Archive for Roger Clegg
Richard Sander has documented the mismatch effect that occurs when blacks are admitted to selective schools through race preferences. He found that law students admitted under preferences tended to receive lower grades and pass the bar exam at lower rates. Sander posits that without preferences, blacks would be better matched to their schools.
Four Duke University researchers conducted a study in which they argue more information is needed to determine if the mismatch effect exists. Specifically, they contend that mismatch could occur only if selective universities possess private post-enrollment student information, which they call a “necessary condition” to make the determination. (Source)
Rather than looking at objective factors to determine whether the mismatch exists, such as GPAs and scores, the researchers suggest “two potential avenues that may lead to a more conclusive test of mismatch,” which is what they mean by “private post-enrollment information.” The subjective approach includes asking admitted black students what they expected their GPAs to be after their first year and whether they still would have attended if the GPAs turned out to be X.
Confused yet? I think that’s precisely the idea.
Leave it to a group of academics to make something simple seem complicated. As the Center for Equal Opportunity’s (CEO) Roger Clegg notes, the researchers have in front of them evidence of the mismatch theory already. His comment on NRO’s Phi Beta Cons blog (emphasis added):
All very interesting, but doesn’t this article miss the forest for the trees? The most important point, found in the last line of the table but not commented on, is this: The first-year GPA for white and Asian students was 3.33 and 3.40, respectively; for black students it was 2.90; for Latinos was 3.13. So the ethnic groups that, in all likelihood, got preferences (look at the rest of the table) did substantially worse than the ethnic groups that did not (e.g., a half-point gap between blacks and Asians). Sounds like confirmation of “the controversial ‘mismatch’ theory” to me. (This is not news, of course: The Shape of the River acknowledged that African Americans at selective schools on average had a class rank in the 23rd percentile, versus the 53rd percentile for whites; the Center for Equal Opportunity’s studies over the years have found similar gaps.)
Such lopsided GPAs (not to mention test scores) is evidence of mismatch, isn’t it? Why is it necessary to send letters to students asking them to speculate on first year grades? The mismatch isn’t subjective; it’s an effect that either exists or doesn’t exist. If students admitted under preferences have substantially lower grades than students not admitted under the policy, there is a mismatch.
Download “Does Affirmative Action Lead to Mismatch? A New Test and Evidence” here. (PDF – 33 pages)
Filed under: Richard Sander, Roger Clegg | |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
Voting Rights Act – On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Voting Rights Act does not require election officials to consider race when redrawing districts if blacks are a minority in the area. Disappointed with the decision, the New York Times says, without any irony at all, redrawing districts based on race moves us toward ”a colorblind future.” Worth reading is Roger Clegg’s take on the issue.
New LSAT Proposed – A pair of UCLA-Berkeley professors have proposed ditching the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) in favor of a test that won’t have such a negative impact on blacks and Hispanics. (Source)
Instead of focusing on the ability to analyze, say the professors, potential law school admittees should be judged on “effectiveness factors” like writing ability, stress management, listening (oh, brother), and researching. Why the professors believe putting more emphasis on these qualities and less on analytical thinking would result in a higher admissions rate for blacks and Hispanics is a mystery to me…unless the factors are applied only to blacks and Hispanics. But that would be illegal in California, Washington state, Michigan, and Nebraska.
Reverse Discrimination – 75 white firefighters in Chicago settled a 23-year-old “reverse discrimination” case for $6 million. (Source)
Because black firefighters failed or didn’t score high enough on the test to receive promotions, the department “race normed” the results – adjusted scores by assessing blacks and Hispanics based on a lower standard.
Filed under: Judiciary, Roger Clegg | |Comments off
The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Roger Clegg has an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer on race preferences. He identifies at least two impediments to improving race relations: racial bias and discrimination, and the disproportionate number of blacks at the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.
For the most part, America has dealt with bias and discrimination through laws and by making blatant bigotry socially unacceptable. Another type of bigotry may exist among those who believe the disproportionate number of blacks at the bottom is proof that blacks are somehow inferior. Clegg writes:
“[B]igotry today exists not because it is taught by the government or in school, but principally because bigots observe the disproportionate number of African Americans who are jobless or in prison or whatever, and predictably but unfortunately conclude that there is something wrong with the whole race.”
