Archive for March, 2009
It looks like another set of judges has found a way around the will of the people.
In 1996, 54 percent of California voters said yes to Proposition 209, a constitutional amendment barring state and local governments from granting preferences to and discriminating against individuals or groups in public employment, public education, or public contracting based on factors like race and sex.
On March 17, California’s First District Court of Appeal ruled that the Berkeley Unified School District’s student assignment plan, which takes race into account, does not violate California’s ban on racial preferences.
Read the rest at Townhall.
Filed under: Column, Judiciary | |Comments off
Larry Purdy, author of Getting Under the Skin of “Diversity”: Searching for the Color-Blind Ideal, responds to an article I blogged about earlier today, “Affirmative-Action Programs for Minority Students: Right in Theory, Wrong in Practice,” adapted from a book titled, Taming the River: Negotiating the Academic, Financial, and Social Currents in Selective Colleges and Universities.
Among other things, Purdy explains the difference between affirmative action and race preferences. The two are used interchangeably, but they are distinct. Purdy writes:
“As a preliminary matter, the essay mixes and matches two very different concepts, ‘affirmative action’ and ‘race-sensitive policies’ (or race-preferences). The former, in its best sense, is directly opposed to the blatant racial discrimination practiced under the latter. As a matter of historical background, ‘affirmative action’ was devised to insure that no person would be discriminated against based on his race or ethnicity. It is a principle that most Americans agree deserves vigilant support and perpetual protection. Indeed, that is the essence of what President John F. Kennedy had in mind when he coined the phrase in 1961. His policy directed that ‘affirmative action’ be taken to remove, not add, race as a factor in deciding who should be hired by the federal government…Today’s race-preference policies fly in the face of that principle and frustrate the achievement of the color-blind society most Americans sincerely desire.”
Filed under: General | |Comments off
After you read Affirmative-Action Programs for Minority Students: Right in Theory, Wrong in Practice (excepted at TaxProf Blog), you may come away as amazed as I was. Proponents of race preferences contort themselves into strange positions to justify the practice and avoid stating the obvious.
The article is adapted from the four authors’ new book, Taming the River: Negotiating the Academic, Financial, and Social Currents in Selective Colleges and Universities. “Critics” of skin color preferences have three basic arguments, they contend: 1) the practice is reverse discrimination; 2) the practice creates a mismatch between students and their respective schools; and 3) the practice creates a stigma for students admitted under preferences.
Reverse discrimination is a term some people use to distinguish between discrimination against whites and discrimination against blacks. Obviously, there is no difference. Racial discrimination is racial discrimination, and regardless of what the Supreme Court says, it should be illegal in all contexts.
The authors admit that minority students at 28 colleges and universities they studied tended to have test scores below the school’s average. “Such results assume that minority-group SAT scores fall below the institutional average because admissions officers trade off test scores against other criteria associated with their desire to recruit more minority students — the essence of affirmative action.”
In the name of skin deep-only diversity, schools admit minority students, who tend to have lower grades and scores than the rest. You can debate whether the practice is justified, but there is no debate that the practice goes on at colleges and universities across the country.
Strangely, the authors assert that “black and Latino students with relatively low SAT scores do no better or worse than their counterparts who scored at or above the average for their institutions,” but admit to finding a “significant effect of institutional affirmative action on the grade performance of black and Latino students…A sizable minority-majority test-score gap within any given institution appears to create a social context that makes it more difficult for minority students to perform academically.”
In other words, race preferences harm minority students not because students who “benefited” have lower qualifications and are less prepared for their respective academic settings; they harm minorities because of how others perceive them and how they perceive themselves. Let me say it another way. Race preferences, which tend to produce large gaps in scores between minorities and other students, lower minority achievement by creating a stigma and a sort of stereotype threat, both of which affect a minority student’s ability to perform.
Don’t laugh. They’re quite serious.
The authors believe the inherent weakness of skin color preferences isn’t about academic gaps and institutional mismatch. It’s how race preferences are administered.
An easier way to eliminate “reverse” discrimination, the gap, the mismatch, and the stigma would be to remove race from the equation altogether and admit well-qualified students, regardless of race.
But that would make too much sense.
