American Bar Association Scraps Controversial Diversity Proposal After Blowback - "The American Bar Association on Monday axed a proposal to require law schools to "diversify" their student bodies after more than a year of warnings from law professors that the plan would force schools to violate federal law. The proposal, first released in May 2021, would have required law schools to submit annual progress reports on minority enrollment to the American Bar Association. Law schools that failed to boost the enrollment of "underrepresented groups" would have been at risk of losing their accreditation. The proposal underwent three rounds of revisions before finally being withdrawn by the association’s house of delegates, which did not rule out revisiting the proposal at a later date. An early draft had warned that U.S. anti-discrimination laws were "not a justification" for "non-compliance" with the diversity standard, a line that drew criticism from many in the legal community, including from elite universities. Ten Yale Law School professors said in a public comment filed in June 2021 that the proposal "instructs schools to risk violating state or federal law in order to retain certification." As late as February 2022, law professors were raising "legal concerns" about the "use of racial balancing or quotas," according to a memo from the bar association summarizing the feedback it received... The association, which accredits almost every law school in the United States, has made noise about eliminating the LSAT, a test some say disadvantages minority applicants. And in February, it voted to require law schools to educate students "on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism," over the objections from law professors who said the requirement would threaten academic freedom. The curricular mandate was nonetheless popular among law school administrators, with 150 deans calling on the American Bar Association to implement it... There has also been little consensus on what sort of diversity the American Bar Association should prioritize. Some comments on the now-scrapped proposal said it gave "priority to racial and ethnic diversity at the expense of LGBTQ+ and disability diversity," according to the February memo, creating a "two-tiered DEI system." Others attacked "the phrase ‘underrepresented groups,’" which "may exclude individuals of groups that have been limited by a history of discrimination.""
Choice and Consequence: Assessing Mismatch at Chicago Exam Schools - "The educational mismatch hypothesis asserts that students are hurt by affirmative action policies placing them in selective schools for which they wouldn’t otherwise qualify. The researchers evaluate mismatch in Chicago’s selective public exam schools, which admit students using neighborhood-based diversity criteria as well as test scores. Regression discontinuity estimates for applicants favored by affirmative action indeed show no gains in reading and negative effects of exam school attendance on math scores and four-year college enrollment. But these results are similar for more- and less-selective schools and for applicants more and less likely to benefit from affirmative action, a pattern inconsistent with mismatch. The authors show that Chicago exam school effects are determined largely by the schools attended when not offered an exam school seat. In particular, apparent mismatch is explained by the fact that exam school admission diverts many applicants from high-performing Noble Network charter schools, where they would have done well. Consistent with these findings, exam schools reduce math scores for applicants applying from high-quality charter schools in another large urban district. Exam school applicants’ previous achievement, race, and other demographic characteristics that are sometimes said to mediate student-school matching play no role in this story."
Opinion: The warning for Democrats in the recent Supreme Court rulings - "the court’s views on the higher education issues at hand are likely more in line with voters than their own. Though their political battle plan to demonize the Supreme Court has until now been largely successful, Democrats are poised to make a major miscalculation if they assume this year’s decisions will push more people against the court and therefore further into Democratic arms... The Biden student loan proposal has found more support in polling than affirmative action generally does, yet it still doesn’t garner a majority. And its support resides much more with young people than older Americans – and the latter vote at a much higher rate."
Clearly, most Americans are bigots and need to shut up - but continue voting for Democrats
The Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision also closes the door on race-based reparations - "The Fourteenth Amendment declares that no state shall “deny to any person . . . the equal protection of the laws.” Early Supreme Court decisions understood that this meant that “the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States.”... The Supreme Court has consistently held since then that any government policy involving the use of race must be held to the exacting standard known as “strict scrutiny.” Even in Regents of Univ. of California v. Bakke, the first case to allow “affirmative action,” Justice Powell explained that “[r]acial and ethnic distinctions of any sort are inherently suspect,” and that “antipathy toward them was deeply “rooted in our Nation’s constitutional and demographic history.” The Students for Fair Admissions decisions reaffirmed the legal principle that law and government policies must be colorblind. All government programs will now be assessed by what Roberts calls “the Equal Protection Clause’s twin commands: that race may never be used as a ‘negative’ and that it may not operate as a stereotype.” Government payments made based on someone’s race — also known as reparations — fail this same common-sense test."