As race preference opponents have been saying for years, preferences foster racial resentment and likely reinforce bigotry. If the government says a whole race of people needs extra help and short-cuts and do-overs and entitlement programs, what message is it sending?
To address disparities between blacks and everyone else, we must look to culture. We must deal with the “acting white” attitude that makes it difficult for children to value education. We must be willing to talk about the outrageously high out-of-wedlock birth rate in the black community. Fatherlessness is correlated with higher rates of incarceration, juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and high school drop outs. Fatherless children are more likely to be poor. And the cycle continues
As Clegg notes, President Barack Obama, married to his children’s mother and living with his children, can serve as a role model. As far as race preferences are concerned, the president has gone on record to say his daughters shouldn’t receive preferences, considering they are not disadvantaged.
Perhaps Obama will use his influence to encourage people to marry before having children and to be an advocate for socioeconomic affirmative action, which would benefit people of all races.
Filed under: Center for Equal Opportunity, Roger Clegg, Socioeconomic AA | |Comments off
More brilliance from the Center for Equal Opportunity’s Roger Clegg as he goes head-to-head in a comment thread with Jay Rosner, responding to his convince-me-racism-doesn’t-matter straw man:
“[N]o one believes that racial discrimination has vanished, that race does not matter. But there are better ways to fight it than giving preferential treatment to individuals who are more privileged than those being discriminating against (as President-elect Obama acknowledged), and it is not so systemic that it justifies institutionalized discrimination in the other direction. The playing field is not level, but there are plenty of folks of all colors at both ends. Enforce the civil rights laws; provide scholarship and other aid for those of all colors.
…
“[E]ven if there are some dubious benefits to the use of racial preferences, they are overwhelmed by the costs: It is personally unfair, passes over better qualified students, and sets a disturbing legal, political, and moral precedent in allowing racial discrimination; it creates resentment; it stigmatizes the so-called beneficiaries in the eyes of their classmates, teachers, and themselves, as well as future employers, clients, and patients; it fosters a victim mindset, removes the incentive for academic excellence, and encourages separatism…”
Clegg and Rosner are discussing an article about an October 2007 study, which concluded that eliminating race preferences would result in a 35 percent decrease in minority enrollment at competitive schools and a lesser decrease at all colleges. See the original exchange on this Inside Higher Ed comment thread. Great stuff, Mr. Clegg.
Filed under: Center for Equal Opportunity, Roger Clegg | |Comments off
The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Roger Clegg blogs about goings-on at the U.S. Naval Academy in a post cheekily titled, “Rum, Sodomy, the Lash, and Racial Discrimination.”
The academy’s Board of Visitors urges members of Congress to nominate “top-notch” black candidates as officers and to help attract more black students. (Source)
How exactly does the board propose that members of the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses achieve the goal? Expanding the recruitment net or lowering standards? If it’s the former, great! Knock yourselves out.
It’s worth noting that 28 percent of the class of 2012 are racial minorities, the highest percent ever at the academy. Together, blacks and Hispanics make up a quarter of the U.S. population. They are, by all accounts, proportionately represented in the class of 2012 at least. More, more, more!
“Maybe it’s just me,” Clegg writes, “but I’d prefer that our naval officers be chosen on the basis of, say, merit rather than, say, skin color. But maybe their duties are so unimportant that it doesn’t really matter.”
Young Mr. Clegg’s naïveté is refreshing!
Seriously, though, what can you do? Ward Connerly’s mission to ban state and local governments across the country from discriminating and granting preferences on the basis of race is a step in the right direction. There won’t be a nationwide uproar over preferences until governments revert to discriminating against blacks. Only then will people get it.
Filed under: Roger Clegg | |1 Comment
National Review Online asked a group of center-right thinkers if they believe Obama’s election is “good for blacks.”
The American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly said yes it is, in the sense that blacks have arrived as first class citizens of a country that once enslaved and degraded them because of skin color. An Obama presidency also may alleviate whites of misplaced guilt.
Additionally, Connerly believes that Obama, as a married family man, might serve as an example to a community in which intact families are rare.