I echo Roger Clegg’s sentiment. When attempting to refute the mismatch theory, the authors cite William Bowen’s and Derek Bok’s The Shape of the River, which defends racial preferences, while ignoring the more well researched work of Richard Sander, who said that law school race-based preferences result in fewer black lawyers, because blacks admitted under these conditions are placed in schools that exceed their levels of preparation. As a result, they failed the bar exam at higher rates.
Also, I recommend picking up a copy of a book that critiques Bowen’s and Bok’s thesis, Getting Under the Skin of “Diversity”: Searching for the Color-Blind Ideal, by Larry Purdy.
The four authors, like most preference proponents, support lowered standards for minorities to satisfy some arbitrary notion of diversity. Their solution to problems stemming from this practice is simply to put a different spin on what’s actually happening. Athletic and legacy preference beneficiaries don’t suffer similar problems as race preference beneficiaries, contend the authors, so there’s “no good reason that affirmative-action programs for minority students cannot be run in the same way.” (I say get rid of athletic and legacy preferences, too.)
Like all roads that lead to a very hot place, this one is paved with good intentions.
Filed under: General, Richard Sander, Roger Clegg | |1 Comment
John McWhorter, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and Mary Frances Berry, history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, discussed the future of race preferences. Specifically, the two talked about whether the election of the nation’s first biracial president has rendered “affirmative action” unnecessary. Listen to the show here.
Berry rallies around the same justification for lowered standards for blacks: diversity. McWhorter supports socioeconomic affirmative action, which would benefit people of all races. He opposes preferences for people who happen to have a certain skin color and who “benefit” from this policy whether they want to or not.
In January, McWhorter discussed the same topic on NPR with panelists Dahlia Lithwick and BAMN’s Shanta Driver. In that interview, McWhorter raised an important point. He wondered whether it was “really such a tragedy” if, in the absence of race-based admissions, a black student gets a degree from the University of California at San Diego rather than UC Berkeley.
In my view, race preferences are immoral, should be illegal, and are unnecessary no matter who’s sitting in the White House.
Filed under: Socioeconomic AA | |Comments off
It’s retro Tuesday!
According to a study published two years ago in the American Journal of Education, the proportion of black immigrants at private and the most competitive colleges and universities was higher than the proportion of black Americans. First- or second-generation black immigrants, who accounted for 13 percent of black students age 18 or 19 attending colleges and universities in the U.S., accounted for over a quarter of black students at selective colleges. (Source)
Why the discrepancy?
The study notes statistical differences between black American and black immigrant students, which include the following: 1) immigrants were more likely to be raised by two parents; 2) their fathers were “much more educated;” and 3) immigrants were more likely to have attended private schools.
The article notes the ruckus raised in 2003, when Lani Guinier (pictured) complained about black immigrants, who are not descended from American slaves, benefiting from race preferences. (The assumption is black students, regardless of nationality or whether their ancestors experienced human bondage, are admitted under lowered standards.)
Columnist Clarence Page weighed in on the discussion and said immigrants simply work harder. In a 2004 column he wrote:
“Why are black students whose families have been in America for generations being left behind by newcomers, including black newcomers from other countries?…They work harder, in part, because their parents work harder – and their parents work harder because of their relentless optimism: Where others might see a dead-end job, immigrants of all colors see an entry-level opportunity.”
Henry Louis Gates told the New York Times, “We need to learn what the immigrants’ kids have so we can bottle it and sell it, because many members of the African-American community, particularly among the chronically poor, have lost that sense of purpose and values which produced our generation.”
Race preferences are discriminatory, no matter who benefits. Do preference proponents have the moral authority to declare that some “people of color” are more deserving of preferences than others?
Filed under: General | |Comments off
Arkansas Representative Frank Glidewell introduced a bill in the state house that would have required Arkansas to disclose whether taxpayer-supported colleges and universities give preferential treatment in admissions to students based on skin color. Unfortunately, a House committee rejected the measure. (Source)
Representative Dan Greenberg said, “The people of Arkansas have a right to know who’s getting preferential treatment.”
Richard Peltz (pictured), a professor at the University of Arkansas Law School in Little Rock who opposes race preferences, wants to disclose the information. He says his school stands accused of biased admissions. “I would like to know what’s going on inside my institution.”