Myths about affirmative action being discriminatory against Asian Americans - "Blum is not a lawyer but according to the American Civil Liberties Union, he has a "long history of crafting legal attacks on civil rights... "Asians were standing in as proxies for white students," says Jeff Chang, a writer and activist who has long fought for affirmative action. "That's essentially the strategy that Ed Blum used." That strategy, before a far right Supreme Court, would finally be a winning one for Blum. But to reach this goal, scholars like Chang say he and his colleagues pitted Asian Americans against Black and Latino communities, using both real issues and false narratives, to end policies that had helped diversify college campuses... "It's really tapping into fear with zero evidence."... "This myth of affirmative action being harmful to Asian Americans is creating a deliberate racial wedge between communities of color," she says. "It's ultimately rooted in anti-Blackness."... Many students of color can feel psychologically unsafe. Majority-white campuses can be isolating and even toxic to underrepresented students — something that the likely drop in Black and Latino students post affirmative action will only make worse... The model minority myth does something else, Chen says. By bolstering the idea that Asian Americans—like her—don't benefit from race conscious policies or practice, "it insinuates that Asian Americans are not affected by racism in this country."... When David Cao introduced Edward Blum to Asian Americans in Houston almost a decade ago, he quoted Orwell's famous line from Animal Farm, that all animals are equal, but some are more equal. But Poon says that doesn't describe a world with affirmative action; it better sums up our education system without it. "To think like somebody like Ed Blum is gonna come along and basically bamboozle young Asian Americans into thinking like these policies are against us when they're actually for us is just heartbreaking," she says."
I like how racial discrimination is civil rights, if you believe in racial equality you are now "far right" and racial equality and meritocracy are anti-Blackness. This is current liberal orthodoxy. And of course the obvious evidence of racial discrimination is dismissed (which is why they can claim with a straight face that Asians are not affected by racism)
If a white student felt psychologically unsafe because the campus wasn't majority white, that would be mocked as "white fragility"
Of course there's the usual canard about how legacy admissions are affirmative action - redefining words is great to push an agenda
Asians who don't buy the liberal party line are stupid and easily confused
Thread by @RichardHanania on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "People know about affirmative action in universities, medicine, etc, but what about in government? What does it mean when constituencies are more worried about their politicians looking like them than performance? Here's the story of Eddie Jordan, New Orleans DA, 2003-2007. Jordan was at first a federal prosecutor. He oversaw the prosecution of Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards for corruption. At the same time, he refused to prosecute politician Cleo Fields, even though the FBI had him on video stuffing $25K from Edwards into his pocket. Why prosecute Edwards and not Fields? We may never know. In 2002, Jordan was elected District Attorney of Orleans Parish. Two weeks after taking office, his first priority was to fire 43 employees, of which 42 were white and 1 was Hispanic. He went on to hire 68 people in their place, 92% of them black. Those who were fired included the majority of his investigative staff. The effects were described as "catastrophic." The blacks that replaced them had little or no experience. Under Jordan, New Orleans would have the highest murder rate in the nation. Jordan was sued, and the fired employees were awarded $3.7 million. Jordan couldn't pay the verdict, and the city wouldn't bail him out. It got to the point where the fired white employees were going to be able to start seizing the furniture of the DA office to get their money. Jordan therefore resigned in disgrace. Employees of his office described a lack of office supplies like paper clips, phone lines that didn't work, and a DA who rarely showed up to work. His only priority was apparently replacing white employees with black ones. Under Jordan, in 2003 and 2004, the conviction rate for murder and attempted murder in New Orleans was 12%, compared to 80% nationwide. Again, this was in a city that was leading the country in murder. Days before his resignation, a New Orleans man robbed a liquor store. As it turned out, he had been "visiting" Jordan's girlfriend at the house that they shared, and then returned there after he was done. As was usual in New Orleans, charges against the man were never pursued. After resigning in disgrace, Eddie Jordan returned to private practice. Last time he was in the news, it was for allegedly slipping an envelope with drugs in it to his client while in court. It's important to note that Jordan maintained support throughout the black community while all this was going on. It's possible he would have been releected if he hadn't resigned after bankrupting his office with the civil rights lawsuit. In July 2007, the community came out in support of Jordan, even after the civil rights lawsuit and years of neglecting to prosecute violent crime. What the NYT described as a "vociferous" black crowd denounced other politicians who tried to hold him accountable. The story of Eddie Jordan is the story of the American inner city. Racial voting leads to corrupt and incompetent politicians, who only feel pressure to give their constituents jobs. Those they hire are incompetent, but that doesn't matter. As long as whites aren't in charge. It's particularly tragic because the constituents are of course worse off. Eddie Jordan didn't hire that many people! There aren't enough city jobs to uplift black communities. And the whole city suffers from a high crime rate and government incompetence. But that doesn't matter. Racial voting is psychological, not a matter of group self-interest. It's actually self-destructive. This is the mistake white racialists make. "They look out for their own, we should do the same." Yeah, look at how well that's worked out for them."
