A new report is out, purporting to document racial stereotyping and “microaggression” at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The latter is another addition to the jargon of political correctness, and is defined as slights or snubs, often unintentional, but which communicate derogatory or negative messages.
From the first news story I saw on this study: “‘They [i.e., students] shared very detailed personal stories of experiencing racism on campus,’ [report coauthor Stacy] Harwood said. For example, some students said they heard classmates comment that racial minorities were less qualified and only admitted because of affirmative action. Others said their advisers encouraged them to change their majors to something less challenging.”
Well, but if a school gives preferential treatment in admissions to students in some racial and ethnic groups, then at least some of those students will be less qualified than students in nonpreferred categories, and they will have been admitted over those better qualified students because of affirmative action. That’s logic, not racism. And it is documented that this lowering of standards leads to a mismatch effect, and that this in turn often will result in students switching majors.
So if you want to change this reality, the first step is to end admission preferences on the basis of race. I doubt that the university here has done this; on its admissions page, it says it aims “[t]o achieve a class that embodies rich diversity” and that “[s]tudent diversity is a compelling interest.” And you, gentle reader, will be astonished to learn that, while the report makes many recommendations, ending racial preferences in admissions is not among them.
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The Chronicle of Higher Education also had an article last week on a new study, this one showing there may be some educational drawbacks to interracial contacts on campus (“negative experiences with students from other backgrounds may actually hurt undergraduates’ intellectual development”). Here’s my posted response:
The purported “educational benefits” from using racial preferences in order to achieve “diversity” have always been marginal at best as well as disputed. What’s more, they do not outweigh the many costs of engaging in such discrimination. If it turns out that there are some purported benefits to weighing race in order to avoid diversity, I would feel the same way: Those benefits would be only marginal and will be legitimately disputed, and would not outweigh the many costs of engaging in such discrimination. The fact that social science evidence can be cited to favor and disfavor racial diversity is no surprise and nothing new: The opposing briefs in Brown v. Board of Education each cited social science (see this link ).
As a matter of policy and, certainly, law the correct approach is obvious: The best qualified students should be admitted, and skin color and national origin should be ignored.
And here, by the way, is a list of the costs of weighing race 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 (starting with our president).
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A couple of short items.
From time to time, I’ve written about the rampant political correctness at Bowdoin College, the exposure of which has been executed brilliantly in recent years by Center for Equal Opportunity board member Tom Klingenstein and the good folks at the National Association of Scholars, a stalwart CEO ally. The latest item in our bill of particulars is a Bowdoin professor’s spirited defense of the Communists: After all, she says, they were fighting the Nazis and wanted a nicer world, doncha know: Listen here.
Also, in case you missed it, Hillary Clinton gave a big speech last week on race and crime. You can read it here. The best line: “ . . . as the congenital optimist I must be to live my life . . . ” The worst: “Mothers and fathers who fear for their sons’ safety when they go off to school — or just to go buy a pack of Skittles.” Lots on community mistrust of the police and “mass incarceration”; not a word on out-of-wedlock births. Enjoy.
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Finally, my eye was caught by this sentence in a recent news story — titled “Kasich Explains to Conservatives How He Won African-American Votes” — on a speech by Ohio governor and possible presidential candidate John Kasich: “He also suggested that awarding 20 percent of contracts in a recent highway project to African-American firms had been a success for communities of color.”
Needless to say, this sort of bean-counting makes me nervous — especially if, as is often the case, the 20 percent came about as a result of a state-mandated “goal” (read “quota”). Ohio is a repeat offender in this area, by the way.
But here’s an instructive story: When I first heard about this, I was told that Kasich was bragging about the 80 percent that went to whites rather than the 20 percent that went to blacks. Needless to say, this would have been a very big deal, and probably the end of any presidential aspirations by the governor. But the news story cited above says that, no, what Kasich was bragging about was not the 80 percent going to whites but the 20 percent going to blacks. That’s completely different!
But wait: Either way Kasich is saying the same thing, so why would the “80 percent” version create a firestorm while the “20 percent” version creates a yawn? Oh, because Kasich is white, you say. But if a black politician bragged about a set-aside program that he had helped pass by pointing to the high percentage of contracts now going to blacks, would anybody condemn that? Would anybody even notice?
Okay, you say, maybe the reason for the difference is that one quota is for a group that has been oppressed and the other is for a group that has been an oppressor. But is that really how we ought to be making law and policy in 2015, in a country that is increasingly multiracial and multiethnic?
And what if we have a quota for, say, Latinos that hurts, say, Asian Americans — as is indeed the case in university admissions: Is there a history of Asian Americans oppressing Latinos in this country? And, in the contracting context, what if the preferences favor Asian Americans (and blacks) over Latinos (as sometimes happens)? Do we have a history of Latinos oppressing Asian Americans and Asian Americans oppressing Latinos?
