March 2010

Supreme Court May Revisit Racial Preferences

by lbarber on 03/31/2010

in Diversity,Judiciary

blind justiceIn 1996, the U.S. Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit, ruled in Hopwood v. Texas that using racial preferences in college admissions to achieve “diversity” was unconstitutional. Consequently, the second largest state in the Union adopted the so-called Ten Percent Plan to get around the law. Texas high school students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their class are guaranteed admission to the state’s tax-supported colleges and universities

I gave Texas the benefit of the doubt in the racial preferences department. Though the plan was enacted in an attempt to admit more minority students, it benefited students of all races.

Lo and behold, the benefit was unwarranted. In addition to the 10 percent plan, the state also admits students under “holistic review.” As I implied in yesterday’s post, holistic review is code for racial preferences.

But that’s not the point of this post. The point is, the U.S. Supreme Court may take up the “affirmative action” issue again.

Seven years ago, the court held in Grutter v. Bollinger (which abrogated Hopwood) that the University of Michigan law school’s race-based admissions plan was narrowly tailored to further a compelling interest in “obtaining the educational benefits that flow from” a skin deep-only diverse student body. Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, who voted with the majority, wrote that she and her colleagues “expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”

Fast forward to 2008. Two white students filed suit against the University of Texas at Austin (Fisher v. University of Texas), alleging racial discrimination in admissions. After losing in district court, the plaintiffs appealed to the 5th Circuit. Regardless of the outcome, either party may appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court may refuse to hear the case or grant certiorari. At the moment, a majority of the court opposes racial preferences.

For the record, the vice president of legal affairs at UT Austin admits that “many private and public universities take some account of race in admissions. Because blacks and Hispanics on average score lower on entrance exams than white and Asian-American applicants, universities have adopted affirmative-action programs to compensate.”

White House Supports Race-Based Admissions

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration has submitted a brief in support of the side that wants to admit students based on skin color (shocker).

“The question is not whether an individual belongs to a racial group,” reads the brief, “but rather how an individual’s membership in any group may provide deeper understanding of the person’s record and experiences, as well as the contribution she can make to the school.”

This takes us back to the racial assumption rationale I blogged about last week. The government assumes that an individual’s race reveals something about the individual’s worth or value. That may be a nice idea if the assumptions are deemed positive, but what about negative assumptions? Do we want the government making decisions about us, as individuals, based on racial group membership and/or stereotypes, or do we want to prevent the government from making race-based assumptions altogether, beneficial or not?

We can’t have it both ways. If you mess with the bull, you’ll get the proverbial horns.

Rather than progressing toward objective standards and removing race from the equation, the government is regressing to making judgments about individuals based on their membership in a racial group.

Yes, yes, yes, the 1960s-era civil rights movement’s goal was the exact opposite, but that was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Those people mistakenly believed they were fighting and dying for race-neutral government policy.

They were really fighting for a racial spoils system, only they didn’t know it.

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Holistic Review Rears Its Ugly Head

by lbarber on 03/30/2010

in Diversity,UC

dinosaurBased on a handful of incidents by a handful of idiots, the University of California is considering lowering admissions standards to increase “diversity” on campus, otherwise known as “holistic review.”

The notion of holistic review is to consider the whole person, that is, the person’s life experiences. “I want a system that more effectively considers multiple factors beyond test scores and GPA,” UC president Max Yudof said. “I want one that has a larger pool of applicants that will be considered.”

Why a holistic review of applicants necessarily would result in more black students on campus and increase “tolerance” are never explained. Assuming UC would apply holistic review across the board, to every applicant, why would it increase the number of admitted (or enrolled) minorities?

I’ve thought about the question many times and posited an answer. In the post Holistic Admissions and Human Accomplishment, I proposed that schools like UC in fact don’t intend to apply holistic review across the board and to every applicant. If they did, more whites and Asians would be admitted. Why? I’ll quote myself:

Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, also wrote an excellent book titled, In Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. He compiled an inventory of 4,002 significant figures over 2,750 years who pursued excellence and accomplished great things in the arts and sciences. His inventory overwhelmingly consists of white European males, as do other authoritative and respected inventories. Murray made the case that no significant non-European figures and events were omitted from the major inventories. What was known about great works of other cultures was included.

In response to charges that European accomplishment in the sciences is exaggerated and that sources used to compile inventories are biased against non-European countries (about 97 percent of significant figures and events in the sciences are Western), Murray encouraged critics to augment the list of “giants” with non-Europeans, with one caveat: You must use the same rules by which European figures and events were included.

This method would not increase the number of non-Europeans on the list, says Murray, but would add more Europeans to the list. Why? Because European countries were so prodigious; dropping standards of evaluation would result in more European countries, not fewer, and certainly not more non-Europeans.

If holistic assessments were applied equally across the board, the enrollment of whites and Asians – not blacks and Hispanics - would increase.

To clarify, let’s assume more whites than blacks apply to UC. Evaluating all applicants holistically would result in more admitted whites, as they on average tend to have higher grades and scores. As the pool of whites would be larger and better qualified, relaxing the rules for everyone equally would benefit them the most.