Cleo Fields is black
Clearly representation is important, so we need government figures who look like their constituents
Nikole Hannah-Jones and the affirmative-action paradox - "There are few better illustrations of the difference between the currently acceptable narrative about race and actual reality than the Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure saga at the University of North Carolina (UNC). The media would have you believe that an award-winning journalist applied for a job for which she was easily qualified, but after she experienced extraordinary racist abuse, she accepted an alternative position at a historically black university instead... before activist media became involved, NHJ was happy to sign UNC’s initial offer – which was apparently a completely standard academic offer letter. It noted that her position would not be ‘inherently tenured’, but also that it would likely produce tenure ‘at the end of the contract’. Even if the decision not to offer tenure at the hiring stage was specific to Hannah-Jones, this had literally nothing to do with racism. The controversy around her hire relates to her ‘award-winning’ work. Dozens of serious media and academic outlets on the right and the left have savaged the 1619 Project that made Hannah-Jones’ name. Her claim that the American Revolutionary War was fought largely to preserve slavery has been widely debunked. (I have also harshly criticised 1619 on spiked and elsewhere.) Even the Project’s own fact-checker wrote an article for Politico, criticising Hannah-Jones for not listening to her factual advice. It is worth looking beyond the particulars of the Hannah-Jones saga. Almost no faculty contracts involve a promise of immediate tenure, with the best and most prominent faculty hires generally being brought in on the tenure track. And while journalism schools can sometimes be an exception to this rule, almost no tenure-track faculty are hired without a PhD or other terminal degree, and some history of scholarly publication. NHJ’s highest degree is, according to what is publicly available, an MA from UNC. Despite this, her proposed contract was one of the best job offers in academia I have ever seen: it reportedly included a guaranteed $180,000 per year in salary, a $100,000 ‘start-up package’ and almost $10,000 in moving funds. Had Hannah-Jones taken up the position, she would have immediately become the highest-paid professor in UNC’s sizable journalism school, supplanting John Sweeney, ‘who has taught at the school since 1981 and makes $151,954’. In exchange for this amount, NHJ was required to teach two classes per semester and ‘produce journalism projects about structural racism’. In fact, the entire focus of the Knight Chair in Journalism was also changed to ‘race and investigative journalism’ to accommodate her. Literally nothing indicates that Hannah-Jones’ race provided any barrier to her proposed hiring. On the contrary, diversity was widely cited as a reason for bringing her on board. The university that sought to employ her has a Diversity/Equity/Inclusion (DEI) office which employs dozens of people and has its own unique website. The deal she went for after rejecting UNC’s pitch wasn’t too shabby, either: her new position at the nation’s top black college comes with a six-figure salary, with Ta-Nehisi Coates as a co-worker, and is funded by nearly $20million in donations. In other words, the mainstream-media discussion of the Hannah-Jones tenure is an extraordinary reversal of reality. Sadly, this is not unique to her case. A very widespread theme in modern discourse is that ‘mediocre’ white males are held to lower standards than – say – bisexual Hispanic women when it comes to college admissions or corporate hiring. There is, in fact, a recent best-selling book about this ‘phenomenon’ by Ijeoma Oluo, fittingly titled Mediocre. Though there is more than a residual racial bias that endures for entry-level jobs, there is no evidence to support this claim in the corporate world or in academica. It is the exact opposite of the truth. Affirmative action has long been legal, if not mandatory, under US law. Almost every Fortune 1000 company or reputable university employs an entire department of bureaucrats focused on making their institutions more diverse... Was the 1619 Project really the best piece of factual journalistic commentary produced in 2019? I can hardly be alone in asking this question, especially following embarrassing incidents like the National Association of Scholars submitting a formal public letter from 21 experts to the Pulitzer Board, calling for the revocation of the 1619 Project’s prize. One thing is for certain: the mainstream narrative on race does not recognise the prevalence of affirmative action in US society. In their book Mismatch, Sander and Taylor investigated whether black students thought a black teenager would be more or less likely to be admitted to a typical selective college than a white kid with equal credentials. An astonishing 67 per cent of black respondents said the black applicant would be less likely to be admitted – presumably because of racism – while only five per cent said the white student would be. And, right there, we have the ‘NHJ paradox’. Because of false messaging, people who are empirically and measurably privileged (in the world of academia at least) expect to be victims of racist abuse. How to stop this trend? One obvious if blunt suggestion comes to mind: we should start actually treating all people exactly equally, and be damned open about it."
