college and law school at a large state university) were exceptionally well integrated.
Both indeed devoted considerable attention to diversity and there were occasional comments aired to the effect that the had school engaged in direct covert affirmative action with respect to certain individuals.
But at the same time neither of these schools had nearly the significant problems with self segregation that are described here. There were occasionally some minimal examples, such as sitting together in the campus cafeteria, and there were student groups defined by racial categories but by in large the communities interacted together nearly completely, and there were certainly no examples of things like a "black caucus intermural league" or student groups that significantly seperated their activities from the rest of the social life on campus.
Recent reports on the Detroit system has the warhouses with books stacked to the ceiling and the classrooms without textbooks. One administrator said that books weren't a primary means of education. The new boss of the system has not answered questions. The problem is, probably, the bureaucracy. It's happened before. Once, somebody sold whole series out the back door to the Catholic system who thought the books were surplus. Turned out not to be true. They weren't surplus, they were still in the warehouse and somebody had a hot idea.
Everybody interviewed is black, except for the head of an advocacy group trying to improve the system who thought--racist cultural chauvinist that she is--that getting the books to the students is a high priority.
My feeling is that it was an offensively racist act for the white power structure to put these morons in charge of a big school system. In addition to ruining the education process, they have plausible deniability. Ingenious.
But even if it is only 50% inheritable (which I have a hard time believing, given my personal experiences), what you are really talking then with much of the (allegedly) 50% uninherited portion are all the reasons that some kids don't live up to their potential. These factors include single (or no) patenting, maternal drug addiction, less stimulating environment, diet, excercise, parental involvement, etc. And, thanks arguably to the Great Society, these factors are more prevalent in the Black communities than in others (except probably the Native American ones).
But jumping from that to AA is quite a jump. I am not clear on the arguments there - possibly that society has to somehow negate all these factors by admitting those less able to do the work due to factors outside their control - without taking into account the fact that it is poverty, drug addiction, etc. that are implicated, and not skin color, except as an extremely rough, inaccurate, proxy.
Well sure, if you keep blacks and latinos out of the elite schools, whites and asians are never going to get to know any as individuals -- other than as boot blacks and busboys, that is.
So, if Harvard was filled with Gujaratis who all had 2400 on their SATs, to the exclusion of your children who could only muster a 2399, at best, that would be fine with you. Fine, but I think you'd be a fairly atypical parent. Most would argue that 2399 is essentially the same as 2400, and their kids should have a nonzero shot at attending. In my "collectivist" view, a black man who finally got to sit in the front of the bus after 300 years, would understandably be disappointed if ten thousand immigrants cut in front of him in line. If you don't think black people aren't stigmatized by their 300 year history in our society I have to wonder what bubble you live in.
Although the number of Asian-Americans in the U.S. pre-1965 was not literally zero, the numbers were trivial: While China was our ally in 1943, the Magnuson Act repealed the Chinese Exclusion Acts which went back to 1882, and established a Chinese quota similar to all others in the Johnson-Reed Act, namely 2% of their proportion to the population in 1890, or 105. This means there were a whopping 5250 Chinese remaining of the group that built the railroads, etc. The number of West Coast Japanese interned during World War II was 120,000. A few Sikhs from the Punjab also had moved to Northern California to farm, before the 1924 law took effect. As colonials, Pilipinos could move freely to the U.S., but they came as bachelors.
Acceptance as an equal is the chief benefit of being white in a white dominated society.
And, sure, he'd be annoyed. Lots of people get annoyed about a lot of things. The law isn't designed to be the venue for competing annoyance. "I'm more annoyed than you, so I get to take cuts!!!"
Lani Guinier and Henry Loius Gates point out that of Harvard's 530 Black undergrads, 2/3 were West Indian or African immigrants or their children, and a lesser number children of biracial couples.
So, where's the compensatory effect here? Compensation for what?
And diversity? Does Harvard think it's better to get to know West Indians and Africans rather than American Blacks?
How come more Blacks from the West Indies and Africa than from the USA?
A shabby numbers game, showing elites in their own society have an easier time getting into elite schools.
Probably it's a two-fer. One is AA points and the other is no worries about lack of qualifications--the kind of qualifications which allow a student to pass classes. Now, the AA-for-Americans-descended-from-slaves folks have the risk of being seen as nativist, chauvinist, anti-immigration. This is fun.
"Dark skin good. Fair skin bad."
