Affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to black and other minority students admitted with lower academic qualifications than some white students who are rejected. But Justice Scalia questioned whether being admitted to an institution geared to students with higher-powered academic records was a real benefit.Actually, affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to the entire student body. That's the compelling interest that the Court has relied on to justify race discrimination. But it should be a benefit to the students who are admitted under the program, and if it is not, then they are being used for the (purported) benefit of the whole group of students.
The key precedent, Grutter v. Bollinger, put diversity in terms of the educational benefits it gives to all of the students. It "promotes 'cross-racial understanding,' helps to break down racial stereotypes, and 'enables [students] to better understand persons of different races.'" It makes "classroom discussion... livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting."
In permitting this educational benefit to be provided to all students — mostly white students, of course — should the Court take into account that the minority students who are employed as a means to this end may themselves experience difficult burdens? Why should the Court deprive them of the choice of what burdens they wish to shoulder as they evaluate offers of admission? The minority applicants don't have to say yes. If they'd really be better off at a less challenging school, can't they figure that out for themselves? Why patronize them? Do they need rescuing? I think it's enough that there is discussion and information about the downside of going to a school where you have to compete with other students who got better test scores.
Conservatives should lean toward individual autonomy.
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144 comments:
Actually, affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to the entire student body. That's the compelling interest that the Court has relied on to justify race discrimination.
This is the legal argument, but we all know it's a lie.
The benefits of "diversity" is a B.S. fantasy construct.
Black people - actually everybody, but the way things are, particularly black people - should insist on better public school system education.
And locally, they can give the local school boards all kinds of grief until they get it, while expecting the feds to get it for them will only cause the situation to get worse.
It "promotes 'cross-racial understanding,' helps to break down racial stereotypes, and 'enables [students] to better understand persons of different races'" and made "classroom discussion... livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting."
Wow, the Court really got it wrong on that. Turns out it promotes microaggressions, the need for safe spaces and the re-writing of the first amendment to protect the little snowflakes from offensive speech and ideas.
We should be able to sue the Supreme Court for malpractice.
Actually, affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to the entire student body. That's the compelling interest that the Court has relied on to justify race discrimination.
Yes, and everyone understands that's a polite fabrication to enable the proper result.
Actually, affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to the entire student body.
No Affirmative Action is supposed to be a remedy for minorities to make up for past injustices.
That's the compelling interest that the Court has relied on to justify race discrimination.
That's the poor justification the Court has used to preserve a racial spoils system.
Black people - actually everybody, but the way things are, particularly black people - should insist on better public school system education.
They would...except their school systems are run and staffed by Black people, which means they can't...instead they just scream racism a little louder.
"The benefits of "diversity" is a B.S. fantasy construct."
That may be, but it's nailed down in the case law until that's overturned.
What I am focusing on here is the "mismatch" argument. That's what Scalia is getting berated for bringing up.
The "mismatch" argument is not addressed to the possible b.s. of diversity as a compelling interest. So leave that to the side and examine the function of the mismatch argument. What I'm saying is that it shouldn't lead to a finding of an Equal Protection violation. It's just advice to prospective students that they might want to refuse the offer to the more challenging school and go somewhere that won't be as hard. Why shouldn't the individual applicant make that decision for himself? What part of Equal Protection doctrine demands that the courts rescue the applicant from what the courts may worry is an unwise decision? The law, fortunately, normally lets us make our own decisions and live with the consequences.
In fact, it may be better to go to the more difficult school and work extra hard. The prestige of the degree and the value of the connections you make may outbalance the difficulty.
It "promotes 'cross-racial understanding,'helps to break down racial stereotypes, and 'enables [students] to better understand persons of different races.'"
It might, if minorities weren't insisting on segregating themselves socially and academically into ethnic enclaves.
It makes "classroom discussion... livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting."
It might, if minorities weren't constantly in search of the next micro-aggression to be offended at.
If diversity is so great, why isn't there Affirmative Action for White kids at traditionally Black colleges?
The "mismatch" argument is not addressed to the possible b.s. of diversity as a compelling interest. So leave that to the side and examine the function of the mismatch argument. What I'm saying is that it shouldn't lead to a finding of an Equal Protection violation. It's just advice to prospective students that they might want to refuse the offer to the more challenging school and go somewhere that won't be as hard. Why shouldn't the individual applicant make that decision for himself? What part of Equal Protection doctrine demands that the courts rescue the applicant from what it thinks is an unwise decision? The law, fortunately, normally lets us make our own decisions and live with the consequences.
Elite schools only enroll so many students. An unqualified student took the spot of a qualified one. How is that fair to the one who was qualified who is less likely to fail out?
If you only have 1000 spots for a Freshman class, setting aside a quarter for less qualified students utterly screws over higher qualified students who didn't get the spot?
Don't THOSE students have any recourse for being discriminated against?
That is why it's an Equal Protection issue. Because we are placing students in spots they cannot handle at the expense of students who can handle it.
Conservatives should lean toward individual autonomy.
We do.
"Conservatives should lean toward individual autonomy."
If they do, they will redouble their objections to affirmative action, which is premised on the antithesis of 'individual autonomy.' The contention that a preference for individual autonomy should provide the principle governing the application of a racially class-based system of preferences is a bit odd, wouldn't you say?
That last sentence is trolling and I refuse to take the bait.
"It might, if minorities weren't insisting on segregating themselves socially and academically into ethnic enclaves."
Yes and so do white people, but that's a subject we discussed yesterday, here.
Let's not go back into that, because the post is focused on something else, the mismatch argument. Let's assume, to make headway on the mismatch argument, that educational diversity is a compelling interest that can justify racial discrimination.
Althouse: "It's just advice to prospective students that they might want to refuse the offer to the more challenging school and go somewhere that won't be as hard."
"hard"
These students know, indeed have been indoctrinated to know, that if they fall behind they have the silver bullet of "institutional racism" to blame and they will never, under any circumstances, be allowed to "fail".
Thus, the creation and expansion of pretend-studies programs and feel-good curricula which guarantees completion of "degree" requirements.
Are we still pretending that this is not the case?
Astonishing the "truths" we must "believe" to exist happily in the liberal mind-hive.
Go to yesterday's post if you want to discuss the idea that the reality of diversity is not what diversity purports to be.
Talk about the problem of mismatch and its role in how courts should analyze affirmative action.
I'm going to use moderation to keep this discussion on track.
"The "mismatch" argument is not addressed to the possible b.s. of diversity as a compelling interest. So leave that to the side and examine the function of the mismatch argument. What I'm saying is that it shouldn't lead to a finding of an Equal Protection violation."
Wait, so now the argument is that the college can use blacks as the pawns in the school's scheme to provide a more diverse student body and create a better educational experience for the white kids? According to the theory, the blacks get admitted, and don't do as well as they would at a less elite school or a historically black college, and presumably can't compete as well for the jobs upon graduation (if they graduate at all). But its ok to use them that way (to their detriment) in order to give the white kids a better, more diverse, education?
That's equal protection to you Professor?
"Elite schools only enroll so many students. An unqualified student took the spot of a qualified one. How is that fair to the one who was qualified who is less likely to fail out? If you only have 1000 spots for a Freshman class, setting aside a quarter for less qualified students utterly screws over higher qualified students who didn't get the spot?"
I'm publishing this comment but I must rule that it isn't on track with the mismatch concept. You are going back to concern about the student who is discriminated against. Doctrinally, the answer is that she has a legal right if the school's program doesn't satisfy strict scrutiny. So that's granted. Now, move on to whether strict scrutiny is satisfied. That's done with the diversity argument, which we are assuming is a compelling interest. The mismatch argument looks at the student who DOES get in and says maybe this person isn't actually getting a benefit. Focus on that for this discussion.
"Don't THOSE students have any recourse for being discriminated against? That is why it's an Equal Protection issue. Because we are placing students in spots they cannot handle at the expense of students who can handle it."
That's an argument about whether the policy adopted by the school is a wise or good idea, and the only question for the Court is whether it passes strict scrutiny.
If mismatch is the justification used to end a racial spoils system, then I am all for it.
As to the penalties of mismatch to the minority students, that is dealt with by lowered expectations, "studies" classes with no rigor and as a last resort, protests to get finals cancelled.
Let's not go back into that, because the post is focused on something else, the mismatch argument. Let's assume, to make headway on the mismatch argument, that educational diversity is a compelling interest that can justify racial discrimination.
I don't think mismatch ALONE is the argument. The argument against AA is two fold. Mismatch is one piece of the equation.
1) It negatively impacts qualified students.
2) It negatively impacts unqualified students.
If an unqualified student fails out quickly, it means that TWO people were negatively impacted. The original qualified applicant who was told no and the unqualified one who was told yes.
It's not a "we must protect them from themselves" argument. It is a "This is bad on BOTH sides of the equation". For years, it was "Well, the unqualified student was given a spot and it was helpful". Scalia is pointing out that it, likely, is not the case.
A lot of these students over-estimate their capabilities. So, they think "I can do it" when they, manifestly, cannot hope to do it. I'm sure you've had students who thought they were really smart who crashed and burned in your class. My mom (who teaches nursing) has had people with MS in Biology tank out of nursing courses. The student won't know there IS a problem until it is far too late and they are crushed by having their deficiencies exposed...and the person who could've excelled is crushed because their qualifications didn't mean as much as their skin color.
Prove that there is such a thing as a "more challenging school" - especially at the undergraduate level. A Harvard undergraduate degree is great if you intend to become a federal bureaucrat, but otherwise not noticeably better than a degree from almost any landgrant college, as I understand it.
The "challenges" likely come from different social environments rather than intellectual requirements.
And the response, from what I can see from the media, has been to give black students their own sandboxes to play in at these "challenging" schools. It is difficult to see that this is going to be of any help when they eventually have to return to the real world.
"The conservative argument should lean toward individual autonomy." Meaning, some students who are offered admission to highly selective colleges should rationally assess their academic abilities, and if they see too great a mismatch should be expected to choose a lower-ranked school?
Well, perhaps, but that's asking a great deal of these students. Not only is admission to these schools presented as a prize of great value, but few if any adults will even suggest rejecting an offer to attend a highly selective schools (and those who do put their careers at great risk). Adults can't be expected to step up here, and how many people can realistically be expected to have developed this degree of wisdom by age 18 or so?
Few of these students will ever have experienced a rigorous academic environment prior to being immersed in it; as flunk-out rates attest, this can be a challenge even for the best performers (who often have become complacent in navigating less rigorous environments. Do these students have any understanding of how different this academic environment will be as compared with what they're used to?
The press will call an 18-year-old male a "man" and a 17-year-old male a "boy," but that sharp dividing line between "child" and "adult" is artificial. Most High school seniors are not all that child-like, and most college freshmen are not all that adult-like.