Diversity by diktat: An obscure 1977 OMB memo forms the basis for today’s affirmative-action programs - "Ever since the Supreme Court decided the Bakke case in 1978, enhancing the “diversity” of a school’s student body has been the only permissible rationale for affirmative-action preferences in higher education. Justice Lewis Powell, originator of the diversity rationale, had in mind a college admissions office that wanted to admit applicants who would add racial and ethnic diversity to the crop of musicians, athletes, scholars, artists, actors, and other discrete groups colleges recruit to enhance the college experience. Yet the way colleges use race in admissions today does not match the putative diversity objective. First, many elite schools try to match their percentage of minority students from various groups with their respective percentages of the applicant pool or other demographic baseline. This seems a lot more like a soft quota than like a sincere attempt to achieve diversity. Moreover, as David A. Hollinger has pointed out, universities often give little or no consideration to the fact that members of minority groups “may have no interest whatsoever in the culture popularly associated with the group.” An applicant with one Mexican great-grandparent can honestly check the Hispanic box on her college application, but that does not mean that she will bring Hispanic culture with her to the school, or that she is even familiar with that culture. Both of these problems have been debated in detail in past cases. But there is another, bigger, problem with the diversity rationale that has been largely ignored by courts and litigants: In pursuing diversity, colleges universally rely on racial classifications derived from the Office of Management and Budget’s 1977 Statistical Directive No. 15. These classifications were never intended to be proxies for educational diversity, but rather to create uniform classifications to make government data collection needed for civil rights enforcement and other matters more consistent and coherent. OMB cautioned that the “classifications should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature,” and warned that they should not be “viewed as determinants of eligibility for participation in any Federal program,” such as affirmative-action programs. Nevertheless, the classifications became the standard used in measuring diversity in higher education. No university has ever explained, in litigation or otherwise, why a diversity of students from these specific statistical categories are appropriate proxies for ethnic diversity. Indeed, the relevant official categories — Asian American, Black, Hispanic, Native American, White — are themselves internally ethnically diverse, indeed radically so. The Asian classification is particularly broad. As Justice Samuel Alito commented in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, “it would be ludicrous to suggest that all [students classified as ‘Asian’] have similar backgrounds and similar ideas and experiences to share.” Such a “crude” and “overly simplistic” racial category cannot possibly capture how “individuals of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Indian and other backgrounds comprising roughly 60% of the world’s population” would contribute to diversity on a college campus. Chief Justice Warren Burger similarly noted in United Jewish Organizations v. Carey that the White classification also “consists of a veritable galaxy of national origins, ethnic backgrounds, and religious denominations.” The only time a white applicant counts as enhancing diversity is when he has Spanish-speaking ancestors and therefore qualifies as Hispanic. A Yemeni Muslim, Egyptian Copt, Hungarian Roma, Bosnian refugee, Scandinavian Laplander, Siberian Tatar, or Bobover Hasid might add significant religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity to a campus. For campus affirmative-action purposes, however, admissions offices classify them all as generically white per the Directive 15 rules. Those who qualify for the African American category also are not culturally uniform. A descendant of American slaves who grew up in a working-class, majority-black neighborhood in Milwaukee does not contribute to diversity in the same way as a child of an African diplomat who grew up in toney D.C. suburb, nor as a black-identified applicant with multiracial ancestry who grew up in a small town in Montana. Yet they all fall into the same diversity classification. The American Indian category, meanwhile, includes everyone from a resident of the Hopi reservation with an unbroken line of Hopi ancestry to an individual who checks that box because his great-great-great grandfather was a Cherokee. Surely, these applicants would make very distinct contributions to a campus’ ethnic diversity. Classifying them both as generic Native Americans obscures those distinctions... An alternative basis for affirmative-action preferences in university admissions is to right historical injustices that have modern reverberations, and to help bring marginalized groups into the American mainstream. The Supreme Court has held that using racial preferences for this purpose is unconstitutional. Nevertheless, there is a way to pursue the remedial goals of many affirmative-action advocates without using race in admissions — universities could limit admissions preferences to African American descendants of American slaves (ADOS) and members of American Indian tribes who live on reservations... Universities could be “color-blind,” while retaining the ability to redress the lingering harms from state-sponsored racism without triggering strict scrutiny that applies to racial classifications under the 14th Amendment."
