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Here's some good reads on the myths of affirmative action. I'll pick out a few that pertains to this conversation.
Myth is that we can achieve diversity using other means. Could the Michigan Law School, the undergraduate program, or the Medical School obtain a racially diverse class with a "colorblind" process, by placing greater emphasis on socioeconomic factors? The answer is no; racial diversity and socioeconomic diversity are not the same thing (because, in short, most of our poor people in this country are white). When a colorblind process emphasizing socioeconomic diversity was adopted at the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, African American enrollment in the entering class fell by approximately 60 percent.
In his opinion in Bakke, Justice Blackmun wrote (and he was joined in this by Justices Brennan, White, and Marshall), "I suspect that it would be impossible to arrange an affirmative-action program in a racially neutral way and have it successful. To ask that this be so is to demand the impossible. In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently. We cannot - we dare not - let the Equal Protection Clause - perpetuate racial supremacy." That was right in 1978, and it is still right today.
Some schools in other states have tried a "colorblind" admissions process in which they accept the students in the top four percent or perhaps ten or twenty percentage of each high school in the state. There are several problems with this approach: first, this approach is completely ineffective for graduate schools and professional schools. Second, it would result in admitting some top students from weak high schools who may not be academically prepared to do the work, and reject very able students who are below the cut-off at a very strong school. Third, all opportunity for individual evaluation and assessment of the candidate is lost. And so the process is color-blind, but blind to the applicants themselves as well! And fourth, for such an approach to work, de facto segregation would have to continue in high schools, which, given the purposes of such an approach, would be ironic in the extreme. The conclusion is clear: the best way to admit a racially diverse class is, not surprisingly, to use an admission process that uses race as a factor -- the approach followed by virtually every selective college and university admissions for the past thirty years.
If, in the future, colleges and universities are not permitted to consider race as a factor in their admissions processes, it will have a devastating effect on their ability to assemble a diverse student body. It is likely that the number of minority students enrolled at universities would decline significantly. The experience at California's flagship public universities, Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), bears out this prediction. Admission levels of underrepresented minorities---Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans---remain well below where they were prior to Proposition 209. At Berkeley, they are down 44 percent and at UCLA they are down 36 percent from pre-Proposition 209 levels. And the decision will not affect Michigan alone: all public institutions across the country would be affected, and all private higher education institutions as well, given that, under Title VI, those schools are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race - and other things - in the admissions process, and an adverse decision in the Michigan cases would in effect change the statutory definition of race discrimination in admissions.
Myth is that this policy, well-intentioned and even important as it is, materially diminishes the likelihood of a white student being admitted, and is therefore unfair. This notion that enormous numbers of whites are being denied admission because of the preferential treatment of under-represented minorities is simply false. In fact, admissions policies such as Michigan's do not meaningfully affect a white student's chances of admission. The numbers of minority applicants are extremely small compared to the numbers of white students who apply to universities across the country. It is not mathematically possible that the small numbers of minority students who apply and are admitted are displacing a significant number of white students. In their book The Shape of the River, William Bowen, former president of Princeton, and Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, looked at the nationwide statistics concerning admissions to selective universities. They determined that even if all selective universities implemented a race-blind admissions system, the probability of being admitted for a white student would only go from 25 percent to 26.2 percent.
The source of this whole problem of admissions affirmative action is, in large part, the need for remediation of K-12 public education in under-resourced school systems. Addressing that issue, however, and seeing the educational benefits will take many years, during which we will lose several generations of students; in the meantime, colleges and universities have had decisions to make -- classes of students to admit.
The effects of unequal - and inadequate -- funding of public school on the quality of education for racial and ethnic minority students are hard to overstate. And those effects are, in large part, the source of the problem that the admissions affirmative action leg up seeks to address -- making sure, as we do so, that we don't take students who can't do the work. Renowned researcher Linda Darling-Hammond notes that the wealthiest ten percent of school districts spend almost ten times more than the poorest ten percent. And poor and minority students are disproportionately concentrated in the least well-funded schools. Predominantly minority schools have difficulty hiring the most qualified teachers, which, she has concluded, is a major contributor to the students' achievement gap. One study of 900 Texas school districts found that, "holding socioeconomic status (SES) constant, the wide variability in teachers' qualifications accounted for almost all of the variation in black and white students' test scores." In general, Darling-Hammond notes, "urban schools suffer from lower expenditures of state and local dollars per pupil, higher student-teacher ratios and student-staff ratios, larger class sizes, lower teacher experience, and poorer teacher qualifications." Those factors are, I think, important to keep in mind as we consider the disappointed majority applicant.
http://www.columbia.edu/node/8321.html
Myth : The only way to create a color-blind society is to adopt color-blind policies.