I mention exactly 2 examples of diversity in my post: one having to do with white Europeans, one with black AFricans and West Indians. I don't see how this evidences some desire on my part to increase the percentage of "white Europeans." In any event, both examples are merely illustrative and don't exhaust the field.
Or to put it another way. It might be better to be surprised by American diversity than the "yeah duh" reaction that folks from other countries have different cultures.
2 points:
1. Immigrants are also part of "American" diversity.
2. Even if they are not, I don't see why exposing students to "foreign" diversity is less educational than exposing them to American diversity. And educational benefit is supposedly the heart of the whole diversity rationale.
Americans don't like race-based admissions because they are fundamentally unfair to young adults who have nothing to do with historic racism or with the social environment that may make it harder for some to achieve. Americans want people treated as individuals, not as representatives of any group. Americans believe that no matter how hard you've had it in life, it's your responsibility to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. The law should be color blind in providing equal opportunity. The law does not guarantee equality of outcome.
I ask because I just roughly describe a family member &trying to figure out certain forms that ask one to define themselves assumedly for AA or like purposes.
I encountered, years ago, somebody who looked pretty Celtic to me, green eyes, red hair, fair skin, long-boned. She was sufficiently Native American to qualify for big time educational benefits absent any need to show a means problem.
Various Native American tribes are occasionally accused of selling certs of authenticity. When you think about it, some of those are worth a LOT of money.
Can you imagine somebody hauled into court to demonstrate the proper antecedents? Never happen.
I am so sick and tired of hyphenated-American
And as for Tutins' unequivocal, one size fits all statement:Speak for yourself, race-baiter. That attitude constitutes a huge part of the problem.
The old aristocracy, at least, had a sense of noblesse oblige. The new one's attitude is "I got mine. Too bad about you."
I used to ride public transportation through the ghetto. I used to work with gang members -- not in the social worker sense but in the factory worker sense. If you're trying to persuade me that whites and asians don't have preformulated ideas about blacks, you'd better come up with a better argument. Put it this way, no one is saying, "There's no need for affirmative action; everyone knows blacks are as good as anyone else and often a damn sight better."
As one such "beneficiary" who had a perfect SAT score going into college and no girlfriend for my first two years there, I think I can speak for much of my demographic when I request that colleges maintain a gender-blind admissions process. I assure you that decreasing male/female ratios will only alleviate, not create, problems of vanishing breeding.
So what? Publish the admissions criteria, and let the chips fall where they will. Take name, race, and gender off the application and let the games begin.
Do law schools still keep names off papers and tests when they are graded? How's that working?
This shows the inadequacy of the SAT score as a measure of merit. In the old days, a young man would achieve merit by performing a good work, such as slaying a dragon, that would entitle him to a reward, such as the love of a lady fair. Even 5's on all one's AP exams wouldn't measure up to that.
But anyway, the obvious arithmetic is such that at the very top all of the students of all races are very very good. It's when you get down to the Michigan State level of things that you end up with racial stratification -- virtually all of the top-gun geniuses are asian (because quotas have kept them out of the top schools), virtually all of the blacks and hispanics are hopelessly unqualified (because the top schools have snapped up all of the qualified ones), and whites range between mediocre to unqualified.
If "diversity" is your goal, I think that this stratification is terribly counterproductive. Very few students go to elite schools, so the vast majority of college students go to schools where most of the asian students are smarter than everybody else, most of the white students are smarter than everybody but the asian students, most of the hispanic students are smarter than the blacks, and there are few blacks that are smarter than anybody but some other black students. This seems to me to be a disasterous state of affairs that could well cause students to development life-long prejudices which they would never form in a more representative environment that had not been stripped of all the smart blacks and overloaded with brilliant asians.
These sorts of comments, which I often see from conservatives, distress me. First of all, it is often the political right in this country that minimizes traditional (i.e., white on minority) racism, saying it all went away 50 years ago, or justifies it, advocating for racial profiling, or coming up with explanations for racist cops, or endorsing arguments like those in "The Bell Curve".
At a very minimum, if you don't know what white-on-minority racism is, acknowledge that it still exists, and think it is a bad thing, you shouldn't be condemning preferences that favor minorities as "racist".
Second, calling preferences "racism" misses a crucial distinction in intention. Traditional racism involved a stereotype of inferiority, and of not being entitled to participate in polite society, as well as pure hatred. In contrast, affirmative action proponents, whatever one wants to say about the merits of the programs, do not feel whites are inferior, are not entitled to participate in polite society, or should be the object of hatred.