Affirmative Action Conundrums - "its beneficiaries—no matter how supportive they are of the policy—still do not want to be associated with it. Yes: no matter how much the dialogue has changed, everyone hates the idea of affirmative action. Even Kendi seems to dislike it. The claim that someone has benefited from affirmative action is generally treated more like a scandalous accusation than a neutral statement of fact, even by affirmative action supporters—not what you would expect from a treasured and successful policy. Affirmative action fails ballot measures even in the most liberal states, and people of goodwill can tie themselves into the most absurd intellectual knots as they attempt to discuss it without acknowledging its inherent unpleasantness. At the same time, the ethos of affirmative action has made it past admissions and hiring into our approaches to interpersonal encounters. Robin DiAngelo and the other handsomely remunerated hucksters in the you're-so-problematic anti-racist cottage industry basically train people to be individual loci of affirmative action psychology in everyday life. And studies bear out that white liberals do in fact exhibit this psychology: they use shorter words with black people than with white people and judge them by less exacting standards... Back in 2009, it was a point of general agreement that affirmative action policies were prima facie discriminatory and hence undesirable, and that they needed a compelling justification to overcome this fact. Even a deviation from colorblindness had to pay respect to the colorblind ideal by justifying itself on other grounds. This, of course, is how courts have always treated affirmative action. Three justifications were floated at the time. First was the diversity rationale, a relatively centrist justification enshrined in actual law... Then there was the historical reparations rationale... Finally, there was the role model rationale... None of these rationales informs much of the discussion about affirmative action today outside of court decisions. The idea that affirmative action helps white students by bringing the diverse perspectives of black students into the classroom is seen as tokenism that concedes too much to white interests. Affirmative action is no longer really considered a reasonable vehicle for reparations, either; the right way to achieve reparations—if they're justified at all—is to pass a reparations bill. And I don't hear much talk about the role model rationale anymore. If I had to guess, I'd say the hip view is that it misdiagnoses the problem or even blames black people. Plus, years of affirmative action ought to have ameliorated the role model problem, so continuing to use this rationale would be to accept an increasingly limited role for the policy (or would constitute a tacit acknowledgement that the policy had failed to produce its intended results). So what justifications for affirmative policies have replaced them? Well, none, as far as I can tell... its necessity is substantiated in three new ways. First, affirmative action is straightforwardly anti-racist, since anything that helps black people is anti-racist. Second, affirmative action cannot possibly be racist, since the people against whom it discriminates are not considered powerless in a way that would make discrimination against them objectionable. Third, affirmative action does not really discriminate at all because the whole idea of merit or student ability is itself a racist or otherwise prejudicial notion... How could affirmative action play an important role in an allegedly racist, white supremacist society? Critical race theorists hew to the interest convergence thesis, which holds that policies that help nonwhites are only able to pass when they also help white people. For this reason, some writers, like Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the originators of the theory of intersectionality, have claimed that the group that benefits from affirmative action the most is white women (in Crenshaw's words, the “principle [sic] beneficiaries”). But at least in college admissions, white women do not benefit the most from affirmative action. They do not benefit more than members of underrepresented minority racial and ethnic groups; they could not possibly based on average grades and test scores and admission rates for the different groups. Compared to white men, white women are admitted to college at rates roughly proportional to their representation in the population; they have only slightly lower SAT scores, and they have higher grades. So it is virtually impossible to read into college admissions statistics an energetic affirmative action program for white women. A Vox article making this claim cites only Crenshaw to substantiate it, and Crenshaw's own article has no footnotes whatsoever—a very rare thing in a law review... The incoherence of anti-racist agitprop extends beyond affirmative action. Progressives and anti-racists advocate an end to colorblindness, not just as a theoretical ideal of liberal neutrality, but as a matter of practical politics and the letter of the law. But it's hard to see how such a development could possibly benefit people of color in a genuinely racist society. When I ask why racist institutions might be so committed to affirmative action, I'm sometimes told that it’s merely a matter of public relations—a kind of cosmetic diversity. But this just pushes the need for an explanation back a step. Why would diversity itself be prized by the public in a racist society?... Of course, some people use “racist” or “white supremacist” to describe a kind of state of affairs or distribution of resources rather than a set of beliefs people might actually hold. If that's what you mean by the terms, there's no mystery; but if that's what you mean, you also won't have recourse to “white backlash” explanations of political events, or to other elaborate stories about the psychology of white people... The best explanation of this conundrum available to anti-racists is that the racism in American society is not due to its elites and their institutions—those people are trying to “do the work.” Rather, American racism is the product of the leftover dregs of historical racism that manifest as implicit biases, and larger pieces of racism that end up as explicitly racist individuals... This theory, however, faces an empirical problem and a political problem. The empirical problem is that the construct of implicit bias is questionable... the theory valorizes wealthy, prestigious, urbane Americans at the expense of ordinary ones... A different kind of theory of this sort holds that powerful people aren't racist, but that they also don't want to trouble themselves much with real problems, or to think about just how racist America is. So they practice affirmative action and similar policies due to a tense combination of genuine conviction and denial. I suppose this is politically better than the above theory, but as psychology it strikes me as even worse. It requires us to think of people as suspended in a constant state of cognitive dissonance around race, motivated primarily by the irrational need to ignore what is obvious."
