Skin Color Determines “Who Gets In”

Roger CleggEducation

A new book by Rebecca Zwick, Who Gets In?, has some interesting data on, among other things, the effect of racial preferences on university admissions.  According to the discussion this week in Inside Higher Ed: What she found is that an admissions system based solely on grades and test scores would result in significant increases in Asian [and white] enrollments and declines in enrollments of underrepresented minority [i.e., black and Latino, and sometimes American Indian] students. … Model for Impact of Different Admissions Models at Colleges That Admit Less Than 10% of Applicants Race/Ethnicity Current If Decisions Based Only on …

Some Good News

Roger CleggUncategorized

I can report some good news this week. Last Friday, when President Trump signed the big appropriations bill keeping the federal government open, he included a presidential signing statement. Here’s the last sentence: “My Administration shall treat provisions that allocate benefits on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender … in a manner consistent with the requirement to afford equal protection of the laws under the Due Process Clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.” The ellipsis is a list of examples of the federal programs the president has in mind, including minority contracting and subcontracting; preferred treatment for Native Americans, …

A “NO” to Automatic Felon Voting in Nebraska

Roger CleggVoting Rights

The Center for Equal Opportunity has been busy of late with Nebraska — and, specifically, with urging its governor to veto a bill that would automatically allow felons to vote the day they walked out of prison. We wrote directly to the governor, for example, and also published this in the state’s largest newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald: No automatic felon enfranchisement Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts should veto the bill that would automatically restore the right to vote for felons when they walk out of prison (“Ricketts won’t sign bill on felon voting rights,” April 26 World-Herald). If you aren’t willing …

Cognitive Diversity versus P.C. Diversity

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

We are constantly being told by the proponents of racial, ethnic, and gender preferences in business and academia that diversity results in better problem-solving, learning, and so forth. Now, there are a number of rebuttals to this justification for discrimination, but one of them has always been that, to the extent that there is truth here, it is cognitive diversity that matters rather than diversity of superficial characteristics like skin color. And it does not make sense to use skin color as a proxy for different perspectives and backgrounds. Well, The Harvard Business Review has published an article that provides …

Stop the Balkanization

Roger CleggUncategorized

Last fall I wrote about some disturbing changes that the Obama administration wanted to make in the data gathered for the Census. A short 30-day window was given for public comments, but thankfully the Trump administration seems to have misgivings about the proposed changes. And so it has asked for more public comments (via the White House website no less), and extended the deadline to the end of this month. Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation has done yeoman’s work on this matter. I quoted his “Issue Brief” last fall: “The two most significant proposals [are] creating a new ethno/racial …

Odds & Ends

Roger CleggUncategorized

Here’s a sample of what the Center for Equal Opportunity has been up to in recent weeks. We have weighed in against racial preferences in government contracting with the following cities and counties:  Decatur, Illinois; Leon County, Florida; Guilford County, North Carolina; Asheville, North Carolina; and Fayetteville, North Carolina.  Here’s some typical language: It’s good to make sure contracting programs are open to all, that bidding opportunities are widely publicized beforehand, and that no one gets discriminated against because of skin color, national origin, or sex.  But that means no preferences because of skin color, etc. either — whether it’s …

No to “Racial Impact Statements”

Roger CleggUncategorized

The Federalist Society blogsite has an interesting post by James Scanlan on proposed legislation in New Jersey that would require racial and ethnic impact statements for any legislative measure that affects pretrial detention, sentencing, probation, or parole policies. Mr. Scanlan notes that racial-impact-statement laws have already, alas, been enacted in Connecticut, Iowa, and Oregon and that similar legislation has recently been introduced in Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, and Wisconsin; and, what’s more, frequently the legislation addresses not just post-arrest and conviction policies, but what is made criminal in the first place. Mr. Scanlan does a wonderful job of pointing out how …

Diversity Myths

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

The Washington Post has a “Five Myths about …” series, and over the weekend Valerie Strauss focused on college admissions.  Here’s her fifth “myth”:  “Schools don’t need affirmative action to make diverse classes.”  Ms. Strauss begins by noting that [1] some schools have rejected racial preferences — a.k.a. affirmative action — and still improved racial diversity, and that some critics have pointed out that racial preferences “are [2] unfairly discriminatory and [3] don’t help minority students” and that [4] if “diversity” were really the goal of racial preferences, “`then preferences would be given on the basis of unusual characteristics, not …

Bad Times for New York Students

Roger CleggDisparate Impact

As the recent articles here and here discuss, the combination of the Obama administration and Mayor Bill de Blasio has proved toxic for safety and order in New York City public schools. On top of that, the New York Board of Regents announced last week that it was no longer going to require aspiring teachers there to pass a literacy test. The reason for this madness is in both instances the same: the felt imperative of getting the numbers right, of getting rid of any standard that might have a “disparate impact” on the basis of race or ethnicity. If discipline standards and literacy requirements …

“Environmental Justice” and the Trump Administration

Roger CleggDisparate Impact

The “disparate impact” approach to civil-rights enforcement is bad policy in any area —employment, voting, housing, credit, school discipline, policing, pizza delivery (yes, it’s been applied there, too), you name it — but it is perhaps most bizarre in environmental law, where it’s labeled “environmental justice.”  The approach in general considers it to be illegal discrimination if a practice has a statistically disproportionate racial effect, even if the challenged practice is neutral by its terms and in its intent, and is evenhandedly applied. So, for example, if a landlord prefers not to rent to people with a record of violent-crime convictions, …