Haven't all successful cultures guided the transition between childhood and adulthood? Perhaps that guidance should come from the family, yet today so many families have been exploded or never formed, and who or what is to take their place? Only a fool would expect much from a high school guidance counselor or a college faculty adviser. Where would young people go to find the wisdom to make these decisions well?
Althouse raises a good question: Even if the mismatch theory is true, shouldn't black students be able to decide whether it's worth the greater risk of failure by being accepted into a more difficult academic setting? After all, even proponents of the mismatch theory acknowledge that some black students still succeed and graduate.
Conservatives like to criticize liberals for their elitist paternalism. Well, isn't that what you're arguing here? That you know better than the black student what is in the best interest of his educational career? They're taking the risk not you.
Why should the Court deprive them of the choice of what burdens they wish to shoulder as they evaluate offers of admission? The minority applicants don't have to say yes. If they'd really be better off at a less challenging school, can't they figure that out for themselves? Why patronize them? Do they need rescuing? I think it's enough that there is discussion and information about the downside of going to a school where you have to compete with other students who got better test scores.
Well, perhaps except for the Court's own embrace of the desperate impact doctrine. Applying it to higher education outcomes can't be far off. And what would be the outcome of that? A lowering of academic standards across the board.
I'm white, but I grew up in a housing project and still retain to this day a certain amount of lumpenprole distrust and cynicism about bourgeois culture. I was a scholarship kid at a somewhat toney prep school. So far as I know none of my classmates benefited greatly from my hostility towards the ease of their lives. Their lives probably weren't all that easy, but when you're poor and pimpled its easy to misjudge the comforts of other people's lives.. I don't think I benefited enormously from their acquaintance either. I felt poorer than I really was......I picked up a few upper middle class mannerisms, but when you're poor they're more like affectations than good breeding.......So far as education and income goes, I ended up in the middle class, but my class identity is more mimicry than truth.
I thought the argument for affirmative action is that the minority student is not truly under-qualified. Rather that implicit racism appears to diminish her qualifications. That, despite lower qualifications on paper, the minority student is in fact truly qualified for the institution.
You appear to be arguing that the qualification is correct, and the minority student is under-qualified, and realizes that she is under-qualified. However, it is important to offer her the choice to take a "hard mode" university education.
However, only minority students are allowed to make that choice, make that mistake. If a university thinks it is correct to prevent a privileged student from making that choice, that mistake, isn't it a bad thing that they allow minority students to make that mistake?
Like let's say the government says white people must buy cars with seat belts because it's proven that seat belts improve safety. However, black people can buy cars without seat belts if they wish. Isn't that a disservice to black people?
Okay Ann, you really made me think with your question. But after doing so, I'm not sure you don't have a bit of a false equivalence here. The mismatch theory isn't really the rationale behind conservative's disdain for Affirmative Action. It's more of a point that illustrates that Affirmative Action may not be an unalloyed good and should be taken into account regarding how we evalute the benefits.
I would guess that potentially harming individuals who don't get into better schools because of the compelling interest in diversity is not necessarily worse than subjecting a diversity admit to a more difficult and potentially less successful path for the sake of the other students. Basically, both can get screwed over by this system, which might seem sort of fair but in a really twisted, actually cut the baby in half way.
The mismatch argument looks at the student who DOES get in and says maybe this person isn't actually getting a benefit.
Isn't this evidenced at how utterly pissed off current college minorities are as an extension of Black Lives Matter? But it should be a benefit to the students who are admitted under the program, and if it is not, then they are being used for the (purported) benefit of the whole group of students.
They figured out that their being used. Just like when Sam Malone (Cheers) got hired to work at that high end firm just because they wanted him on the company softball team.
Liberals in the United States have been using minorities for their own advantage for decades. This mismatch concept is only one of many areas where minorities were supposed to benefit from the liberal agenda, but haven't. None bigger than the destruction and dissolution of their nuclear family and their main support system.
I am a big fan of Thomas Sowell and have been going back to the 70's. He talks about this in several of his books from as far back as the 80's. Blacks get admitted to schools for which they are underqualified, do poorly, drop out, never get a degree anywhere.
Then they go through life feeling stupid.
It is an incredibly toxic effect of Affirmative Action.
Good to see it talked about openly. I suspect that most people kind of realize this cycle but are scared to talk about it for fear of seeing racist. Comments I've seen elsewhere about Scalia prove that this fear is entirely reasonable.
John Henry
Steve Galbraith said, ,Conservatives like to criticize liberals for their elitist paternalism. Well, isn't that what you're arguing here? That you know better than the black student what is in the best interest of his educational career? They're taking the risk not you.
I agree - self-determination is ultimately king. I see the question more as, I can put an underqualified person as CEO of my company - but if they are more likely to fail, they will hurt themselves and others in the process. Similar to college, if an affirmative action candidate fails at much higher raters because they are academically underqualified, they then have hurt themselves and the candidate they displaced.
However, they should absolutely be given the opportunity to make that determination themselves when offered the position.
But this isn't about their choice - it's about the hiring committees decion making.
"Wait, so now the argument is that the college can use blacks as the pawns in the school's scheme to provide a more diverse student body and create a better educational experience for the white kids? According to the theory, the blacks get admitted, and don't do as well as they would at a less elite school or a historically black college, and presumably can't compete as well for the jobs upon graduation (if they graduate at all). But its ok to use them that way (to their detriment) in order to give the white kids a better, more diverse, education? That's equal protection to you Professor?"
I'm not seeing the equal protection violation in offering admission to students who serve the university's overall interests where the benefit offered also brings burdens and where the admittee has a choice.
If you think that's an unethical, immoral, or unwise use of these students, you can argue that. I intended to put a spotlight on that problem. I think using minority students for the benefit of the students who come from traditionally advantaged groups is a serious ethical concern, but I don't think it's a violation of equal protection, because the students who are subjected to that treatment had the alternative of refusing the offer. And obviously, they haven't brought lawsuits. I could conceive of a lawsuit premised on fraud if there were deception in the process, but where is that?
I may be teaching at UW in the fall term. I was discussing my proposed syllabus yesterday. That person had shown it to some students in the program who objected to it on the basis that I expected class discussion.
UW students don't do class discussion and won't participate if asked.
Sheesh! So I guess all that diversity doesn't do much to foster discussion after all, does it?
I don't know what I'm going to do. I've been teaching 35 years now and all my courses revolve around lots of discussion.
John Henry
Is it the role of the Supreme Court to make sure the minority student is getting a benefit from their admission due to affirmative action, or should the Justices concern themselves with either continuing AA or ending AA because it no longer is needed to rectify the wrongs done to minorities regarding their admission to Universities? Maybe I'm misunderstanding all the ins and outs of AA, but the mismatch issue seems a side issue and the decision shouldn't be based solely or given too much weight on whether the student sinks or swims when they actually do get admission. It seems disingenuous on the part of Scalia, his mismatch comment seemed to be more of an insult toward minority students and he seemed to be suggesting that they are wasting a space at the University that could've been used by a more prepared student. Scalia seems to be trying to deny these AA students a chance to excel.
"I don't think mismatch ALONE is the argument. The argument against AA is two fold. Mismatch is one piece of the equation. 1) It negatively impacts qualified students. 2) It negatively impacts unqualified students. If an unqualified student fails out quickly, it means that TWO people were negatively impacted. The original qualified applicant who was told no and the unqualified one who was told yes."
First, you'd have to show the evidence that these students are "failing out quickly." I don't think that's correct.
But other than that, what I am seeing is a policy argument against affirmative action. You need to fit that into legal doctrine if you're arguing that courts should put that policy argument beyond the range of choices available to the university.
"You appear to be arguing that the qualification is correct, and the minority student is under-qualified, and realizes that she is under-qualified. However, it is important to offer her the choice to take a "hard mode" university education. However, only minority students are allowed to make that choice, make that mistake. If a university thinks it is correct to prevent a privileged student from making that choice, that mistake, isn't it a bad thing that they allow minority students to make that mistake?"
I'm not talking about what is or isn't "a bad thing." That's policy talk. I'm only talking about what is a violation of the Constitution. Judges are deciding this based on law, not their assessment of what is good and bad. Maybe the university has adopted a policy that creates a lose-lose situation and without it, there would be a win-win situation. But that's not what the university presents itself as thinking, and it is the decision maker as long as it doesn't violate the law.
How can we expect prospective students to evaluate whether they are qualified or underqualified for a particular school?
They have no idea what is involved in getting through college. Some schools are rigorous, requiring a great deal of work, research, attention, thinking. Others are not. How is any HS student supposed to know?
They went through HS getting all As. In some cases that means they did the work and know the material. In other schools everybody gets an A because it is easier than dealing with the complaints.
Parents don't know.
The colleges know based on evaluating thousands of applications, based on SAT scores, based on HS records. But they won't say for a variety of reasons:
1) Their diversity points are based on how many blacks are admitted, not how many graduate.
2) They get paid regardless. It is not their problem if the student is saddled with debt. They got theirs.
Seems to me that it is solely the college's responsibility to address any mismatch and not accept any student that is unqualified.
John Henry
I think the mismatch argument supports the position that we should stop lying about the diversity argument because it really isn't helping the people it is supposed to help, even though we were lying about who it was supposed to help in the first place.
I was going to say that this takes us back to those weird people who lie even when it's not in their own interest. But in this case the people lying are probably benefiting politically by pretending to lie for the benefit of other people who don't realize that the lies don't actually benefit them.
Ann Althouse said... I think it's enough that there is discussion and information about the downside of going to a school where you have to compete with other students who got better test scores.
Conservatives should lean toward individual autonomy.
I agree, Professor, but that's the very issue here--it's not possible to have the discussion at all. To begin such a discussion or offer an opinion or information about the topic, as Justice Scalia did, is to guarantee one will be called racist (especially if one is not of the Left). It would be disingenuous to assert that the best course of action is to present the facts & information and let each individual decide for themselves without acknowledging the powerful forces preventing that open discussion and presentation of information from happening. Justice Scalia could have phrased his question better, of course, but it's silly to pretend that had it been better phrased he wouldn't have been attacked in exactly this way. We can't really debate the validity of mismatch theory if the prevailing view is that there is only one socially acceptable position and anyone who disagrees is de facto racist.
Why should the Court deprive them of the choice of what burdens they wish to shoulder as they evaluate offers of admission?
Again, a valid point, but in terms of what the Court is actually reviewing it doesn't help--the admission decision of the university itself is what's in question, so if the ruling is that the method used to determine an admission offer is warranted is impermissible then it wouldn't even get to the point of the student weighing the offer (since the offer wouldn't be made).