The liberal justification for affirmative action I see nowadays is that it assumes all groups are equally talented, so disparity in outcomes is proof of discrimination, so AA stops minorities from being discriminated against
To liberals, affirmative action is anything that helps you get in, so it's no wonder they keep claiming whites are the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action
The Question of Affirmative Action: An Interview with Glenn Loury - "MICHAEL SANDEL: You’ve said that affirmative action is not about equality, it’s about “covering ass.”...
GLENN LOURY: I was drawing the listener’s attention to the difference between the institutional interest in having a diverse profile of participants and the interests, as I understand them, of the population which may be the beneficiary of this largesse. My point was: if you want genuine equality, this is distinct from titular equality. If you want substantive equality, this is distinct from optics equality. If you want equality of respect, of honor, of standing, of dignity, of achievement, of mastery, then you may want to think carefully about implementing systems of selection that prefer a population on a racial basis. Such a system may be inconsistent over the longer term in achieving what I call genuine equality; real equality; substantive equality; equality of standing, dignity, achievement, honor, and respect...
GL: part of the honor being conveyed comes from the distinction of having been identified as one of the persons in society who excel; who are extraordinary in their achievement; who are in the top five or 10 percent or whatever it may be. Brown admits about 1,800 students from over 30,000 applications. I imagine something similar is true at Harvard. The very fact of having been selected is meant to convey that we have vetted you, we have compared you to others, we have found you to be extraordinarily outstanding and we have selected you. So that is honor. That is a certification of merit... Peter Arcidiacono, the economist who was the expert witness for the plaintiffs in the Harvard affirmative action case, is studying students at Duke who elect to pursue science and engineering and mathematics-type curricula. He wants to know how likely it is that a student will elect to leave the technical curriculum and switch over to a softer, less quantitative line of study, as a function of race and their pre-admissions characteristics, their test scores and grades and so on. He finds that more than half of the African American students at Duke who matriculate with an intent to pursue STEM area studies end up switching out before they graduate. I don’t remember the number exactly but something like 10 or 15 percent of white students in the same situation switch out. But he also finds that when he controls for the test scores and grades, there’s no racial disparity in the likelihood of leaving STEM. His data from Duke indicate that the African American students with an interest in STEM but lower quantitative qualification in their pre-admissions profile simply are unable to persist in the study of the technical curriculum. That’s the kind of thing I say is inconsistent with “genuine” equality as I’m defining it. Let me give another example: I’ve been told—sotto voce—by partners at big law firms in New York and Chicago that they are hiring associates of color who they don’t think are really that good. But they know that they’re going to have to make some of them partners because the firm can’t stand the reputational hit of having a class of partners with an inadequate number of people of color. And, without wanting to be quoted by name, they say, “I shudder at the prospect in some cases because I know that the people that we’re dealing with here are really not as good as I would like to see them be in order for me to make this promotion decision. But the logic of affirmative action in a way compels this and now I’m confronted at the firm with an ex post facto situation in which everybody knows that there are these disparities by race and the performance of people within the firm, but nobody is willing to say it because it’s politically incorrect to do so.” That’s the kind of situation that I would hope to avoid. Affirmative action in 1980 is one thing—thinking of that as a year marking the transition from the era of discrimination to an era of aggressive effort to achieve diversity and inclusion. But affirmative action as a permanent, institutionalized practice of racially differentiated standards of selection is problematic...
Sure, the rich kid who has three generations of Harvard alumni in the family and gets selected to be admitted ought to have an asterisk next to their name... But those people are not operating against the headwind of racial stigma. You can’t identify the beneficiary of the legacy preference at a glance... if I want there to be more black physicists or more black literary critics, I’ve got to do something about the background educational dynamic that is producing such huge disparities in the performance of the black population on the criteria used to select students at a place like Harvard...