Now, one can argue that "benign discrimination" is not benign at all (as Chief Justice Roberts does) or that it should be struck down for the same reasons that other forms of discrimination should be. Those are all plausible arguments. But don't call affirmative action "racist". Racism has a very particular meaning, and this debate gets poisoned by people who portray American society as if the only current victims of discrimination in America are whites.
Can you tell us specifically what white-on-minority racism is today, and how it has effected the typical black kid born in Seattle in 1989? Has this racism caused the kid to be academically deficient? How has it done this?
So explain how this system "favors" blacks? It certainly doesn't favor whites and asians, who get delusions of grandeur that they are going to be disabused of when they get out into the real world.
After the admissions office made their decision, it would be a simple matter to adjust any shortfalls in desired ethnic groups by randomly choosing from the admitted students who agreed to give up their slot. Given the strong commitment to diversity, racial justice, a more equitable society that we see among the students of elite schools, I'm sure it would be most instructive for schools to release the statistics as to what percentage of non-minority applicants offered to give up their slot if admitted to a deserving minority candidate.
I've got to confess I've never witnessed any sort of massive asian mental domination but, accepting this for the sake of argument, asians cannot be excluded from the top schools because they are asians, but merely because there are far more outstanding asians than there are top school slots to put them in, even if no non-asians are admitted.
The logical solution for the asian numbers problem is for asians to create their own elite institutions; after all, the WASPS built Harvard, Yale, etc., the Catholics built Georgetown, Notre Dame, etc., the Jews built Brandeis, etc. -- it is time for the asians to shoulder their responsibilities instead of continuing to accept free rides from older, more established groups.
An IQ score of 130 is 2 standard deviations above the mean of 100, I believe, so someone with a 130 is in the upper 2.5 percentile. Or, in other words, those with IQs of 130 are smarter than 97.5% of people. So now, how many "times" more intelligent does that make the person with IQ 130 when compared to the person with an IQ of 100? If 50% of the population has an IQ of at least 100, while only 2.5% has an IQ of at least 130, are the 130s 20 times as smart (50/2.5) as the 100s? And let's suppose those with IQs of 130 are 500- or even a 1,000-fold more likely to be admitted to an elite university than those with IQs of 100. With such numbers, would it be "fair" that a twenty-fold difference in IQ translated into a 500 or 1000 times greater likelihood of acceptance and enrollment? [CAUTION: No conclusions should be drawn from such specious reasoning.]
The problem with AA (and I hate to call it that) is that it punishes Caucasians and Asians to remedy either social problems in black families or past injustice (however one wants to justify the use of AA). My teens who will be applying to colleges in a few years have absolutely nothing to do with any of that but the 'remedy' will be at their expense.
There may be fewer "nobles" among us these days, and hence less "noblesse oblige," but what evidence is there to suggest selfishness is a recent phenomenon? Where race is concerned, its my impression that there is less racism in younger generations than in their forebears. Anyone think this isn't so as a general proposition?
Do you mean "punished" like the Yale student who was punished by Princeton's failure to admit him? Or some more concrete form of punishment? Again, there are more top GPA/SAT students than elite uni seats for them to fill.
As for Brandeis, it is true that Jews built it, but it is also true that today there are Jews who want it to be less Jewish, if Jewish at all. (see previous David Bernstein threads about the school)
And while Yale, Brown and others may have been built by WASPs, it is claimed that many of the WASP fortunes which paid for them were the ill-gotten gains of slavery. (Just thought to stir this affirmative action pot a bit more than it already is, if that is possible.)
It's not just elite schools. It's the police officer who isn't promoted when his scores on the lieutenants exam is better than the minorities promoted. It's in the magnet school that admits students by race rather than ability. It's pervasive and it rankles many Americans. Everyone knows of blonde blue eyed lawyer's kid whose father is Hispanic so he has a Hispanic last name who got preferential treatment. But the Scots-Irish kid whose father drives a truck gets none. It violates Americans ideas of fundamental fairness.
neurodoc: I'm going to believe you and assume those opposed are limited to the blog commenters. I never knew any blue-eyed blonds with Spanish surnames, but I do know brown-eyed brunets with Hispanic mothers and Anglo fathers.
Do you talk to many college-bound students or those already enrolled, especially at elite schools? Hard for me to believe that you do, if you believe this.