The Althouse autonomy argument assumes the minority student is fully aware of the fact that he has received little or no preparation from his prior education for the kind of intellectual work that is required by the university that has accepted him. But this assumption is unfounded. The student will not become aware of his problem until he starts taking college classes.
Unless the university administrators clearly explain to this student before he enrolls that he will likely be unsuccessful in the classes offered by university, the student does not have the necessary knowledge to make a rational decision that the autonomy argument requires. Absent this, the student is being exploited, and the university's interest in admitting him is hardly compelling.
Minority students who are the targets of affirmative action really can't make their own clear and honest choices when they are lied to with regularity and impunity by the higher education complex, can they? If the whole system, from high school guidance counselors with their EVERYONE CAN BE A STAR posters to the higher ed grievance "your struggles are due to others' racism" industry, were forced into transparency, then maybe all students would have a clear picture and could make good decisions accordingly. Instead, we have a system of obscured truth regarding what is required for collegiate success, or an individual student's preparedness for same, or the true cause of some students' failures which is never "institutional racism" but students are often told that it is. It's really quite disgusting.
I'm following a pretty high standard of moderation to keep this focused. If your comment didn't make it, please don't take it too hard. I am reading the comments, and I'm saving other readers the distraction of multiple issues. There are many old threads on affirmative action, and this one is specifically on the legal significance of the mismatch argument. I'm trying to create a fairly coherent reading experience readers of the comments.
Here is the thing--mismatch is a real phenomenon and it applies to everyone. Consider this question: should a bright but not brilliant student of any race choose a highly selective school where compared to others his record is likely to be mediocre, or should he go to a good but not great school where he can be a big fish in a smaller pond? Why are you going to school? To learn something or to get a credential? To earn glittering prizes or to make connections? To make a step towards a professional graduate education or as an endpoint?
I agree with Althouse that individuals should make these decisions. But the ability to sort all this out is very difficult for an 18 year old who has been "the hope of the next generation" since he was seven years old. In general, individuals are best off where they have a good chance of being successful, but the willingness to work hard and persist in the face of adversity will yield great rewards in life.
Thomas Sowell's memoir of his life is instructive. He grew up in NYC when the schools were tracked (he is now 85), and always managed to get or stay on the fast track--right up until he dropped out without graduating. He went into the Marines, got a high school equivalent diploma, went to Howard on the GI bill, found it not rigorous, transferred to Harvard (being told that it was unlikely that that he would succeed) and was overwhelmed by the speed with which material was covered. He struggled initially, but realized that he would have to work as he had never worked before to remain enrolled. He stuck it our and went on to an MA at Columbia and a Phd at Chicago. He understands the conseqences of mismatch, and in his own case he had the maturity and talent to step it up at Harvard.
I'll guarantee that Althouse made some changes from her artsy undergraduate life to her outstanding career at NYU Law.
The Mismatch Problem undercuts any benefits of diversity in the student body. I'll make the argument that instead of seeing poor minority students as peers, other members of the student body see these struggling and failing students as people to be avoided at best, ridiculed at worst. You can see this effect in the cries for more and more "safe" spaces for minority students and anger about "micro-aggression". Are minority students subject to deep-seated institutional racism, or is it simply the basic survival instinct of successful students of ostracizing the failing and flailing?
This may be a bit of my white privilege showing through. I'm guessing the life-skill of superachieving students, of pushing away friends and family that are distractions from your studies, isn't something underprivileged children learn.
Dan Hossley said...
Wow, the Court really got it wrong on that. Turns out it promotes microaggressions, the need for safe spaces and the re-writing of the first amendment to protect the little snowflakes from offensive speech and ideas.
A microaggression if 1/1000000th of an aggression. Do you want to see what an aggression looks like? It looks like this. Note that the young man on the receiving end of this aggression will come out stronger for it. He isn't hiding in some "safe space", cuddling a soft kitten and sucking his thumb. He's in the process of becoming something powerful. It takes heat and pressure to make a diamond.
"If they'd really be better off at a less challenging school, can't they figure that out for themselves?"
How are they supposed to do that when a discussion of minority performance at the top schools is absolutely verboten in the media? Scalia's comments were a topic of discussion last Sunday on Chuck Todd's show. The political panel was apoplectic. Not once did anyone even allow that Scalia's observation of underperformance may be true. They rejected it out of hand. I'm used to the media's shading of the facts to portray the world as they want the masses to see it, but even so I was slack jawed at the end of the segment.
Who is treated badly by the offer of a position based on affirmative action? The person denied the spot certainly. The court in its wisdom has already ruled that poor schmuck should take one for the team. Does mismatch imply that the acceptee is also hurt by the offer? Well, the person may end up worse off in the long run for accepting the offer, but that proves nothing. If the acceptee is told the truth, and not illicitly persuaded (by whatever means), then I cannot see how he has been screwed. So I think Althouse is right that mismatch does not demonstrate any new equal protection violation that the court has not already decided to overlook (that of the passed over applicant; sucks to be Asian).
The real question is, does mismatch harm the student body overall. Well it deprives the better students of the interaction with some of their peers, but that effect helps other schools and their students. So that's not clear cut. How about racial harmony on campus, and serious debate? At this point I am laughing too hard to continue. I don't think you can deny Stuart Taylor's argument here.
"Conservatives should lean toward individual autonomy."
Respecting individual autonomy would require eliminating state universities. So long as the state chooses to coerce its subjects into subsidizing services that exceed those provided by a night-watchman state, however, conservatives may reasonably expect the state to treat citizens as equally as possible.
The idea that conservatives must defer to the judgment of students that would not have been admitted under a system of legal equality, to an institution that would not exist under a system of equal liberty, seems to be missing the point. Its like asking us to respect the rights of well-connected soviet commissars to select their own Crimean beach houses.
Where does the fraud perpetrated by elite schools come into play? When do we start caring about honesty and reality?
Students rely on schools. The schools don't tell them the truth.
Is Ann really trying to claim that UT is telling minority admissions that they are not as bright as the average student and their grades and test scores are weak? That the odds of them being able to compete and succeed are low?
Really?!
Actually, conservatives lean toward individual autonomy, and bias against exploitation, and merit - which was demonstrated by Scalia's line of questioning.
Ann Althouse said...I'm not seeing the equal protection violation in offering admission to students who serve the university's overall interests where the benefit offered also brings burdens and where the admittee has a choice.
If you think that's an unethical, immoral, or unwise use of these students, you can argue that. I intended to put a spotlight on that problem. I think using minority students for the benefit of the students who come from traditionally advantaged groups is a serious ethical concern, but I don't think it's a violation of equal protection, because the students who are subjected to that treatment had the alternative of refusing the offer. And obviously, they haven't brought lawsuits.
This is why I enjoy your blog, Professor, that's a very sharp take.
The fraud angle occurred to me, as well, and I think you'd see the lawsuit from students who flunked out and ended up with a lot of debt as a result--they could argue that the University by granting them admission implicitly promised or warranted that they were the kind of student who had a chance of succeeding at that school. It'd be a good angle to pursue to get out of otherwise un-bankruptable student loan debt, anyway. The interesting practical question would be whether the University gave these particular kids scholarships--if so and they don't have debt I think they'd have a hard time showing harm.
Another legal angle I'd appreciate it if you addressed is the degree to which the University owes a duty of transparency to the citizens of their state regarding the actual admissions criteria and their reasons and function. If the University says they're using Rule X to achieve Constitutionally-permissible end Y but it's clear that they're actually using it to achieve questionably-Constitutional end Z, how would one go about attacking that, legally speaking? What I mean is the Court has said that a strict quota isn't acceptable. If the school uses (purposefully-obscure) method Q and that method just happens to produce an outcome just like what a quota would have, what would a plaintiff have to do to successfully challenge that method? I assume the Court wouldn't just take the school's word for it, would they?
Well, if the question is "assuming blacks suffer under affirmative action, should that be okay because it serves the compelling interest of providing diversity to the institution?" then clearly the answer has to be yes, because we've already accepted that whites and Asians can suffer for that compelling interest.
I guess the problem is no one actually believes that "diversity" as such ever was the real interest here, so the Courts have to dance around this sham to justify allowing institutions to give out racial handouts. They need to deny that it is actually hurting blacks, because if the system is hurting both blacks and whites (and really helping no one) then they'd have to drop it and who knows what would be left?
Professor wants to assume that the "Diversity" sham is a compelling state interest and instead focus on the rest of the analysis. OK.
Assume the stated benefits of diversity are compelling. Is the plan chosen by the school the least restrictive means or narrowly tailored to achieve those benefits?
According to the record, as discussed at oral argument, their odious plan that discriminates on the basis of race doesn't even achieve the benefits. The school cannot get to their "critical mass" of minority students. By their own admission, each small class still only has one or two black students.
I guess you'll say "that's why they have to discriminate to an even larger degree"... But I call BS.
There was another exchange between Justice Scalia and Solicitor General Verrilli, where they discuss the success (or lack thereof) of the plan. Verrilli says the blacks still feel isolated because there are only 3-400 in a class of 6000, and Scalia says "600 is going to make the difference?" and "They wouldn't feel isolated with 600?"
The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race, is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
Scalia, his mismatch comment seemed to be more of an insult toward minority students
Why? Everyone acknowledges the minority students weren't as qualified or prepared.
and he seemed to be suggesting that they are wasting a space at the University that could've been used by a more prepared student.
He's not suggesting anything. The whole point of Affirmative Action is to take away spaces from White kids who are better prepared than minority students and give those spaces to the minority students. A large number of these minority kids fail to graduate, thus "wasting" the slot they took.
Scalia seems to be trying to deny these AA students a chance to excel.
No, Scalia is pointing out that these kids would have a much better chance to excel at a school that more closely matched their preparation. It is actually the Progressive Lefties like you who are denying these students a chance to excel by placing them in an environment that they are not prepared to compete in successfully.
Preferential benefits are the antithesis of individual autonomy.
Individual autonomy in college applications means getting accepted based on your own merit.
"Actually, affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to the entire student body. That's the compelling interest that the Court has relied on to justify race discrimination. But it should be a benefit." Supposed to. Should be. By assertion, never empirically examined, certainly not before SCOTUS invented the benefit as a compelling interest, itself pure invention, to get around the obvious equal protection violation. Of course, it's complete BS. No one has ever argued for legal remedies to rescue the least diverse and therefore most deprived student populations, those poor kids at HBCUs. It's as if only whites (and perhaps Asians) benefit from the presence of blacks. Of course, it's also complete BS in practice. No one cares if, after being admitted, the diverse students actually show up diversely in all classes or have diverse conversations or do anything with each other at all. In Prog theater, it's all about the numbers.