No African American has ever won the Nobel Prize in economics. Suppose Black Lives Matter were to go to Stockholm and picket the committee that decides who gets the Nobel Prize. The honor that I would like to be able to bask in would become unattainable were there even a hint of political influence... there are some kinds of goods which can’t be redistributed. The very act of intervening in order to effect a redistribution destroys the quality of the good that is being redistributed. And I think human distinction is one of those goods... the motivation for it, while perhaps noble, is nevertheless inconsistent with the dignity of the African American population. We are being treated to a certain degree like children. We’re being excused from the burdens of performing at a very high level... you don’t treat us seriously, you don’t treat us as equals, if you’re not prepared to insist that we perform to the same level as anybody else. In your students’ questions, I have heard two themes. First, it may be that above a certain threshold the differences amongst individuals are not that important. So, you might want to say that people are “qualified” and have that be some kind of categorical and not a continuously differentiated judgment, if they exceed that threshold... Second, what are we rewarding when we say we’re rewarding merit? Are we rewarding effort or are we rewarding ability or are we rewarding privilege?... if the institution is only concerned about performance, then the fact that the high performer is a high performer in part because they’ve benefitted from privilege should not count against them. But I can see a more subtle argument, one I associate with John Roemer’s book Equality of Opportunity, that says let’s classify people based on their background conditions... That tells me something about you, about your resilience, about your determination, about your fortitude, perhaps about your aptitude because I’m comparing you to other people who have similar background conditions... I haven’t really changed the fundamental premise of my selection model, which is that I’m trying to find the people who are going to perform best after admission; I’ve just enriched my prediction model by using your relative performance among peers. (The question remains as to the role of race per se in making such relative assessments.)...
The over-representation of African Americans amongst the incarcerated population is in the realm of dishonor... we fill our jails with drug traffickers serving a market that wouldn’t exist but for middle-class and upper-class people engaged in the consumption of these substances... the huge disparities in the quality of the educational services available by class and by race and by social location are a fundamental issue of fairness. So, in my view, racial justice and equity understood in the largest sense would be 95 percent talking about things like that and five percent talking about who got admitted to the most selective higher education venues. They’re not unimportant, but it’s the tail wagging the dog if that’s the main thing we’re talking about."
Clearly, black students who drop out of STEM are victims of racism, so we need even more anti-racist discrimination, like having easier courses for black students
Affirmative Action in a Multiethnic Nation - "As we are constantly reminded, America is becoming an ever-more diverse nation. Whites will be a minority by mid-century. Some perceive this to be an unalloyed good. But it appears that few proponents of affirmative action are prepared to consider the dangers of quotas in a multiethnic society. A survey of other nations’ experiences with this policy reveals sobering consequences. At best: social strife, inefficiency, endemic public corruption, and nepotism. At worst: tribalized violence and warfare. In Malaysia... The term “Ali Baba” there describes an arrangement wherein “Ali,” the native Malay, acts as a frontman for the actual Chinese/Indian business owner “Baba.” Despite state discrimination, the overseas Chinese and Indians remain far wealthier and better educated than native Malays. India’s reticular caste system poses unique problems. Legions of ethnic groups seek categorization as “backwards classes.” In Maharashtra, the paramilitary Shiv Sena jealously guards ethnic spoils systems. Successful Bengalis in the state of Assam have encountered violence from aggrieved natives. Scions of the upper-castes have self-immolated protesting quotas that limit their opportunities. Many reserved spots for Dalits (“untouchables”) and other backwards classes either go unfilled—especially in high-skill occupations like engineering—or go to the “creamy layer” (i.e., the most advantaged members of putatively marginalized groups). In Brazil, applicants for university and government jobs are boosted by Afro-Brazillian or pardo (brown) status. Inspection boards use detailed guidelines—including fine gradations of skin-tone and measurements of lip size, hair texture, skull shape, and nose width—to ferret out Europeans from those of genuine Indigenous and African descent (given the high rate of intermixing, this is a fraught endeavor). Desperate strivers blacken their skin or otherwise modify their appearance to gain an edge. The Policy of Standardization in Sri Lanka contributed to a bloody civil war between Tamil and Sinhalese... as the share of eligible recipients increases claims that quotas do not materially harm whites (and perhaps “white-adjacents” like East Asians) will become increasingly implausible. When the Nixon Administration first implemented affirmative action programs for blacks and American Indians, whites comprised the vast majority of the US population. At that time, one could reasonably claim the program had minimal impact. This is not true anymore... If the ratio is allowed to become too unbalanced, it will do violence to the Court’s promise that “Under the Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race.”... there is little evidence that diversity actually yields educational benefits (and that courts do not require universities to prove that they do)... the “plus-factor vs. quota” distinction has always been farcical. Universities’ student demographics remain remarkably stable year-to-year, suggestive of quotas applied with slight fluctuations. Moreover, universities are not required to offer statistical proof that any applicants possessing Justice Powell’s race-neutral holistic characteristic are provided with a “plus-factor” at any rate approaching that of “underrepresented minorities.” In fact, being a “farm boy from Idaho” might function as a demerit to many admissions departments. Affirmative action’s early proponents promised that the regime would function as a temporary stopgap rather than a permanent dispensation. But today’s supporters don’t deign to offer any such assurances. In their view, affirmative action will remain justifiable until representation in every sector of society is near proportional to share of population. The Manichean view of Ibram X. Kendi, as articulated in his ideological guidebook How to be an Antiracist is instructive... Many have pointed out that this political platform is “openly totalitarian.” Kendi’s proposal for a Department of Antiracism tasked with preclearing all state, local, and federal policies for any hint of racism—defined as any racial disparities—makes this abundantly clear. Kendi’s formulation is necessarily selective (it only considers the historical struggles of certain groups, naturally those whose present struggles are conspicuous) and presumes that past inequities are determinative of outcomes today. Due to accidents of history, culture, and more, never in history have different ethnic groups experienced equal outcomes. And while discrimination does have an impact, and should be rectified where possible, it is often not dispositive. Victims of discrimination frequently outpace perpetrators (e.g., Chinese and bumiputeras in Malaysia). The antiracist Left’s vision would require authoritarian micromanaging of society, lowering of standards, and leveling of outcomes. Meritocracy and excellence would fall by the wayside. The individual ambitions of those who possess the wrong racial traits would be squashed and their opportunities limited. Affirmative Action Now, Affirmative Action Forever. Few ordinary people want to live in a society rife with ethnic tension and mediocrity. California voters, and the American public at large, should reject the antiracists’ racism by subterfuge."