What do platitudes like that mean here?
Again, I have no idea what your point might be. Am I obtuse? (With all the snark, the too subtle or nuanced, the non sequitors, etc., that flow in some of these threads, I admit to having trouble following at times.)
Do you talk to many college-bound students or those already enrolled, especially at elite schools? Hard for me to believe that you do, if you believe this.
What do platitudes like that mean here?
Again, I have no idea what your point might be. Am I obtuse? (With all the snark, the too subtle or nuanced, the non sequitors, etc., that flow in some of these threads, I admit to having trouble following at times.)
I know two types of impoverished immigrants from Asia, people on the losing side of the Viet Nam war and grad students. They have generally done quite well here, because they were smart and well-educated.
Or would you rather just keep adding profs, buildings, and classes to the existing schools? Or, as state universities have done, add branches, say Harvard University-Amherst, or Duke University-Fort Lauderdale?
Trouble is, you can't just "create more elite schools," because "elite educations" are goods of position — whatever you do, "the top schools" are by definition going to be few and hard to get into. So far as teaching is concerned, you can get already get a first-class undergraduate education at an awful lot of schools much easier to get into (and cheaper) than the Ivies. The differences are in the quality of the other students and the cachet of the degree.
Possibly... although some students may not care; some African-American students would want to know that they got in on their merits; and some students would want to be part of a school wherein everyone was admitted, irrespective of race.
The proper solution is to the let the market figure it out. Presumably, some percentage of top-flight schools could survive without affirmative action, based on the possible preferences above; many will not. Once equilibrium is achieved, it won't matter.
The problem on the law school level is that the ABA prohibits schools from admitting without regard to race. Prof. Bernstein has more information on this, but I believe that GMU Law once admitted without regard to race, and some 2% of the student population was black. Those students sought out a school where they could be sure that their admission was earned - where they would know, and their peers would know, that they were "only admitted" because they were black. The ABA effectively shut that one down several years back.
The other problem is competition. The preferences are so freakishly severe (see Boalt LSATs) that most black students cannot compete. Half of them end up in the bottom 10% of their class after 1L year. Sure, white students might be happy because they go to a cool, hip, diverse school; administrators might be happy because they look like they are helping to diversify the legal profession; and professors may prefer (if we accept the Grutter rationale) diverse viewpoints; however, that does little to help out the supposed beneficiaries. If we are going to admit black students because they make white students, professors, and administrators feel all warm and fuzzy, shouldn't certain obligations attach?
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As for making elite schools... yeah, let's just buy some land and make one. Sure, it worked for the Olin Foundation, but most people lack the financial and social capital to start an elite school from the ground up.
It shouldn't just be limiting what is "stressed." It should be limiting what is done. Supreme Court rulings are the law of the land, are they not?
But as wm13 pointed out above, the real goal of AA is keeping Al Sharpton off your campus, and if the price of that is illegal "payoffs" in the form of undeserved admissions for memebers of certain groups, many universities are willing to pay it.
So what's going on here is an industry-wide pattern of lying to cover up an industry-wide pattern of lawbreaking. And asking for honest about goals, transparency in methods, and accountability in results is tantamount to demanding the end of affirmative action.
Good luck in achieving it.
Looking at a student's RECENT economic background is the best way to figure out what to do. If a person's great-great-great-great grandparents were horribly oppressed, but that same person's grandparents made a fortune and the family has had the best of everything ever since, which should count more when you decide whether to cut that person a break? Or, in reverse, if a person is descended from royalty, but the last three generations of the family have lived in dysfunctional poverty and left their offspring to scramble for themselves, which is more relevant to the credentials of the 18-year-old who presents himself right now?
I'm not advocating socioeconomic AA that puts uneducated gang members into Harvard. What to do about people who fall outside the academic system entirely is a whole separate question from what you do for the various people within the system, especially in close cases. And when I try to answer the second question, I do think it makes sense to adjust one's thinking about abstract merit to take into account the resources a person had available when achieving that merit. You can find an impressive list of differences among individuals -- tutoring and mentoring vs. strict self-reliance, or menial jobs for money vs. posh unpaid internships. One big difference is what sorts of education children get outside of the formal school curriculum, and the answers range from nothing at all to private coaching in everything. It's really, really worth looking at differences like this at the college admission stage.
The problem is that it only tracks partially by race. Unsurprisingly, people who dislike affirmative action get most upset by examples that defy th