After I assume the can opener Althouse suggests, getting into the Affirmative Action canned goods should be no problem.
Actually, affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to the entire student body. That's the compelling interest that the Court has relied on to justify race discrimination
If it does not benefit minority students because of the "mismatch," then it does not benefit "the entire student body" and there is no compelling interest and it should be struck down. So the mismatch theory, if accepted, negates the compelling interest, hence no compelling interest = no reason for AA.
What a bunch of crap you create when you're just making sh*t up.
All the anti-Scalia Facebook agitprop I saw last week was cringeworthy.
I was glad to find a rational analysis by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic. Friedersdorf summarizes mismatch theory very succinctly and makes a game effort to work through it's implications. Here he quotes a key recommendation by mismatch theorists Sanders and Taylor:
Schools should provide any information they have available or can reasonably obtain on learning outcomes for past students similar to the admitted student. For example, a student admitted to a college with a given SAT score and high-school GPA should receive its best estimate of the past graduation rates of comparable students, their college GPAs, and their rates of attrition from intended majors.
He couples this with analysis by the National Review’s Reihan Salam:
The goal of transparency wouldn’t be to discourage students from attending selective schools. If [mismatch theory critic] Chingos is right, the news would in most cases be more encouraging than discouraging. Yet students with below average levels of academic preparation would have a clearer sense of the obstacles they face, and that they’d be wise to take advantage of enrichment resources on campus to keep up with their better-prepared classmates.
This type of transparency would better answer Althouse's rhetorical questions: "The minority applicants don't have to say yes. If they'd really be better off at a less challenging school, can't they figure that out for themselves?"
And how do they figure it out for themselves? Perhaps the court should rule that given diversity as a standard, transparency is also required.
Ann said
"First, you'd have to show the evidence that these students are "failing out quickly." I don't think that's correct."
I don't know what the "quickly" means but if failing out means not getting a degree within 6 years, it is absolutely correct.
2007 is the most recent starting year I quickly found, meaning that they should have graduated by 2011-2013
Overall rate 39.4%
Whites 43.3%
Black 20.8%
Hispanic 29.8%
Asian 46.2%
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d14/tables/dt14_326.10.asp
There are a lot of different reasons for blacks only completing less than 1/2 as often as white. It is not all mismatch. But a good part of it, particularly in more selective schools is mismatch.
As I mentioned in a prior note, Sowell has done a lot of work on this over the years and goes into considerable detail in several of his books.
John Henry
A problem with the argument that minorities are free to choose colleges that give them a better chance of academic success is that everyone knows about affirmative action, and so many people assume that a minority student who doesn't go to an "elite" college must be really dumb. This, I think, puts some pressure on minorities to go to a higher-prestige school than a similarly situated white or Asian student would face. Furthermore, the mismatch problem, if real (and I think it is), undermines the very "diversity" argument that's supposed to justify affirmative action. When minority students go to a tough college, learn that their SAT scores are some 1.5 standard deviations lower than the white kids and that the white kids went to high schools where they learned a lot, they tend, not surprisingly, to hang out with each other. My son was an administrator at an "elite" university for several years. He says he's never seen anyplace else that was more segregated. He'd go somewhere for lunch, and all the black kids were at their own, separate, table.
I remember when forced busing was supposed to make black children smarter and white children...smarter, too.
What it was, then as now, is just a way to use kids to avoid addressing the reality created by adults. Schools reflect the community. If the schools were not diverse it was because adults didn't want t live in diverse communities. Rather than confront that, busing advocates said, "I know, let's force children to do what adults won't!" It wasn't pleasant for anyone.
Today, forcing schools to accept under-qualified black students serves the same purpose: avoid addressing the source of disparity.
"Diversity" is appealing only when it happens naturally -- it means that in a given setting we all share common values and aptitude and work ethic. It means that we're the same inside. When it's achieved at the end of a bayonet, it means the opposite. That's why it feels so empty.
I think it's enough that there is discussion and information about the downside of going to a school where you have to compete with other students who got better test scores.
The way Scalia's remarks have been used suggests that there will not be much in the way of honest discussion and information.
"I don't think it's a violation of equal protection, because the students who are subjected to that treatment had the alternative of refusing the offer."
Really? So a bunch of "mis-matched" black students fail to graduate and, realizing that they were used to benefit the educational experience of the whites who did graduate, decide to sue. And you're going to say they were not subjected to unequal treatment because they could have said "no thanks"?
Dangle the carrot of a UT degree (with all its perceived benefits for job/career/networking) in front of these "unqualified" kids knowing a bunch of them are going to fail, all to further benefit the "qualified" white kids? And you don't think they're going to make a case for unequal treatment?
One other thing from Sowell is that the AA system doesn't just cause mismatch at the top schools, it filters all the way down.
Assume 3 classes of school based on selectiveness and difficulty, call them A, B and C.
The A schools need to fill their diversity slots but there are not enough candidates so they take some lesser qualified students who would do well at the B schools. Now, in the A, they are mismatched.
Meanwhile, the B schools need to fill their diversity slots but some of the qualified students have been siphoned off to the A schools. So they need to reach down to students who are qualified for the C schools.
And so on all the way down.
John Henry
"If they'd really be better off at a less challenging school, can't they figure that out for themselves?" I think it makes it a lot harder to figure out, when he's just been accepted to a prestigious school. A graduating high-school kid doesn't have too good a picture of where he stands in a national/planetary market. One important signal for him is which school accepts him. You are sending him a message that you are confident he will be successful at your school, a dangerously false message.
I'm a bit unclear on compelling interest. Can mismatch be relevant to the question of whether the interest is met? After all that's a policy judgment to at least some degree. So a thought experiment.
I think the state has a compelling interest in preventing violence. So we should ban anyone under 6 feet tall from wearing jeans. This will promote fashion diversity. That will make things better. I have my theory of why; that's policy not law, so maybe it doesn't concern the court. Now you might argue that this is unfair to short people, but the court has already told the short people they just have to live with it. There's a compelling interest here, runts!
Now Dr T argues that restricting jeans has no effect on violence. Actually it just irks people, leads to resentment by short chino-wearers of tall jeans-wearers, and might make the problem worse.
Is Dr T's argument relevant?
So, now that we are at the bottom of the rabbit hole, the rules are that we accept all that has gone before and accept that the unqualified student has a right to attend the school because they have autonomous choice and can choose to attend a school they will likely do poorly at. Point taken. SCOTUS should NOT base any ruling on the mismatch theory. But, as SCOTUS is infallible, your argument is puerile as SCOTUS will rule as they want and YOU will have to adjust your thoughts and beliefs to fit the reality so you can continue to believe in the Law. The rest of us will be content to regard SCOTUS and all government as hopelessly devoid of common sense.
" The prestige of the degree and the value of the connections you make may outbalance the difficulty."
Unless, of course, you flunk out as the majority of these students do in spite of the destruction of higher education in an attempt to hide their failing performance.
Your "high level of moderation" is an attempt to allow only comments that agree with you,
Bye.
Individual autonomy, established on the basis of the moral principle or axiom of individual dignity, precludes class diversity schemes. It precludes affirmative action policies that detract or burden equal treatment based on individual merit. It's not just about choice, but rather reconciliation of principles and imperatives to produce positions that are internally, externally, and mutually consistent.
Affirmative Action is discrimination based on race, can we at least agree on that?
So for it to be "constitutional" one needs to show a compelling state interest, true?
However, if the impact of this policy harms both minority students who end up in schools where they won't succeed and non-minority students who cannot get into the schools where they will succeed, you have a lot of negative consequences (in addition to racial discrimination itself) to overcome for a compelling state interest.
I don't think the benefits of sitting in a class with minorities passes that bar - not even close.
Perhaps the Court should insist that all acceptance letters to, say, the lowest 20% by SAT score (white, black, Asian, whatever) should include prominently and in large print, "Your SAT scores are in the bottom 20% of admitted students. You may find yourself struggling to succeed here. You may need to take extra time and work extra hard. You may find yourself discouraged by so many others doing better than you. Consider this carefully and discuss it with others before you decide to come here."
You know, like the Miranda warnings.
Admitting under-qualified students can benefit the other students, it gives them a better chance of ranking higher in their class.
Another point Anne:
If offering a spot at a school to a minority who is not qualified serves "a compelling state interest" even though:
1. The student has a high probability of failing, wasting time and money
and
2. Therefore has a high probability of running up a large amount of student debt
you should have no problem whatsoever with so-called predatory home loans offered to minorities. After all, they are free to refuse such loans and it serves a "compelling state interest" to get minorities into housing, even if it means that many of them will end up with houses they can't afford and will have to bankrupt at some future date.
Are kids informed that they are being admitted based on affirmative action policies? If not, how are they expected to make an informed choice about whether to attend or not? Are minority kids expected to wonder and/or assume they are AA admissions? Does that not unfairly stigmatize non-AA minority admissions? If a kid of any color is an AA admission and is not informed and thus does not know, how will it affect his/her sense of self-worth when they start to fall behind?
If kids are told they are AA admissions how does that affect their self-esteem if they decide to attend? Will it cause them to work harder to prove their worth, or will it lead them to expect more benefits and hand-holding in "safe spaces"?
Could one not reasonably be led to conclude that AA merely makes white liberal baby-boomers feel good about themselves at the expense of the kids they claim they want to help?
(And I agree with the other commenter; your final sentence is pure grade BS.)
In order to justify Affirmative Action, the state must show a narrowly tailored program and a compelling state interest. It is the state that must prove these things to the Court.
The mismatch theory diminishes the state's interest in violating the Equal Protection Clause. After all, it is hard to be compelling if Asians face discrimination and must attend second choice schools and the students admitted under the program are hurt, at least in part. Much more compelling is the lie that nobody is harmed and all students are helped by increased diversity. But that world does not exist.
Legally Ann is of course correct.
What's frustrating to the readers is that everyone understands that the Supreme Court and legislatures have manufactured "the benefits of diversity" as the compelling state interest when in fact the argument is mostly a sham to cover the true goal of minimum quotas for good minorities (African Americans) and maximum quotas for bad minorities (Asians and Jews), regardless of the merit of the individual candidates.
Ann is correct that the mismatch argument is aimed at the wisdom of the underlying true goal and not a great argument against the diversity justification. Meanwhile, Harvard will continue to salivate at the opportunity to admit the liberal child of rich African American celebrity over a more deserving disadvantaged kid from Appalachia. Harvard cares much more about checking a racial quota box than it does about true diversity.
Anne, Does it serve a "compelling state interest" to continually pass failing minority students in order to maintain a diverse student body under the assumption that a failing student is free to drop out at any time and put an end to the sham?
After all, they were "passed" into a school in which they were not qualified, so why not keep up the pretense all throughout their academic career?
