Two items in the news recently highlight the creepiness of racial preferences.
First, do you think it’s a good idea for medical schools to consider race, instead of simply who’s the best qualified, in deciding whom to admit? To put it another way, would you like it if you knew your doctor might have been admitted in part for some reason other than his or her likely ability to become a good doctor?
I explained to a reporter why such preferential treatment is a bad idea, and am quoted in this article.
Here’s the full response I emailed to the reporter (who had suggested that the arguments posed in the study at issue were novel):
Thx, Scott. These thoughts (#4 may be particularly salient in light of the Harvard case; #3 is good, too):
1. Actually, to push back on your premise, I think that both sides frequently discuss effects (good and bad) beyond those on the students themselves, and always have. For example, Justice Powell rejected an argument quite similar to the one at issue here in [the Supreme Court’s decision in the Bakke case] (part IV-C). And this particular argument is not new, though the study may be.
2. Assuming that there are some benefits to having (more) doctors of a particular race — I’m assuming for the sake of argument that there are no methodological problems with the study here, by the way — we have to weigh that against the costs of using racial preferences in order to achieve this purported benefit. You probably know my litany of costs, Scott, but I’ve appended them to this email.
3. If less qualified individuals are admitted into medical school because they have been given a racial preference, the most obvious cost is that fewer doctors will be graduated, fewer will pass the licensing exams, and the doctors who do practice will not be as good, with bad results for patients and research. Speaking again of Bakke, recall the unhappy story of Bernard Chavis.
4. Let’s tweak the study’s argument just a bit: If we aim for doctors who reflect the general population racially, then we should be capping the number of Asian American doctors — since there are fewer Asian Americans in the general population than whites, blacks, or Latinos — if merits admission results in their overrepresentation, as I suspect it would. And we should cap the number of Jews if non-Jews prefer not to have Jewish doctors, and the number of doctors of non-Western religions (Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, etc.) if they are less desired by the general population of patients. All such discrimination should be rejected.
5. Are we comfortable with a two-track admissions system because we want to facilitate segregated heath care, namely having black doctors for black patients?
Thanks for reaching out.
So here’s a list of the costs of using racial preferences in university admissions: 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 mismatches African Americans and Latinos with institutions, setting them up for failure; it fosters a victim mindset, removes the incentive for academic excellence, and encourages separatism; it compromises the academic mission of the university and lowers the overall academic quality of the student body; it creates pressure to discriminate in grading and graduation; it breeds hypocrisy within the school and encourages a scofflaw attitude among college officials; it papers over the real social problem of why so many African Americans and Latinos are academically uncompetitive; and it gets states and schools involved in unsavory activities like deciding which racial and ethnic minorities will be favored and which ones not, and how much blood is needed to establish group membership – an untenable legal regime as America becomes an increasingly multiracial, multiethnic society and as individual Americans are themselves more and more likely to be multiracial and multiethnic.
[One last point: It takes a long time to become a doctor, and if the patients most preferring a black doctor are likely to be older, they are also less likely to benefit from the admissions preferences being offered now.]***
Here’s the second news story, also highlighting the creepiness of racial preferences.
A business owner in Washington State wants to use his DNA ancestry-test results (90 percent white, 6 percent indigenous American, and 4 percent sub-Saharan African) to qualify him as a minority contractor, making him eligible for preferential treatment in state and federal contracting. The bureaucrats have balked, and so he has sued.
And, come to think of it, why is any evidence needed — why can’t your race be a matter of personal preference, just as we’re told your gender should be? But if we do require documentation, we must — in the spirit of those who urge American law to incorporate foreign law — look at past practices abroad, in enlightened places like Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa. Justice Anthony Kennedy (in Metro Broadcasting v. FCC) and, before him, Justice John Paul Stevens (in Fullilove v. Klutznick) gave us that advice, tongues firmly in cheek.
Or we could avoid this creepy prospect by treating all Americans without regard to skin color or what country their ancestors came from, not only in government contracting, but in university admissions, employment, you name it.
P.S. According to a news story on this case in the Seattle Times:
“As part of the state’s application process a business owner must submit a photograph, typically a driver’s license or government ID. Those who aren’t “visibly identifiable” based on the photo must submit further proof such as a birth certificate or tribal-enrollment papers. The agency has no definition of “visibly identifiable,” and there is no manual that describes how employees should interpret someone’s visual appearance in a photograph.”
P.P.S. Also according to the news story:
“While the state office has no set criteria for minority status, a nationwide minority-contracting organization started in the 1970s states someone must be at least 25 percent black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American to be a member. The National Minority Supplier Development Council, funded by membership fees, connects more than 12,000 minority-certified suppliers with well-known corporate members like Microsoft and Boeing as well as public agencies like the city of Seattle. Fernando Martinez, president of the group’s Northwest Mountain chapter, said he doesn’t know why the group chose that percentage cutoff decades ago. The council requires a birth certificate listing an ethnicity or a death certificate from a recent relative.”