Unless…life experiences is code for something members of the white pool don’t possess. From John Rosenberg at Discriminations:

“What is the reason for assuming that the ‘life experiences’ of otherwise not accepted blacks and Hispanics provide better evidence of readiness for UC than the ‘life experiences’ of Asians or, heaven forbid, even whites who would have been accepted if those experiences had been taken into account? Does anyone really believe that the ‘holistic’ nod to ‘life experiences’ is anything other than a high-brow way to discount poor grades and test scores for certain groups?”

Some members of racial minority groups don’t seem to mind being treated this way. As long as they benefit, it’s okay. They simply ignore the double-edged sword and hope it doesn’t swing too closely.

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Wake County Votes Down Busing

by lbarber on 03/25/2010

in Diversity

Linda BrownMainstream media frame stories in a way that reveals their ideological biases. For example, people who value unborn life frequently are referred to as “anti-abortion rights,” rather than “pro-life” or “right to life” advocates.

I noticed a similar bias in stories about the recent school board student assignment policy vote in Wake County, North Carolina. On Tuesday, members voted 5-4 to end busing in the county, a scheme that was unpopular among parents (see previous blog coverage).

Those who support busing children across town, bypassing schools closer to home, are “diversity supporters” rather than busing supporters. Likewise, those who oppose shipping children across town to satisfy bureaucrats’ misguided social engineering schemes are opponents of diversity.

If you’re against busing, you’re against diversity.

According to media reports, discussions at the school board meeting were “heated” and “tense.” At least three men were arrested, and one was heard shouting, “Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Resegregation has got to go.” Don’t laugh. I’m sure he sincerely believes allowing children to attend schools in their own neighborhoods is tantamount to Jim Crow.

I wonder what Oliver Brown, Linda Brown’s father, would have thought about “resegregation” hysteria. Linda had to walk six blocks to a bus stop to ride the bus to a black school a mile away, bypassing the white school closer to her house. The government said his child could not attend her neighborhood school because she was black. In 2010, the government is still shuffling the racial cards. And for what? Why would parents allow the government to experiment with their children?

In over-the-top, civil-rights-industry ranting, the local NAACP’s William Barber said busing opponents had “racist attitudes.” Making a mockery of real civil rights issues, Barber said the vote to keep children in their own neighborhoods is “morally wrong…legally wrong…economically wrong.”

Like the boy who cried wolf, civil rights professionals are undermining the cause with false accusations of racism, and their use of frustratingly trite hyperbole makes them look and sound like comical throwbacks.

(Sources: News & Observer here and here.)

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Move Over, Selma!

by lbarber on 03/22/2010

in Achievement Gap

SelmaRemember when “civil rights violation” meant being refused admission/employment or blocked from the polling place or hit upside the head for exercising your right to peaceably assemble, just because you’re black?

Those days seem quaint now. If anything negative happens to you (preferred minorities only) in 2010, as a consequence of your performance, behavior, and choices, it’s a civil rights violation. Denied a job because you scored too low on an employment test? Civil rights violation. Expelled from school because you’re an habitually bad boy who starts fights, despite expulsion warnings? Civil rights violation.

The existence of racial disparities means somebody, somewhere, is doing a whole lot of discriminating. Move over, Selma. There’s a new billy club-swinging hick sheriff in town, and his name is…disparate impact.

“Education Secretary Arne Duncan, like many liberals, seems afflicted by Sixties Nostalgia Syndrome, a longing for the high drama and moral clarity of the civil rights era,” columnist George Will writes in the Washington Post. “Speaking this month in Alabama at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march, Duncan vowed to unleash on public schools legions of lawyers wielding Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They supposedly will rectify what he considers civil rights violations, such as too many white students in high school Advanced Placement classes.”

Will recounts Duncan’s remarks about disparities between the races in schools and how the Obama administration plans to rectify this insidious inequity. No longer is the movement about ensuring liberty for individuals, but demanding equal outcomes for groups.

“No policy denies minority or low-income students ‘access’ to AP classes,” Will writes. “The pertinent lesson of the 1960s is the futility of casting today’s problems of social class, as Duncan does, in the anachronistic categories of the civil rights era. In 1966, the seismic Coleman Report concluded: ‘Schools are remarkably similar in the way they relate to the achievement of their pupils when the socioeconomic background of the students is taken into account.” (Emphasis added.) … Plainly put, the best predictor of a school’s performance is family performance — qualities of the families from which the students come. Subsequent research suggests that about 90 percent of the differences among the proficiency of schools can be explained by five factors: days absent from school, hours spent watching television, pages read for homework, the quantity and quality of reading matter in the home — and the presence of two parents in the home.”

Since the government can’t force people to marry before having children or maintain an intact family for the benefit of the children, it falls back on the so-called civil rights violation tactic. If a preferred minority is not performing well in school, even if family structure plays a role in his under-performance, the government drags in 1960s-era civil rights comparisons and invokes images of violent resistance against black Americans fighting to be treated as first-class citizens.

At the very least, the children will learn a big word: hyperbole.