Would you pass a minority student under those conditions? Would you support a university policy that directs professors adopt such a grading policy?
And given these are often institutions that are supported through taxpayer dollars, does it serve a "compelling state interest" to bilk taxpayers out of their money by running such a sham institution?
The idea that minority students are at university in such numbers for the express benefit of white students is one that John Rosenberg has taken up extensively at his blog Discriminations. It's one that is usually missed, and I thank Ann for bringing it up here.
I read yesterday an article that perplexedly complained that, well, we have all these diverse students, but they still aren't interacting. Suggestions were made: Change the paths on campus so that they'll have to cross paths with one another, &c. Force men to take humanities classes, to meet women. (NB: No forcing women to take physics classes, to meet men. As Barbie said: "Math class is hard.")
There was no mention of banning black-themed dormitories. I wonder why not? The easiest way to mix the races is to make them share dorm rooms.
As for me, the mismatch theory seems right. Black students educated at HBCUs disproportionately excel; certainly a graduate from Morehouse is better situated than an early dropout from Princeton. Scalia got himself into some self-inflicted trouble with the word "slower," but the idea itself is cogent.
Why should the Court deprive them of the choice of what burdens they wish to shoulder as they evaluate offers of admission?
If I understand Althouse here, she seems to be saying that if the Court rules the UT AA program is unconstitutional then the equal protection rights of the black applicants are being violated. Because they are being denied the choice to accept the burden of being mismatched with the university? And this denial is solely because of their race.
That's an odd way of viewing it, if I understand her argument.
"The whole point of Affirmative Action is to take away spaces from White kids who are better prepared than minority students and give those spaces to the minority students."
From what I've seen, Affirmative Action mostly takes from Asian-Americans and has little effect on whites.
But mostly pro-Affirmative Action arguments somehow remind me of Ptolemy's model of the solar system. The problem with Ptolemy's model is that because it is conceptually wrong to begin with it had to keep getting added complications such as epicycles and deferents in order to retain predictive value.
Just as Affirmative Action arguments seem to need ever more complex arguments and justifications in order to appear constitutional and beneficial.
Perhaps a Copernican Revolution is overdue? Will a time come when the Supreme Court finally sweeps away all those convoluted epicycles and deferents with a simple, clear model that affirms that the best way to avoid constitutionally prohibited discrimination is to stop discriminating?
Ann said: Actually, affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to the entire student body. That's the compelling interest that the Court has relied on to justify race discrimination. But it should be a benefit to the students who are admitted under the program, and if it is not, then they are being used for the (purported) benefit of the whole group of students.
And there it is! You are right! Affirmative Action in higher education is racist as it benefits white students more than black students and that is yet another reason to do away with it.
That logic is quite good. Affirmative Action is supposed to "make up for" past wrongs as well as improve diversity in higher education by allowing less "qualified" minorities into schools that they would not normally qualify for. As these students are under-qualified, they struggle and often fail causing additional harm to those students. Meanwhile the other students that got into the school on their academic record (mostly white (and Asian) students) accrue the benefits of a diverse student body further enhancing their academic experience AT the expense of the minority student's educational experiences.
Why do those that support Affirmative Action in higher education hate minorities so much?
"Why should the Court deprive them of the choice of what burdens they wish to shoulder as they evaluate offers of admission? The minority applicants don't have to say yes. If they'd really be better off at a less challenging school, can't they figure that out for themselves? Why patronize them?"
Offering them a spot they didn't earn by merit IS patronizing them. And unless he has parents and/or counselors who can impartially and objectively assess his preparedness, how can we expect a 17 or 18-year-old, one who maybe was the best student in his school (and that may be like being a giant among jockeys), one who is self-inclined, and encouraged by others, to reach for the brass ring, to be able to gauge his own prospects accurately? Even older adults who should know better often only learn that kind of thing after failing miserably.
I'm not talking about what is or isn't "a bad thing." That's policy talk. I'm only talking about what is a violation of the Constitution.
Those two boxes are hardly mutually exclusive. Many lawyers have heard the story of Ernest Brown. I heard the story from William Andrews, formerly a student of Brown's and then a tax professor at Harvard Law. Brown was also a Harvard tax professor but one year he was persuaded to teach a section of the basic Constitutional Law course. At the end he said, "Never again. This isn't law; it's politics."
I may be cynical but it really seems like every Supreme Court Justice believes at least somewhat, "The Constitution is good. If it meant X, it would be bad. Therefore, it can't mean X."
I want to argue that intent is an important aspect of this issue. Wouldn't the "mismatch" be a legitimate concern for the Court if the mismatch effect were believed to have been anticipated by those who introduced the requirement for affirmative action? If we were to suppose that racist legislators were maliciously gaming the system to the detriment of minorities, it would be an equal protection issue. Of course, it is not a court issue if the mismatch effect can be regarded as just another example of unintended consequences.
Ann: The minority applicants don't have to say yes. If they'd really be better off at a less challenging school, can't they figure that out for themselves?
This is a good question.
The first problem is the large majority of college applicants are 17 years old or only slightly older. At this age the student is no longer a child but not quite an adult. 17-year-olds cannot vote, cannot drink (without adult permission), cannot join the military (without adult permission), cannot get married (without parental permission), and are considered juveniles in the criminal system. It is somewhat odd to assert that a 17-year-old is too young for a series of obvious adult responsibilities but is mature enough to make a major life decision. Like with anything, some are mature enough now, some will be mature enough in a few years, some will take many years after, likely, numerous bad decisions, and some never are mature enough.
The second problem is for anyone to make an intelligent decision, regardless of maturity, requires having the prerequisite knowledge. When I was a senior in high school, I had no clue how to apply to college much less what schools would be a good fit for me. Neither of my parents had a higher education, or for that matter were unlikely to have been accepted anyway. Keep in mind that I went to an excellent college prep school. I had to be handheld through the entire process. Honestly, I still do not know what schools would have been a good fit for me. (I did pick a good one. Serves me well to this day.)
Now take a hypothetical minority student. That student is valedictorian but of a poor inner city school that is more or less a warehouse for half the class. Maybe half the teachers don't even care. The student lives with one parent who never graduated high school and may or may not have a job. The choice of college could be the ticket out. Various elite schools, boasting hordes of successful graduates, all but beg him or her to attend their institution. Do you really think that the student could get an objective read of his or her prospects at those schools? The school says the student is good enough, so why would the student doubt that? If the student really wanted to know, how does one go about finding out? If he or she is lucky, there will be a good adviser who can help, but that may not be available. He or she may be pressured to go to the best school by his or her family. The research that would help, like the "mismatch" study, are considered explicitly racist and therefore not to be trusted. What now?
So there's your problem. When you boil it down you are asking a somewhat immature and ignorant person, technically a minor in many cases, to make a make-it-or-break-it life changing decision intelligently. For that matter it makes the school look like it is engaging in fraud.
Now, can this be fixed? I have read somewhere - it may have been an excerpt from the "mismatch" book - exhorting colleges to actually provide the student with the expected results of a student with a similar resume. The student provides the high school, grades, SAT scores, and other related items, and the school provides the results of similar students. So if our example student gets accepted to, say, the Ivy League. The report, for example, comes back and says that 10% graduate, 20% transfer to a lesser school and graduate there, and 70% never graduate; however, those that graduate make a ton of money. The student gets accepted to State. The report says that 80% graduate and another 10% graduate elsewhere, but the expected salary is significantly less. Now an intelligent decision can be made.
You cannot keep someone ignorant intentionally and then claim "individual autonomy."
The mismatch argument is very simple. The quest for diversity makes Liberal universities (redundancy noted) willing to lower academic admission standards to admit lesser qualified blacks into college.
As a result, you are pitting lesser qualified blacks in an academic competition for grades with qualified whites.
How will that play out?
Well, you would expect to see higher drop-out rates (lower graduation rates) from Affirmation Action admitees.
And this is exactly what you see. Whites graduate college at a rate of 62%, blacks at 42%.
http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html
So, a reasonable, intelligent compassionate man, such as Dr. Thomas Sowell would suggest that liberal university bureaucrats are actually hurting black folks by enticing them to come to UC Berkeley (a prestigious school) through the guise of Affirmative Action, where they are more likely to drop out. Rather, these black students should be enticed to go to, say, San Fancisco State, a lesser prestigious school, but where they can academically compete, and have a better shot at completing their degree.
Ann, doesn't the student need to know that he/she was admitted on the basis of affirmative action-- I don't mean connect the dots themselves, but be straightforwardly informed about that in order to make an autonomous decision of the kind you indicate? Are there any Constitutional impediments to schools explicitly informing students of that fact and providing them with the statical data of rates of degree completion for similar students?
The mismatch argument or color blind relative deprivation?
Malcolm Gladwell's Fascinating Theory On Why You Should Be A Big Fish In A Little Pond
Actually, affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to the entire student body.
That was always a polite fiction. There was never any evidence for it.
Professor, if the minority students admitted under the guise of "diversity" (which is just a term used for anti-white racism) can't keep up because they're not qualified (lower admissions standards!), then how will they contribute, in any meaningful way, to the lively discussions going on in the classrooms? Any such benefit would be even less than the already questionable marginal benefit achieved by a critical mass of students who are basically segregated once they get to the university.
Central to the mission of the University of Missouri is diversity, described on the school’s website as “not an end to itself” but “a means for students, faculty and staff to experience firsthand the increasing multicultural world that we live in.” And what are the means for achieving diversity and the measure of success? The means is the admissions process and the measure of success is the degree to which the races of those admitted reflect the racial makeup of the state and nation. Whatever the university may claim to the contrary, race is a key factor in admissions, as it is at almost every other college and university in the country.
Once the racially balanced student body arrives at the University of Missouri, minority students have a wide array of options provided especially for them. For example, black students can enroll in black studies with a minor in multicultural studies. They can apply for many different “diversity-related scholarships.” They can join one of seven “historically black fraternities or sororities.” They can hang out at the Black Culture Center and join the African Students Association, the Mizzou Black Men’s Initiative, the Mizzou Black Women’s Initiative, the Association of Black Graduate and Professional Students, the Legion of Black Collegians, the Black Business Students Association and the Black Law Students Association, just to name a few. Meanwhile their fellow white students can enroll in any number of diversity and sensitivity training courses all under the watchful eye of the vice-chancellor for inclusion.
Can there be any surprise that students of color feel as if they are treated differently from white students when their admission to the university is very likely to have been influenced by their race? When they, and only they, are often invited to campus a week early, purportedly to bond with their fellow students of color and to give them a head start on college? When one of their first experiences on campus is some sort of gathering with other students of color? When they are directed to the campus office of diversity or minority affairs as a place for counseling? When they are invited to join the Black or Hispanic or Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian student union? When they learn they can major in Black, etc. studies?
http://www.hoover.org/research/real-cause-campus-racism
Look at the photographs of Obama with Deerick Bell and his fellow studnts at Harvard. Not a non-Black face in sight.