Although this statement sounds intuitively plausible, the reality is that color-blind policies often put racial minorities at a disadvantage. For instance, all else being equal, color-blind seniority systems tend to protect White workers against job layoffs, because senior employees are usually White (Ezorsky, 1991). Likewise, color-blind college admissions favor White students because of their earlier educational advantages. Unless preexisting inequities are corrected or otherwise taken into account, color-blind policies do not correct racial injustice -- they reinforce it.
Myth : Affirmative action may have been necessary 30 years ago, but the playing field is fairly level today.
Despite the progress that has been made, the playing field is far from level. Women continue to earn 77 cents for every male dollar (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010). Black people continue to have twice the unemployment rate of White people, twice the rate of infant mortality, and just over half the proportion of people who attend four years or more of college (see Figure 1). In fact, without affirmative action the percentage of Black students at many selective schools would drop to only 2% of the student body (Bowen & Bok, 1998). This would effectively choke off Black access to top universities and severely restrict progress toward racial equality.
Myth : If Jewish people and Asian Americans can rapidly advance economically, African Americans should be able to do the same.
This comparison ignores the unique history of discrimination against Black people in America. Over the past four centuries, Black history has included nearly 250 years of slavery, 100 years of legalized discrimination, and only 50 years of anything else. Jews and Asians, on the other hand, are populations that immigrated to North America and included doctors, lawyers, professors, and entrepreneurs among their ranks. Moreover, European Jews are able to function as part of the White majority. To expect Blacks to show the same upward mobility as Jews and Asians is to deny the historical and social reality that Black people face.
Myth : You can't cure discrimination with discrimination.
The problem with this myth is that it uses the same word -- discrimination -- to describe two very different things. Job discrimination is grounded in prejudice and exclusion, whereas affirmative action is an effort to overcome prejudicial treatment through inclusion. The most effective way to cure society of exclusionary practices is to make special efforts at inclusion, which is exactly what affirmative action does. The logic of affirmative action is no different than the logic of treating a nutritional deficiency with vitamin supplements. For a healthy person, high doses of vitamin supplements may be unnecessary or even harmful, but for a person whose system is out of balance, supplements are an efficient way to restore the body's balance.
http://www.understandingprejudice.org/readroom/articles/affirm.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-bork/dispelling-myths-about-af_b_989553.html
Myth is that we can achieve diversity using other means. Could the Michigan Law School, the undergraduate program, or the Medical School obtain a racially diverse class with a "colorblind" process, by placing greater emphasis on socioeconomic factors? The answer is no; racial diversity and socioeconomic diversity are not the same thing (because, in short, most of our poor people in this country are white). When a colorblind process emphasizing socioeconomic diversity was adopted at the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, African American enrollment in the entering class fell by approximately 60 percent.
In his opinion in Bakke, Justice Blackmun wrote (and he was joined in this by Justices Brennan, White, and Marshall), "I suspect that it would be impossible to arrange an affirmative-action program in a racially neutral way and have it successful. To ask that this be so is to demand the impossible. In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently. We cannot - we dare not - let the Equal Protection Clause - perpetuate racial supremacy." That was right in 1978, and it is still right today.
Some schools in other states have tried a "colorblind" admissions process in which they accept the students in the top four percent or perhaps ten or twenty percentage of each high school in the state. There are several problems with this approach: first, this approach is completely ineffective for graduate schools and professional schools. Second, it would result in admitting some top students from weak high schools who may not be academically prepared to do the work, and reject very able students who are below the cut-off at a very strong school. Third, all opportunity for individual evaluation and assessment of the candidate is lost. And so the process is color-blind, but blind to the applicants themselves as well! And fourth, for such an approach to work, de facto segregation would have to continue in high schools, which, given the purposes of such an approach, would be ironic in the extreme. The conclusion is clear: the best way to admit a racially diverse class is, not surprisingly, to use an admission process that uses race as a factor -- the approach followed by virtually every selective college and university admissions for the past thirty years.
If, in the future, colleges and universities are not permitted to consider race as a factor in their admissions processes, it will have a devastating effect on their ability to assemble a diverse student body. It is likely that the number of minority students enrolled at universities would decline significantly. The experience at California's flagship public universities, Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), bears out this prediction. Admission levels of underrepresented minorities---Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans---remain well below where they were prior to Proposition 209. At Berkeley, they are down 44 percent and at UCLA they are down 36 percent from pre-Proposition 209 levels. And the decision will not affect Michigan alone: all public institutions across the country would be affected, and all private higher education institutions as well, given that, under Title VI, those schools are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race - and other things - in the admissions process, and an adverse decision in the Michigan cases would in effect change the statutory definition of race discrimination in admissions.