The Center for Equal Opportunity’s (CEO) Roger Clegg said Obama’s election is a “powerful rebuke to the victim mindset” and that the biggest obstacle facing blacks isn’t discrimination but illegitimacy. Agreed. CEO’s Linda Chavez echoed Clegg’s sentiments:
“A President Obama could also take on issues that others have avoided: the breakdown in the black family, the latent racism inherent in holding blacks to lower standards than whites, the enervating aspect of perpetual victimhood. But while he might take on the first of these — he has experienced firsthand what it means to be abandoned by one’s father — I won’t hold my breath for him to endorse an end to racial double standards and preferences.”
I won’t hold mine, either, although the Wall Street Journal holds the view that Obama’s election is a sign that America is ready to move beyond race preferences and toward “colorblind opportunity” for all.
It matters little to me whether individuals learn to see beyond color. They can think and see whatever they’d like, as long as they don’t interfere with my rights. But government policy must be colorblind. Will this be possible with a black president in the White House? In an ideal world, yes. In this world…
Filed under: Center for Equal Opportunity, Linda Chavez, Roger Clegg, Ward Connerly | |2 Comments
I read an article this morning titled “Diversity Grows.” It sounded promising:
“Michigan’s ban on affirmative action has hurt minority recruiting at some colleges, but Saginaw Valley State University isn’t among them…By using focused recruiting and special scholarships as tools, SVSU has increased its share of under-represented minorities — blacks, Hispanics and American Indians — by 4.25 percent this fall, to 245 freshmen from 235.”
So Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU) has done what others thought impossible: increasing “diversity” without discriminating. Wonderful! Then I continued reading:
“‘Through our private SVSU Foundation, there continues to be individual scholarships for which ethnicity is a consideration, based on the wishes of the donor, [spokesman J.J.] Boehm said. ‘But those are administered through the 
foundation, not through the university’s general fund.’”
Although the taxpayer-supported SVSU claims it never admitted students under separate standards based on race, it does use private scholarships in which race is a criteria. Isn’t that illegal? Proposition 2, which passed with 58 percent of the vote in 2006, amended the state constitution to read:
“The University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University, and any other public college or university, community college, or school district shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”
Are race-based private scholarships covered by Proposal 2? Center for Equal Opportunity president Roger Clegg told The Chronicle of Higher Education that such scholarships can come under scrutiny, particularly if the foundation administering them “shares university resources or works closely with the financial-aid office.”
In this case, SVSU has a private foundation that offers race-based scholarships administered through the foundation and not through the general fund. The story characterizes the foundation as the “SVSU foundation,” and it’s listed under the financial aid section on SVSU’s web site. We may assume the foundation shares university resources and/or works closely with the financial aid office.
SVSU’s attempt to get around Proposal 2 might be illegal.
Filed under: MCRI, Roger Clegg | |Comments off
Yesterday the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) released two reports that show law schools at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University, both supported by taxpayers, discriminate against white and Asian applicants in favor of blacks and Hispanics. The studies describe the discrimination as “severe.”
Black and Hispanic students are admitted with “significantly lower undergraduate” GPAs and LSAT scores. CEO chair Linda Chavez said the odds favor black students over white students at the University of Arizona 250 to 1 and 1115 to 1 at Arizona State.
“[N]early a thousand white students during the years we studied were denied admission even though they had higher undergraduate GPAs and LSATs than the average African American student who was admitted–and over a hundred Asian and Latino students were in the same boat with them,” she said.
Roger Clegg, CEO president, added that race weighed more heavily in admission decisions that residency status. “For instance, a white Arizonan in 2007 was about eight times less likely to be admitted to the University of Arizona than a black out-of-state applicant, and at Arizona State he would be twelve times less likely to be admitted.”
Undergraduate and medical school admissions at the University of Arizona also showed evidence of discrimination, though to a lesser degree. Download reports for both schools in Word documents: University of Arizona and Arizona State.
The American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) is trying to put an end to such discrimination in taxpayer-supported schools. ACRI’s effort to add the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative (AzCRI) to the state ballot failed after the campaign ran out of time to validate some 6,000 signatures. The proposed amendment would have barred the state government from granting preferential treatment to any person on group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in government hiring, contracting, and admissions.
AzCRI director Max McPhail said a new campaign will begin after November to place the initiative on the November 2010 ballot. In the meantime, we’ll continue exposing discrimination perpetrated in the name of “diversity.”
Filed under: AzCRI, Center for Equal Opportunity, Linda Chavez, Max McPhail, Roger Clegg | |Comments off
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