If the "benefits of diversity" is the pretext for Affirmative Action, I would say the programs are being fraudulently executed, and how can official fraud perpetrated on the citizens be Constitutional?
Dan Hossley said...
Turns out it promotes microaggressions, the need for safe spaces and the re-writing of the first amendment to protect the little snowflakes from offensive speech and ideas.
Several of you beat me to that.
If there were any benefits to "diversity", where's the empirical data? Has anyone seen it?
We should be able to sue the Supreme Court for malpractice.
That'd be nice. It'd probably end up in the SC and they'd have to recuse themselves.
My dad's idea of "diversity" was more sensible: "Work with your hands and work and associate with different kinds of people - until you feel the need to go to college. You'll appreciate it more." A few of my "Most Unforgettable Characters" were among those people, and I learned more from a year working at an military ammo dump than I would have from another year of college.
The minority applicants don't have to say yes. If they'd really be better off at a less challenging school, can't they figure that out for themselves? Why patronize them? Do they need rescuing? I think it's enough that there is discussion and information about the downside of going to a school where you have to compete with other students who got better test scores.
Your argument is flawed and has the criteria backward. If minority students are given a false sense of qualification by being selected due to their skin color rather than their academic qualifications, how are they to know that they *should* turn it down, when they are told, by their selection that they are qualified? The rejection is the message that they aren't really ready. maybe they need to go to JC to prep
If academically unqualified minority students are rejected by the elite schools, rather than being approved to attend due to their skin color, then they will have to attend a school where they are academically qualified, just like white people.
the fact that blacks (or other minorities) get to make these "personal autonomy" decisions, and whites do not, is racism. It is unconstitutional. It is illegal under America's Civil Rights laws, regardless of strict scrutiny (which has not been applied properly or at all due to the deference to the University's diversity rationale, which we all know is complete bullshit). Supporting affirmative action is supporting racism. Those who do are basically the KKK at this point.
This may be a more focused discussion but I miss Laslo's pudenda jokes.
What if, in addition to a slot at Berkely, AA applicants were also offered a free ticket into a Russian Roulette Tournament? Free samples of an addictive drug? Would we be asserting its "enough that there is discussion and information about the downside"?
Imagine what Laslo could do with "downside".
It must be noted that outcomes are generally predicated on both disposition and predisposition. Whereas predisposition can be addressed and predicted through cumulative achievement, people are equally likely to fail based on their disposition.
The argument for rejecting merit-based treatment fails on both equal protection grounds and individual assessment. So, they are conducting a massive clinical trial, which deprives individuals based on class-based factors, political leverage, and other illegitimate criteria, and simultaneously denies individuals, families, and communities their best opportunity for development.
From the post: The key precedent, Grutter v. Bollinger, put diversity in terms of the educational benefits it gives to all of the students. It "promotes 'cross-racial understanding,' helps to break down racial stereotypes, and 'enables [students] to better understand persons of different races.'" It makes "classroom discussion... livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting."
But does it do any of those things if nearly all minority students fall within the bottom quartile of all students at, say, Harvard in terms of academic preparation? Or does it reinforce stereotypes, undermine racial understanding, and lead to sullen and/or patronizing discussions? Or exile into the various "studies" departments? It's a sincere question; I graduated in 1967.
Making relevant information available to minority applicants is a good idea, but what do you have beyond SAT scores? How are they to know what their GPA means next to the same number at Exeter or New Trier? How can they compare their ability to write a strong two-page essay to that of kids who have been raised from infancy in a highly verbal, professional environment? If they are adequately prepared, fine, they should get every chance, but if not you are doing no one any favors. Devote that energy to promoting better elhi outcomes.
Ann, doesn't the student need to know that he/she was admitted on the basis of affirmative action-- I don't mean connect the dots themselves, but be straightforwardly informed about that in order to make an autonomous decision of the kind you indicate?
If I may say so, that, sir, is a damned good point.
I taught in an HBC in the late sixties and early seventies after having taught in a big ten midwestern university. There is no way the kids in the HBC could have competed in the big ten on equal footing with the students I worked with. Hopefully the feeder schools for the HBC have gotten better over the decades, surely they have. But even as they may have gotten better the culture has gotten coarser and the distractions of today are infinitely greater/worse than in those days. The topic remains deeply troubling to me over these years with no evidence of progress being made. In many respects we have gone backwards, not just in race relations but in the placement of the starting blocks for so many black kids. In my day I would guess that most of my students came from intact families whereas today I would imagine that ratio has reversed itself. It is a horrible situation. Imagine the indignity of being admitted to a school like UT with great high school grades and good SAT scores only to discover that you are way behind many/most of your classmates. While this might make the administration feel good about itself, it definitely is crushing to the kids and only magnifies any negative stereotypes held by white classmates. It is a terrible terrible thing and I am ashamed for those who support it as another measure of their own virtue. The preening is disgusting.
If they'd really be better off at a less challenging school, can't they figure that out for themselves? Why patronize them? Do they need rescuing? I think it's enough that there is discussion and information about the downside of going to a school where you have to compete with other students who got better test scores.
Schools aren't telling the effected students how dramatic the differences are, in fact they intentionally mislead them by claiming they are only using race preferences to break ties among similarly qualified applicants. This is in addition to the fact that schools don't even tell students who was effected and who wasn't effected at all.
So if a school is actively misleading the students about their likelihood of success should we ignore it? I seem to recall a rather intense movement criticizing for-profit schools based entirely on their misleading their students about their chances of success in the job market. Of course those pushing that movement conveniently ignore that non-profit institutions do the same thing, are you applying the not for profit immunity card also?
Althouse brings up the central issue to me and it is moral and not legal. A kid who has done exceptionally well against weak competition in a less than good school does not have the ability to compare herself against the kid who has done exceptionally well against strong competition in an excellent academic environment. The graduate has no concept of the other. None. And if the deficiencies of the kid from the poor school are partly to blame because of poor or lazy or lax instruction the student has no way of knowing that either. If they are terrible writers who have been judged by terrible writers and have gotten A+ on every essay in which subjects and verbs never agree they have no way of knowing how that will be viewed by those accustomed to teaching those from truly excellent academic environments where the subjects and verbs always agree. When the excellent grades and the kudos of 13 years meet the harsh realities of a top quality school there is an emotional disaster in the making. And with years of racial resentment being stoked by the media what conclusion does one come to? When you go from all A+, 13 years of A+, in a majority black system to all C- and D in a white university what conclusion comes to mind? This system does not work. For the kid. For society. It is immoral. It is cruel. Wrong on so many levels.
Much of the conflict here exists because of ill-defined terms. What characteristics does "diversity" cover? Race, gender, regional origin, sure, but what else? Is it a matter of law that only certain traits count (could the school consider, say, height when making admission selections and not run afoul of Constitutional challenges)? Technically having people with lower academic achievement included in a school's population increases the diversity (compared to a population with only high achievers). The same is true for the more-extreme case of a population that includes some students destined to struggle and/or fail vs. one with only students who can be expected to pass without much struggle. If diversity as such is the goal arguably you WANT to have those kinds of people in the mix!
I think it was a British politician who said (after being called stupid) "there're a lot of stupid voters out there and they deserve representation, too." A class comprised of only high-achievers is less diverse than one that includes some people with poor academic records. Is anyone at the University making that argument? If not can we conclude that they don't really mean "diversity" when they use the term, and that it's really just a cover for their desire to ensure greater representation of certain favored groups in the admitted class?
I see a connection between the mismatch theory and the minority lending programs which added fuel to the housing bubble.
In each case, an overly simple connection is made between possession of a thing (an expensive house or admission to a prestigious college) and positive societal outcomes (low divorce rates, high salaries, low unemployment, etc.).
Standards are lessened on the assumption that giving the "thing" to people who don't fully qualify for it will give them the benefits, too. Also, classroom and neighborhood diversity will benefit all. That good intention coupled with limited resources simultaneously deprives qualified candidates and sets up the "beneficiaries" for increased rates of failure. Dropout rates are much higher for affirmative action admissions, and housing defaults are higher against less qualified home buyers.
Althouse argues that protecting minorities from this sort of trap is patronizing them. High school seniors (or first time home buyers if you accept the analogy) should recognize these subtle, adult dangers themselves. The problem is that the students (or home buyers) are not are not the only ones on the hook in the cases of their failures. Higher interest rates will affect many and higher taxes impact nearly everyone. Moreover, if you default on your mortgage, you at least have a salable asset to help. If you drop out of college, those credit hours will not much offset the debt.
Real American said...the fact that blacks (or other minorities) get to make these "personal autonomy" decisions, and whites do not, is racism.
Well I think you'd have to pursue a "fraud" angle on that too, from the not-admitted white student's perspective. If the Court finds that the discrimination (against non-black applicants) is legal (and they have to some degree already) then that alone obviously isn't enough. It seems to me you might still have an argument that the University isn't being sufficiently transparent about their actual admission criteria/process, though--you'd have to argue that the University purposefully lead you (as a white applicant) to believe you had a "fair" chance of admission and/or that you would be evaluated on an equal basis with all other applicants, and that you in fact weren't. That seems like a fraud claim. The University would say that it makes clear that certain things boost an applicant's chances of admission and you'd then be arguing over what kinds of warnings the University has a duty to give regarding an applicant's chances (based on their demographic traits). That may not seem like much, but imagine requiring the university to print "WARNING: YOU HAVE A 10% LOWER CHANCE OF ADMISSION TO THIS SCHOOL IF YOU ARE WHITE" or something like that.
That'd certainly play in to Professor Althouse's argument that the first-best solution involves free people making informed decisions. If you know your are at a disadvantage as a non-black applicant at UT (and you have a good idea of exactly to what degree that's true) you can make the decision to apply there or not in an informed way. The University knows (roughly) what your odds are, and knows how much those odds differ for given applicants. It seems only fair that they be made to share that information with their potential applicants--the government would certainly require that of a game of chance or lottery, for instance.
Blogger Rocketeer said...
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Ann, doesn't the student need to know that he/she was admitted on the basis of affirmative action-- I don't mean connect the dots themselves, but be straightforwardly informed about that in order to make an autonomous decision of the kind you indicate?
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If I may say so, that, sir, is a damned good point.
It's a great point and undermines Ann's entire thesis. And of course the colleges simply cannot admit that they are letting in unqualified applicants to meet a racial quota, so such a letter will NEVER be sent to the prospective student. Thus there is no autonomy because there is no openness in the process.