Opinion | Nigeria Is Haunted by Its Civil War - The New York Times - "Postwar leaders found another way of building national unity: the concept of “federal character.” A new Constitution required the composition and conduct of government to “reflect the federal character of Nigeria.” Its purpose was to ensure that no ethnic group would monopolize leadership of the government or be excluded from national economic and political opportunities. Still in place today, it in effect operates as one of the world’s biggest affirmative action schemes. Nigerian law even bans political parties if they adopt names, logos or mottoes with ethnic, geographic or religious connotations, or if their membership does not satisfy constitutional diversity requirements. But these efforts to ensure national unity, however well intentioned, froze Nigeria in time-bound assumptions about what the country should look like. The postwar desire to prevent another secession generated a near obsessive ethnic micromanaging of national life — and created a nation that exists almost simply to share money and jobs. “Federal character” became the most controversial two words in Nigeria’s Constitution. An ethnic quota regulates almost every facet of public life: Admission to the government and the Civil Service, schools and universities, the military and the police is decided by regional origin. Rather than working as a glue for unity, the fixation on ethnic sharing of national opportunities and resources made Nigerians more aware of their ethnic differences. Resentment rose in parts of the country badly served by the quota system. The irony is plain: To prevent the recurrence of a war fought at least partly on ethnic lines — Biafra was populated mainly by the Igbo ethnic group — Nigeria’s rulers solidified ethnic identities. What’s more, instead of ensuring the country’s unity, the postwar settlement generated conflict."
Clearly obsessing over race will bring nations together
Affirmative Action and Its Mythology - "the presence of the term “preferential treatment” had its most pronounced negative impact on support for assisting racial minorities when the context involved race-based preferences in college admissions. Moreover, and perhaps most disturbingly, Sniderman and Piazza (1993 pp. 102-104) find that in a comparison of two groups of similar whites, individuals to whom affirmative action was mentioned showed a significantly higher tendency to affirm negative racial stereotypes about blacks like “most blacks are lazy” than did those to whom affirmative action was not mentioned at all... This paper enumerates seven commonly held but mistaken views one often encounters in the folklore about affirmative action. 1) Affirmative action may involve goals and timelines, but definitely not quotas. 2) Color- blind policies offer an efficient substitute for color-sighted affirmative action. 3) Affirmative action creates opportunities but does not undercut incentives. 4) Passing equal opportunity laws is enough to ensure racial equality. 5) The earlier affirmative action is used in education or career development, the better. 6) Many whites are directly affected by affirmative action policies designed to increase representation of minorities. 7) Affirmative action always helps its intended beneficiaries... A recent controversial paper by Richard Sander (2005) offers the disturbing possibility that, at least in the context of legal education, affirmative action may actually harm its beneficiaries... the median black student starting law school in 1991 earned first-year grades comparable to those of a white student at the 7th or 8th percentile of the overall grade distribution. Roughly 52 percent of black first–year law students fall in the lowest decile of the overall grade distribution; 83 percent fall in the bottom three deciles. Furthermore, Sander presents evidence that lower first-year grades are associated with lower rates of law school completion and lower odds of passing the bar exam. Thus, Sander argues it is theoretically possible (given certain assumptions on the educational production function and on the determinants of the supply of black lawyers) that even though eliminating affirmative action would cause fewer blacks to be enrolled at elite law schools, it could also cause the number of practicing black lawyers to increase. This counter-intuitive result is possible because, without affirmative action, black students would enroll in greater numbers at less selective law schools and be more likely to graduate from law school and to pass the bar exam."