Myth is that this policy, well-intentioned and even important as it is, materially diminishes the likelihood of a white student being admitted, and is therefore unfair. This notion that enormous numbers of whites are being denied admission because of the preferential treatment of under-represented minorities is simply false. In fact, admissions policies such as Michigan's do not meaningfully affect a white student's chances of admission. The numbers of minority applicants are extremely small compared to the numbers of white students who apply to universities across the country. It is not mathematically possible that the small numbers of minority students who apply and are admitted are displacing a significant number of white students. In their book The Shape of the River, William Bowen, former president of Princeton, and Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, looked at the nationwide statistics concerning admissions to selective universities. They determined that even if all selective universities implemented a race-blind admissions system, the probability of being admitted for a white student would only go from 25 percent to 26.2 percent.
The source of this whole problem of admissions affirmative action is, in large part, the need for remediation of K-12 public education in under-resourced school systems. Addressing that issue, however, and seeing the educational benefits will take many years, during which we will lose several generations of students; in the meantime, colleges and universities have had decisions to make -- classes of students to admit.
The effects of unequal - and inadequate -- funding of public school on the quality of education for racial and ethnic minority students are hard to overstate. And those effects are, in large part, the source of the problem that the admissions affirmative action leg up seeks to address -- making sure, as we do so, that we don't take students who can't do the work. Renowned researcher Linda Darling-Hammond notes that the wealthiest ten percent of school districts spend almost ten times more than the poorest ten percent. And poor and minority students are disproportionately concentrated in the least well-funded schools. Predominantly minority schools have difficulty hiring the most qualified teachers, which, she has concluded, is a major contributor to the students' achievement gap. One study of 900 Texas school districts found that, "holding socioeconomic status (SES) constant, the wide variability in teachers' qualifications accounted for almost all of the variation in black and white students' test scores." In general, Darling-Hammond notes, "urban schools suffer from lower expenditures of state and local dollars per pupil, higher student-teacher ratios and student-staff ratios, larger class sizes, lower teacher experience, and poorer teacher qualifications." Those factors are, I think, important to keep in mind as we consider the disappointed majority applicant.
http://www.columbia.edu/node/8321.html
Myth : The only way to create a color-blind society is to adopt color-blind policies.
Although this statement sounds intuitively plausible, the reality is that color-blind policies often put racial minorities at a disadvantage. For instance, all else being equal, color-blind seniority systems tend to protect White workers against job layoffs, because senior employees are usually White (Ezorsky, 1991). Likewise, color-blind college admissions favor White students because of their earlier educational advantages. Unless preexisting inequities are corrected or otherwise taken into account, color-blind policies do not correct racial injustice -- they reinforce it.
Myth : Affirmative action may have been necessary 30 years ago, but the playing field is fairly level today.
Despite the progress that has been made, the playing field is far from level. Women continue to earn 77 cents for every male dollar (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010). Black people continue to have twice the unemployment rate of White people, twice the rate of infant mortality, and just over half the proportion of people who attend four years or more of college (see Figure 1). In fact, without affirmative action the percentage of Black students at many selective schools would drop to only 2% of the student body (Bowen & Bok, 1998). This would effectively choke off Black access to top universities and severely restrict progress toward racial equality.
Myth : If Jewish people and Asian Americans can rapidly advance economically, African Americans should be able to do the same.
This comparison ignores the unique history of discrimination against Black people in America. Over the past four centuries, Black history has included nearly 250 years of slavery, 100 years of legalized discrimination, and only 50 years of anything else. Jews and Asians, on the other hand, are populations that immigrated to North America and included doctors, lawyers, professors, and entrepreneurs among their ranks. Moreover, European Jews are able to function as part of the White majority. To expect Blacks to show the same upward mobility as Jews and Asians is to deny the historical and social reality that Black people face.
Myth : You can't cure discrimination with discrimination.
The problem with this myth is that it uses the same word -- discrimination -- to describe two very different things. Job discrimination is grounded in prejudice and exclusion, whereas affirmative action is an effort to overcome prejudicial treatment through inclusion. The most effective way to cure society of exclusionary practices is to make special efforts at inclusion, which is exactly what affirmative action does. The logic of affirmative action is no different than the logic of treating a nutritional deficiency with vitamin supplements. For a healthy person, high doses of vitamin supplements may be unnecessary or even harmful, but for a person whose system is out of balance, supplements are an efficient way to restore the body's balance.
http://www.understandingprejudice.org/readroom/articles/affirm.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-bork/dispelling-myths-about-af_b_989553.html