And to repeat my point above: If the state has a compelling interest in race-conscious admissions, why doesn't it also have a compelling interest in race-conscious grading in order to main a diverse student body? Shouldn't universities have one grade scale for minorities and different grade scale for students of other races? Why one and not the other?
POINT ONE: Everybody needs to take a deep breath and step back away from all of their moral/ethical/social justice arguments about Affirmative Action. On all sides. Nobody is going to convince anybody of any great moral truths on this comments page. It doesn't matter to the legal argument that Althouse is setting forth. She doesn't care, and I don't care.
POINT TWO: For the non-lawyers out there. Professor Althouse is making an unassailable point about the legal review of Affirmative Action cases under Bakke, Grutter and Fisher. (Remember that the current Fisher is Fisher II.) Althouse is making her points flawlessly and elegantly. You do not want to mess with her on this one. She's reciting the holding of Grutter flawlessly, and she's got it in exactly the right context.
POINT THREE: To the extent that Althouse is correcting the marvelous Thomas Sowell on a rhetorical point, she's right. (By the way, when was the last time you heard Thomas Sowell on NPR or public television? As opposed to the 67 times you've heard Ta Nehisi Coates?) Sowell, however, is not making a legal point. He's making a social point. Sowell is a great economist and social scholar. He's not a lawyer. He is black; I think for most reading this page that part is understood, but maybe not. Now you know. He's frequently called upon as The Black Conservative which is something that bores him to a great extent, I feel. Anyway, that's what's going on if you don't know it already. Check out Sowell's hard academic curriculum vitae. He ain't no bandleader.
POINT FOUR: Yes the media attacks on Scalia have been vicious and every column (like Sowell's) devoted to rebutting those attacks are worthwhile even when an eminent scholar like Sowell misquotes the legal theory of Grutter v. Bollinger. There is a really great story in the American Spectator by a University of Texas Alumni Association member who reacted to a pair of tweets that were ostensibly put out by the Association's leadership. The author is Mark Pulliam. This is great reading:
http://spectator.org/articles/64935/silly-season-university-texas-over-scalia-comment
POINT FIVE: While Althouse is way ahead of the great Sowell, and Sowell is way ahead of the liberal mainstream media, the one person who is at the very bottom of the intelligent understanding pile is of course Donald Trump. Trump is the one and only person under the general Republican label who consumed the MSM smear of Scalia and actually absorbed some of it. Trump, in an interview with Jake Tapper (look it up) said that he was disturbed by Scalia's language. Trump not only doesn't understand Grutter and Fisher; he didn't even understand the media angle that he was consuming.
It seems like every news story these days concludes with some new expression of Donald Trump's native stupidity.
Four black women (three born in America) won Rhodes Scholarships for 2016. The Ivies are overwhelmingly represented, but these four winners went to Millsaps, Northeastern, Ohio State, and Penn.
Broncoranger puts his finger on a key point. The schools are not being open and honest, so the AA acceptee does not know he is the one at risk. He might be told black kids are. Do we really want to go that route? To basically just say, hey look at your skin and be very careful? To make him responsible for a choice in such circumstances? Absent proper notification he is being used, and in a way white kids are not. Which looks more like an equal protection problem suddenly.
Most important to the above discussion is a point I made and nobody picked up. Namely, the state must prove that these programs are narrowly tailored and if the Court wishes, it can impose this standard to dismantle Affirmative Action.
Thanks, Chuck. I especially like Point 2.
I agree, of course, that Sowell is an impressive scholar and that he deserves great respect.
To summarize Chuck's points:
POINT ONE: Shut up
POINT TWO: Ann is credential and smarter than you
POINT THREE: Sowell is a smart black conservative economist but he ain't no lawyer
POINT FOUR: The MSM is vicious and stupid
POINT FIVE: Trump is even stupider than the MSM
I find myself largely in agreement.
I should add, Professor. It's not that I don't care about affirmative action. It is important. It might well be the most important and fluid social issue we've got in this country these days. And people's substantive views are important. They are important, to be made known to their state legislators, their governors, their federal representatives and -- a too-often-overlooked institution -- their state-elective education boards and university boards (at least for public schools).
But those social-merit views are decidedly unimportant to cases like Fisher. The Supreme Court doesn't -- and shouldn't -- care about a lot of what is being argued in these comments. It doesn't make everybody wrong. It makes them beside the point.
I have my own affirmative action story, in which the LSATs mistakenly listed me as an American Indian and I was admitted to Michigan's Law School (I corrected the listing). I was wait-listed as a white male.
Helenhightops; Penn is an Ivy. Who was the woman from Ohio State?
"But those social-merit views are decidedly unimportant to cases like Fisher. The Supreme Court doesn't -- and shouldn't -- care about a lot of what is being argued in these comments. It doesn't make everybody wrong. It makes them beside the point."
But the Professor didn't want us talking about anything else. She wanted us talking about the mis-match theory. Told us to stay on topic or she wouldn't post the comments. So she made a whole thread of "beside the point"?
Maybe the Professor should tell us how the UT system is narrowly tailored, and how a race-neutral system couldn't perform as well.
So tell us, Professor, does new evidence -- that the alleged beneficiaries are indeed hurt -- not diminish (retired Justice, ahem) O'Connor's points defending the compelling interest of Affirmative Action?
I find it humorous that nobody has mentioned the part of the Michigan Law decision in which O'Connor announced that Affirmative Action would no longer be needed in 25 years or so. Because nothing says 'precedential value' like a judicial timer.
"There are many old threads on affirmative action, and this one is specifically on the legal significance of the mismatch argument."
Well, OK. On the assumption that universities practice affirmative action because diversity improves the educational experience, the mismatch argument is irrelevant. Hooters is allowed to discriminate against men, and women with small tits, because big tits improve the Hooters experience.
Of course, the women who work for Hooters are employees, not customers. But if it's legal to give blacks scholarships for playing basketball, I guess it's also legal to give them scholarships for playing zoo animals for the edification of their betters. Why not?
"But those social-merit views are decidedly unimportant to cases like Fisher." They are the foundation of the whole line of cases -- the fabricated SCOTUS view of the social merit of diversity as a compelling interest. Sure, they said it, not even "they" initially, it's in an opinion, and it's now "legal" and everything. Yeah, yeah, some of us have read all the cases, and the comments on the cases, and yeah, we know mismatch is not dispositive in any way, but we're calling BS on the enterprise itself. It is corrupt, legally and socially.
"The law, fortunately, normally lets us make our own decisions and live with the consequences"
Not any more, if, e.g., (say) you run a bakery and don't want to serve (say) a request for a gay wedding cake.
Ann, get real. You are delusional if you think these things are being decided by legality. And I did see "normally", which (in this case) is a weasel word to protect the statement.
But Althouse isn't referring to previous cases; in fact she wants us to ignore them.
She wants us to consider the ability (right?) of black applicants to apply to universities even if there's a mismatch where there's a high risk of them failing while there. It's not up to conservatives or the Court (I assume) to say they can't take that risk. It's up to them to decide whether they want to take that risk, mismatch facts be damned.
And apparently - I'm not sure on this - she believes that if the Court strikes down the UT program that that would violate the equal protection rights of those applicants since they are being denied that risk due solely to their race.
If I understand it correctly it's a rather odd, to me, argument.
Chuck, to be clear on two things:
1. If "individual autonomy" is not relevant to discussion then Ann should not have brought it up. Personally, I am glad she did since it is an interesting topic. I personally hope she sees the flaw in her argument, assuming she truly holds that position rather than suggesting it for debate purposes.
2. While Ann is clearly an expert on the law - it is her job and she does not have a phony baloney one - I think, probably in agreement with many of us here, that the law itself is secondary to some SCOTUS decisions. Yes, SCOTUS shouldn't care about moral arguments beyond legal application, but it is obvious that they do use moral arguments and personal preferences with a legal veneer at times. Pretending that morally determined precedent is somehow no longer morally determined because it is precedent is foolish. It is even more foolish to treat 5-4 decisions (Grutter), regardless of whether it was legally or morally decided, as something legally settled as opposed to something that is easily reversed (or entrenched) with one political appointment. (The "25 years" thing, while sensible in context, does not add gravitas to the ruling by any means.)
Even if the mismatch effect is only another example of unintended consequences, mismatch affects minority students more than others, so might it not be taken up by the courts under disparate impact doctrine?
It is precisely these selective arguments why we need a separation of Court and State. There are too many lawyers in government and especially in executive positions. The lack of internal, external, and mutual consistency in their logic is a source of progressive corruption that undermines civil and human rights.
In legal terms the issue isn't whether diversity is a compelling state interest (the Supreme Court holds that it is), but whether AA is a narrowly tailored means of achieving it. To the extent that the mismatch argument is true, AA is ineffective.
The diversity in question is intellectual and social diversity. Unqualified AA students don't enrich the intellectual environment because they are unqualified. As a practical matter, the academic environment will intimidate them into silence. The social environment will intimidate them into isolaring themselves, and they will not be taken seriously even if they don't.
Actually, affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to the entire student body. That's the compelling interest that the Court has relied on to justify race discrimination.
The recipients of affirmative action are part of the entire student body.
The key precedent, Grutter v. Bollinger, put diversity in terms of the educational benefits it gives to all of the students. It "promotes 'cross-racial understanding,' helps to break down racial stereotypes, and 'enables [students] to better understand persons of different races.'" It makes "classroom discussion... livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting."
There have to be non-trivial numbers of affirmative action recipients in order for the policy to have any chance of bestowing those benefits. If the recipients are not receiving those benefits too (for the sake of argument), does that factor into the Constitutionality of affirmative action, since the recipients are part of the whole? Is it Constitutional for benefits to be only theoretical or does Constitutionality require empirical/tangible benefits? If a law is not achieving its aims (for the sake of argument), is that in any way relevant to its Constitutionality?
Birkel: The way I read Sandra's comments was not that the decision would expire in 25 years (which, if that was her intention, is judicially idiotic), but that Affirmative Action itself would be moot in 25 years. Presumably, the minorities would have "caught up" to the point that they would be admitted to colleges solely on merit in roughly the same percentages as their population.
Bringing this back to the mismatch theory, Affirmative Action could very well worsening the progress she expects to happen. All things being equal, I think a college dropout is less likely to produce higher performing children than a college graduate, even from a lower tier school. Taking the best and brightest of the minority community and then setting them up to fail at a larger percentage than normal seems counterproductive to another compelling interest, especially if you think that there is a conspiracy to hide this information from the minority applicants. That would be relevant to the legal reasoning here.
Sandra's opinion also assumes that population groups would, if left unmolested, produce college students of the same quality proportions as each other. This may or may not be true.
