By now you’ve probably read about the “college admissions scandal,” the dubious work of a man named William Singer, a college counselor who helped students from wealthy students get into elite schools by cheating on tests and using false athletic credentials. Now the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, has added to it in an article reporting that Singer also “advised some families to falsely claim students were racial minorities.”
Singer let families know that their applicant sons and daughters might be at a “competitive disadvantage” if they didn’t opt for misrepresentation as minorities. He wound up pleading guilty to “lying about students’ ethnicities and other biographical information in an attempt to take advantage of perceived benefits from affirmative action.”
White applicants were the ones misrepresenting themselves, typically at their parents’ urging. The Journal reports that one applicant was incorrectly represented on his College Application as being black and Hispanic. Being one or the other is where the competitive advantage has lain for some years now, especially in admissions at schools that are building “diverse” student bodies by favoring black and Hispanic applicants. Recent lawsuits have shown that Asian Americans and whites with superior academic credentials are routinely discriminated against because they lack the “right” race.
This attempt “to take advantage of perceived benefits from affirmative action” became part of a criminal conspiracy—doubtless not what Singer wanted.
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The Perceived Benefits of Diversity
The word “benefit” or “benefits is found at least 12 times in the opinion for the Court in Grutter v. Bollinger, which upheld a challenge to the constitutionality of the admissions program at the Michigan Law School.
The first usage comes in a question— “whether the law school’s asserted interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body was compelling.”
The second comes in a sentence on the school’s need to “ensure that a critical mass of underrepresented minority students would be reached so as to realize the educational benefits of a diverse student body.”
The third is in the testimony of a law professor who “submitted several expert reports on the educational benefits of diversity.” One benefit lies in the impact of having a critical mass of underrepresented minority students present, as “racial stereotypes lose their force because non-minority students learn there is no minority viewpoint but rather a variety of viewpoints among minority students.”
The next is in the Court’s statement that the “respondents assert only one justification for their use of race,” which is that of “obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”
A fifth is in the law school’s assessment that diversity will yield “educational benefits.” [This is] “substantiated by respondents and their amici.”
In a sixth and seventh usage the Court says that the “school’s concept of critical mass is defined by reference to the educational benefits that diversity is designed to produce”—and “these benefits are substantial.”
The “admissions policy promotes cross-racial understanding, helps to break down racial stereotypes, and enables students to better understand persons of different races.” These “benefits”—an eighth reference—are “important and laudable, because classroom discussion is livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting when the students have the greatest possible variety of backgrounds.”
“The law school’s claim of a compelling interest is further bolstered by its amici, who point to the educational benefits”—a ninth reference—“that flow from student body diversity. . . Numerous studies show that student body diversity promotes learning outcomes and better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society, and better prepares them as professionals.” Brief for American Educational Research Association; and see The Shape of the River; Diversity Challenged: Evidence on the Impact of Affirmative Action; and Compelling Interest: Examining the Evidence on Racial Dynamics in Colleges and Universities.
“These benefits—a tenth usage—are not theoretical but real,” found in business, military, education, law, and medicine. “The law school,” says the Court, “has determined . . . that a critical mass of underrepresented minorities is necessary to further its compelling interest in securing the educational benefits of a diverse student body.” That’s an eleventh usage. And here’s a twelfth: “There is some relationship between numbers and achieving the benefits to be derived from a diverse student body and between numbers and providing a reasonable environment for those students admitted.
Some thoughts:
1. Here, in the landmark Grutter case, is another one-sided treatment of the legal issues attending race preferences. We get a lot about the benefits of diversity but almost nothing about the costs.
2. Could it be that there are no compelling studies of the costs? You think that, then see Mismatched by Rick Sander and Stuart Taylor.
3. What is a critical mass of underrepresented minority students? Is it a number?
4. When it is said that there is “some relationship between numbers and achieving the benefits to be derived from a diverse student body,” that’s when I reach for the calculator, my quota finder.
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For equal opportunity
I’m including this excerpt from Ted Van Dyk’s recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. The writer is a long-time Democratic adviser, the advice given here on“How Democrats Can Avoid Losing.” Reject identity politics, he says, and pursue the politics of equal opportunity. That sounds like something we’d say—to anyone involved in politics.
. . . Reject Identity politics. A proud Democratic history of pursuing equality of opportunity without regard to race, ethnicity, sex, religion, sexual orientation or other irrelevance has given way to an identity politics based on victimhood, ugly accusations such as “white privilege” and “toxic masculinity,” and dramatic but empty symbolism, such as destroying Confederate monuments and demanding reparations for slavery. Democrats should instead concentrate on the plight of black Americans in inner cities plagued by high crime, violence, incarceration, school- dropout and unemployment rates. They should propose measures to restore family structure and provide fair and effective policing and job and skills training.