Incidentally, Peltz sued two students at his law school, charging them with defamation. Peltz said the students used his comments about preferences to unfairly accuse him of racism. (Source)
Speculation: Arkansas likely uses racial preferences in admissions, and state lawmakers who voted against the measure want to obscure this fact. If the state’s practice is exposed, it certainly would open a door to groups that oppose preferences. An Arkansas Civil Rights Initiative would be in order.
Filed under: General | |Comments off
Last week at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, the American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly signed copies of his new book, Lessons from My Uncle James: Beyond Skin Color to the Content of Our Character. (Source)
Speaking to about 100 people, Connerly spoke of his Uncle James, the man who raised him.
“He would say life is not fair for anyone. It doesn’t matter where you started out in life. It’s where you end up, through hard work…I learned so much about the importance of character from him. I think we’ve done a great job as a nation not judging by one’s skin color. But right now, it’s more important to judge by character.”
As an aside, I was pleased to know that Connerly’s Uncle James detested the term “African-American” just as I do and for the same reasons.
Buy a copy of Lessons from My Uncle James by visiting this page.
Filed under: Ward Connerly | |1 Comment
Last week, the California Court of Appeals heard arguments about whether the Berkeley school district’s race-based pupil assignment plan is discriminatory. Yesterday the court ruled that Berkeley’s plan does not violate California’s ban on preferences. (Source)
The court contended that the policy “does not show partiality, prejudice or preference to any student on the basis of that student’s race.” The court’s reasoning is that all students in a residential area get the same treatment and therefore, the practice isn’t discriminatory. Will the state supreme court get the case? Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Alan Foutz says the American Civil Rights Foundation (ACRF), which filed the suit, probably will appeal.
Download the 19-page opinion in Word.
In October, 2006, ACRF sued the Berkeley Unified School District, claiming that if violated a state law that bars the government from discriminating against or preferring individuals in hiring, contracting, and admissions based on factors like race. The district had taken race into account when making assignments for attendance at certain elementary schools and for participation in certain academic programs at Berkeley High School. A judge ruled against ACRF, which asked the appeals court to review the case.
In 1996, 54 percent of California voters said YES on Proposition 209.
Stay tuned for more commentary about this decision.
Filed under: Diversity, Judiciary, Pacific Legal Foundation | |Comments off
Last week, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) sent a cease and desist letter to the city of Omaha requesting that it repeal sections of its municipal code that give race- and sex-based preferences in the awarding of public contracts.
In response, city attorney Paul Kratz said Omaha suspended the contracting rules after the November election, and the city is drafting a new ordinance. (Source)
Under the city’s previous contracting compliance ordinance, businesses owned or operated by members of certain racial or ethnic groups were automatically designated “disadvantaged” and therefore subject to preferential treatment. Omaha allowed female- and minority-owned businesses to submit bids 30 days before other businesses and required 10 percent of the city’s contracting dollars to be awarded to such businesses.
Last November, 58 percent of Nebraska voters chose to bar their state from discriminating against or giving preferences in hiring, contracting, and admissions based on factors like race and sex. A group challenged the law in court earlier this year, but a judge upheld it.
Filed under: Initiative 424, NECRI, Pacific Legal Foundation | |Comments off
Like Stephanie Ramage, news editor of The Sunday Paper, I find it strange that book stores tend to be segregated. If you’re looking for a book by a black author, for example, odds are you’ll find it in the “African American” section. The same goes for books by authors of Asian, American Indian, or Hispanic descent.
It’s a shame, but the potential to increase sales under a niche category is too much to resist. I hope to sell a book manuscript some day, and I’d certainly want my book to appear under the appropriate genre, one that isn’t based on the color of my skin. Ramage writes:
“Equality, without consideration of race, gender or sexual preference, is supposedly the American ideal. Yet, among America’s literati and academics, “separate but equal” is encouraged and perpetuated because there are hypocritical writers and professors who have made their fortunes and careers on special minority designations.”
Indeed, it’s hypocritical to complain about so-called racial segregation, yet embrace it when rewards flow from it. Racial discrimination, in my opinion, is always wrong. At one point in our history, black Americans agreed with this notion. Our government openly discriminated against blacks. But today, many black Americans support race preferences, which is nothing more than racial discrimination. The difference is today’s race preferences benefit blacks, so that kind of discrimination is okay. In the same regard, as long as blacks are able to make more money if their books are in the “African American” section, separate-but-equal is a good thing.
Filed under: General | |2 Comments
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