Unless the schools make an effort to eliminate segregation in practice - which they apparently have made no attempt at so far - applying Affirmative Action in order to promote the benefits of "diversity" (friendly Black-White interaction, other colors need not apply) is bunkum.
I suspect this has more to do with Frank Bruni et al. than any real concern for Black students.
The diversity in question is intellectual and social diversity. Unqualified AA students don't enrich the intellectual environment because they are unqualified. As a practical matter, the academic environment will intimidate them into silence. The social environment will intimidate them into isolaring themselves, and they will not be taken seriously even if they don't.
Perfectly put.
If mismatch is correct, even if we assume diversity is a compelling interest, it raises serious questions that AA is the appropriate means to produce the result. Look at those specific benefits presumed to accrue due to diversity - but that can't just be due to the presence of minorities on campus (that can be accomplished through a variety of measures that doesn't require matriculation). AA presumes that having minorities as a significant component of the student body will help combat stereotypes and improve the learning experience of all. But if mismatch is correct, then AA might, in fact, reinforce negative stereotypes of minorities. It could boost resentments towards minorities because they are both treated differently and are, as a whole, performing differently (from the perspective of the student on campus). Furthermore, the self-segregation through minority advising, student groups, social fraternities, etc., which may itself be a rational reaction to mismatch, may further reinforce negative stereotypes rather than, as is presumed, breaking them down. Thus AA would perversely detract from the educational goals that it was intended to bolster. D.GOOCH
Static Ping,
If O'Connor believed minorities would be on equal footing in 25 years, and Affirmative Action would be unnecessary, this goes directly to my other point. To wit*, the mismatch theory (and the results of the evidence in support) is compelling evidence that Affirmative Action is not narrowly tailored and does not satisfy a compelling interest.
O'Connor anticipated that Affirmative Action would no longer be a compelling, untested theory. She appears to have been correct, even if for the wrong reasons.
Finally, anybody who has read Dr. Sowell knows that his study of Affirmative Action is not limited to the United States. And according to Sowell, Affirmative Action works nowhere it has been tried. And that is true whether the recipients are minorities with, presumably, little political clout or majorities with great political clout.
But let us assume a can opener, again.
Non-lawyers cannot argue based on established legal decisions since we don't know the law. We can only argue in good-faith based on logic and reason, which in theory should be part of good law, but sometimes is not. AA law seems to have been built on intentions and feelings, with shifting goalposts. I always thought AA was to help disadvantaged people by allowing them access to quality education. Now that we see the unintended consequence of the "mismatch effect", we are asked to focus instead on the legally established goal of providing entertainment for white people, aka "diversity".
Additionally, we are told to consider whether it is preferable for courts to continue to allow disadvantaged young adults the "choice" to be used for the enrichment of white students and faculty, with the lure of an elite degree, even if the odds are against these kids succeeding. We non-lawyers can see that if a person does not have sufficient information, his choice may be a false choice. AA starts to look more like a con-job by rich universities and the disadvantaged kids are the marks. And you don't have to be a lawyer to know that con-men are still considered criminals even though the marks willingly lay their money down.
"Conservatives should lean toward individual autonomy."
I lean towards personal responsibility, myself.
Another thought from Thomas Sowell's memoir: when Brown vs. Board of Education was decided, he was gratified that the injustice of segregation was about to end, but he was concerned that the focus would be on mere integration rather than providing excellent education opportunities to all children. I think he is continuing to focus on function rather than form, and I believe that he would argue that diversity is a pretty limited goal and one that by itself means little compared to a student's mastering the material to the best of his ability. In other words, he might well say that the goal of diversity misses the point of creating successful students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Chuck -
POINT SIX: God you are boring.
John Henry,
"I don't know what I'm going to do. "
That's easy: flunk them all, and let God sort them out.
Duh.
Jack Wayne,
"The rest of us will be content to regard SCOTUS and all government as hopelessly devoid of common sense."
You ended this sentence too soon; it should have continued with "and legitimacy".
MDT,
"The easiest way to mix the races is to make them share dorm rooms."
I have a young friend who had that experience as a Freshman at Duke.
She lasted one semester.
Now, to be fair, the from-the-inner-city tough-girl black student that my friend the "nice suburban white girl" was paired with, wasn't the only reason my friend left Duke, but it was certainly a contributing factor.
"Conservatives should lean toward individual autonomy."
This is some twisted logic. Let's see.
Start the car.
Leave it running with the doors unlocked.
In downtown Los Angeles.
Put a sign on the hood stating you won't be back for hours.
But leave it up to the teenager to demonstrate a mature judgement and pass the car by.
Right.
I've heard about the results of affirmative action at a major university and not only do the students not recognize they haven't been equipped (either through the malfeasance of the education system or their own intellectual shortcomings) to handle the rigors of what should be a challenging academic curriculum, but self-select into a grievance cluster, demanding special consideration that takes away from the universities historical mission to equip the brightest students to reach their potential.
There is a lesson here-- that I'm sure the majority of the university students recognize, but it's not the one of liberal feel-good pablum you're articulating. It just reinforces the reality that forced diversity is a bad idea resulting in greater animosity, jealousy and racial division.
Universities should be required to publish progress reports on their students based on race: Each year the report would tell us how many freshman of each race moved on to be become sophomores, sophs to juniors, junior to seniors, seniors to graduation.
I had the great chance to talk with Dr. Ward Connerly, the former UC Regent and anti-affirmative-action activist who helped push through CA Prop 209 in 1996. Prop 209 removes race as a selection criterion. He has also led similar campaigns in other states.
Anyway, I asked him about the impact on graduation rates of Prop 209. He pointed out that fewer minorities attend (and subsequently drop out of) the top UC campuses (UCB, UCLA, UCSD) but more are attending the second-tier (UCSB, UCSC, SJSU etc.)schools and graduating! That the net net was more minority students got a college education because of Prop 209.
We need a little more humility. Perhaps other countries have solved this problem. New Zealand's Maori now have about the same ratio of great and bad schools as the old English, up from situations that were as bad or worse than ours. Neww Zealand ran out of money and banks that would loan them more in the late 70s, so a coalition government was elected privatized everything they could without tearing up a sigle union contract, halved the size of government, and nobody died, even starved (save a few elites who thought their government rice bowl was eternal). They couldn't afford to pay large social benefits without results, so for schools they decided the government had no right to decide where a student went to school, so they let the money follow the student, and put the parents in charge of the school they chose for their child. Bingo. The Maori now have one of the best, if not best high school on that island state, with waiting lines of both races by the best students. This and more because they simply didn't have the money to assume the government always knew best for things other than only it (a government) can do. See the story here: http: //www.waynedaniel.net/images/Document1.pdf
A lot of you seem to miss the point. The point is that the universities have claimed that "diversity" is a valuable element in their peculiar craft. Just as doctors say that "X-rays" are a valuable element in their peculiar craft. It is not up to the court to determine the efficacy of X-rays, but only whether the benefits claimed by the doctors justify their practice of using X-ray machines, which is otherwise contrary to law. The judgment of the specialist is assumed to be correct, or at least dispositive.
Of course, the other side of this coin, is that the universities could claim, probably with considerable statistical justification, that excluding blacks from the campus has an educationally salutary effect on the white and asian students. Just as restaurants used to maintain that excluding blacks improved the dining experience of their white patrons. In fact, the whole point of the CRA was to make such arguments null at law. Why exactly universities should be immune from laws that apply to more important institutions is not clear to me.
BrianE said...
"There is a lesson here-- that I'm sure the majority of the university students recognize, but it's not the one of liberal feel-good pablum you're articulating. It just reinforces the reality that forced diversity is a bad idea resulting in greater animosity, jealousy and racial division."
Perhaps that is the educational value that the university administrators find in diversity. I recall that, long ago, I was quite sympathetic to the grievances of blacks. Then I got robbed and beat up by a few of them. Quite educational.
Harry Reid said, "(Scalia's) endorsement of racist theories has frightening implications, not the least of which is undermining the academic achievement of Americans, African-Americans especially."
This is reprehensible. Where is the condemnation of Harry Reid? He knows damn well that Scalia was doing no such thing. This is one of the top five slimiest things I've ever seen a politician do. (And Harry's done one of the others in the top five.)
"Conservatives should lean toward individual autonomy."
Well, I'm late to this party but, if you want 18 year olds to make an intelligent decisions, how about giving them some information.
When the school accepts a student, it could give the graduation rates and majors of all previous students with the same SAT and GPA credentials as well as the school wide average. That way the students could how much they need to up their game to make it at that school and compare their chances if they went to different school. For example, if you think you are going to graduate with a STEM degree and you chances are 40% less at a "prestige" school (given your initial conditions) then it's pretty obvious that a school more suited to your abilities would be the best choice.
I worked in the aerospace industry and dealt with people from all levels of colleges. They all did well, from the MIT/CalTech/Stanford grads to the Cal State Dominguez Hills/San Bernardino grads. By getting the initial degree, they were able to get in the door and further develop their skills. After ten years, it didn't matter what school you went to because you had developed a work reputation. Some of my best workers came from the Cal States and some of the biggest idiots came from the "prestige" schools or with advanced degrees.
Your college is not the end all and be all of your career. But it can be a career killer, if you don't make it through (or if you have to settle for a less marketable major).
Of course an exception could be made for football players. :-)
Ann, A few questions: (1) Does the Sander friend of the court brief in Fisher have an answer to your question here? (2) Do schools merely have to recite the word “diversity” or do they have the burden to show their program produces diversity benefits at their school? (3) If a school could lower its level of preference and produce less social mismatch and more diversity benefits, doesn’t that mean the current high preference level fails to be narrowly tailored?
The Sander brief (pp. 17-20) says it’s useful to “categorize three types of mismatch effect that find strong support in the literature.”
“In ‘learning mismatch’, students receiving large preferences actually learn less in the classroom than they would if they attended a school where the student’s level of academic preparation was closer to the median student. . . . In ‘competition mismatch’, students receiving large preferences are at a competitive disadvantage, tend to receive lower grades, and become academically discouraged, which can lead to switching to a less competitive field of study or dropping out of school. . . .
Finally, ‘social mismatch’ describes the tendency of students, regardless of race, to form friendships at much higher rates with fellow students at the same school who have similar levels of academic preparation (or similar levels of academic performance). If academic preparation (or grades at college) are highly correlated with race, then social mismatch will tend to produce racially segregated social interactions, defeating a core purpose of campus racial diversity.”
Once you put the social engineering ball into motion, it's hard to stop it.
But what using race this way and at this point ignores the issue of say a white student from a long lineage of hardship having their achievement leaped over by a person of a minority race with a very "privileged" background. And there are many issues outside of race and socio-economic status that would logically go into any sensibly grounded social engineering based decision.
The brush is too broad..too crude.
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