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Roger Clegg on Law School Diversity

by lbarber on 03/22/2010

in Diversity,Roger Clegg

Roger CleggAt Minding the Campus, Roger Clegg dissects “Why U.S. News and World Report Should Include a Diversity Index in its Ranking of Law Schools” and discusses several so-called benefits of diversity.

One of the touted benefits of diversity is that it breaks down stereotypes. Let’s say students at a majority-white school with a race-neutral admissions policy believe blacks and Hispanics are not academically competitive with whites and Asians. To enlighten the poor fool and others like him, a school adopts a race-conscious admissions policy with the goal of admitting more blacks. Being in a classroom with blacks and Hispanics surely will debunk this notion.

Only the disingenuous would argue with a straight face that race-conscious admissions policies don’t entail lowering standards. So, the policy accomplishes the goal: more racial minorities in the classroom. How, exactly, does their presence debunk the intellectually inferior stereotype when said students were admitted under a lower standard of evaluation?

Clegg points out that the focus on race as a benefit perpetuates racial stereotypes. “If it means the stereotype that you can tell a lot about someone’s background, experiences, and perspectives simply by knowing their skin color and national origin, there is again a fatal irony if law schools try to teach this lesson through an admissions process that engages in precisely that stereotyping,” he writes. “I am also skeptical that, in a culture that vilifies racial stereotyping and is at pains to debunk it, the law schools’ intervention for students in their mid-twenties will have much marginal impact. Finally, teaching the rather obvious five-word truth “Blacks don’t all think alike” can be taught just as well, and without engaging in racial discrimination, simply by assigning students to read judicial opinions written by Thurgood Marshall, on the one hand, and Clarence Thomas, on the other.”

Another perceived benefit of diversity is that it generates “livelier and more enlightened classroom discussion.” Anecdotally speaking, I’ve never experienced this. Lively and enlightened discussions ensued from the topic of discussion itself, not whether the classroom was sufficiently diverse.

“What law professors crave is intelligent and well-prepared students, and choosing students on the basis of anything other than how smart and hard-working they are is unlikely to enlighten classroom discussion. There is also no way to predict whether a student, once admitted, will ever raise her hand, or whether what she says will have anything to do with her skin color. And, again, if it is important to admit students who are likely to volunteer unconventional opinions in class, it is completely unclear why we should use skin color and national origin as a proxy for this quality. Finally, while lively classroom discussions can certainly ease the tedium of what is read and, especially, lectured about in law school, let’s be honest: If law students are learning mostly from other law students, then they are not getting their tuition’s worth.”

Assuming something about an individual’s background because he’s black/white/whatever is stereotyping, but stereotyping is okay as long as the traits are positive, not negative. For example, the assumption that black and Hispanic students add a unique perspective to classroom discussions is good stereotyping. Assuming black and Hispanic students will, on average, receive lower test scores in the classroom is bad stereotyping.

The point is that assuming anything about anyone based on his race should have no place in admissions or hiring. That’s why it’s important to have race-neutral objective standards. Race-based admissions and hiring are inherently subjective, even if blacks benefit. A standardized method of evaluating removes race from the equation. Isn’t that a good thing?

Oh, to have the courage to actually live the “content of our character” principle and demand it of our government and our institutions! I’d rather people ignore me altogether than make race-based assumptions about me, positive or negative.

But I’m weird that way.

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Larry Purdy on ‘Affirmative Action for the Future’

March 17, 2010

The following is a re-post from the Pope Center, written by Larry Purdy: For many years I have been immersed in the debate over “affirmative action” or, to be more precise, race preference admission policies employed by many elite colleges and universities. Thus, I was curious whether a new book favoring such preferences would advance [...]

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Wall Street Journal on Racial Disparities

March 16, 2010

Last week I blogged about the Department of Education’s bold new plan to reduce racial academic achievement and suspension/expulsion gaps. Among other things, the department will send letters to certain school districts and state-supported colleges letters, putting them on notice about potential ‘civil rights’ investigations to determine whether minorities have equal access to Advanced Placement [...]

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‘Racism’ in the 21st Century

March 12, 2010

In the late 1960s, college students rioted and stormed administration buildings, protesting everything from the Vietnam War to freedom of speech violations to the paucity of black students, faculty and programs on campuses. If you were around then and thought some, most or all of those protests were over-the-top, you might want to add the [...]

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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Equal Outcomes

March 9, 2010

Hypothetically speaking, if racial minorities are more likely to commit “expellable” offenses in school, doesn’t it follow that racial minorities will be expelled disproportionately to their numbers?  Let’s say whites and Asians with the aptitude to take Advanced Placement classes in fact take those classes, and blacks and Hispanics (assuming they have the aptitude – [...]

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Ward Connerly to Review Students’ Race-Based Demands

March 8, 2010

I’m working on a column about the controversy brewing at UC San Diego since last month. A group of white UCSD students held an off-campus “ghetto”  party that offended some blacks, and a student-run TV station used a racial slur. Consequently, the students have come up with a list of race-based “demands” for the school. [...]

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