I recall two Black applicants we admitted who, in retrospect, puzzle me a bit. One had, like me, grown up middle-class rather than disadvantaged in any salient way. The other, also relatively well-off, had grown up in a different country, entirely separate from the Black American experience. Neither of them expressed interest in studying a race-related subject, and neither went on to do so. I had a hard time detecting how either of them would teach a meaningful lesson in diversity to their peers in the graduate program....
The answer is in the official ideology of diversity, though I don't fault Professor McWhorter for failing to detect it on his own. The meaningful lesson in diversity is supposed to be that black people are individuals and not exemplars of a stereotype. By not being economically disadvantaged and by not choosing "race-related" major, these 2 grad students were teaching other students that black people are not all alike. (It's a very elementary lesson and thus scarcely the sort of "compelling" government interest needed to support race discrimination, but there it is.)
But I will never shake the sentiment I felt on those committees, an unintended byproduct of what we could call academia’s racial preference culture: that it is somehow ungracious to expect as much of Black students — and future teachers — as we do of others. That kind of assumption has been institutionalized within academic culture for a long time. It is, in my view, improper. It may have been a necessary compromise for a time, but it was never truly proper in terms of justice, stability or general social acceptance.... [T]he decision to stop taking race into account in admissions, assuming it is accompanied by other efforts to assist the truly disadvantaged, is, I believe, the right one to make.
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It worked on me. Oberlin back in the day admitted blacks with the same entrance requirements as anybody else. As a result, all I ran into was smart blacks.
Later it was a shock to encounter black leaders on TV, and their followers.
The meaningful lesson in diversity is supposed to be that black people are individuals and not exemplars of a stereotype.
Which of course is why supporters of Affirmative Action savage people like Justice Thomas for escaping the Progressive plantations of thought and denounce them as not authentically Black.
Every teacher grades the papers of all races and ethnicities. They very clearly see which groups tend to cluster at the top and which groups tend to cluster at the bottom. Dreams of equality and equity have been dashed generation after generation, even among young students raised in lefty bubbles and taught by lefty professors. Teachers constantly experience ideological failure so they change the topic and the meanings of words.
@Althouse found an author who says "diversity" but means "activism and advocacy." The left is acting bonkers today because they've painted themselves into several intellectual corners and can't reach them even with athletic Twister moves.
"The answer is in the official ideology of diversity"
Which, by being official and orthodox, makes a mockery of diversity.
"The meaningful lesson in diversity is supposed to be that black people are individuals and not exemplars of a stereotype."
Which lesson depends on stereotyping aplicants and, as a bonus, teaches everyone to be utterly cynical in their self-presentation to deal with prog stereotypes.
"teaching other students that black people are not all alike"
Often forgotten: that the benefit of diversity is supposed to be for the "other students." At least, that's one rationale.
By the way, since many state institutions (CA, MI) already were required not to consider race explicitly, do we know if the quality of education and the regard for blacks as individuals there declined?
Affirmative action is all about admitting unqualified applicants so the college/university officials can feel good. Screw the students. They'll struggle because the K-12 public education system failed to educate them and prepare them for hard academic courses. The teachers' unions are in business to collect dues and raise teachers' salaries.
The Black leadership has failed the Black community. Instead of holding the K-12 establishment to rigorous academic standards and ensuring that the kids take school seriously, they are collecting donations to spend on mansions and inflated salaries. They are nothing but racist grifters.
“By not being economically disadvantaged and by not choosing "race-related" major, these 2 grad students were teaching other students that black people are not all alike.”
Two outliers is hardly compelling evidence. I doubt they changed anyone’s mind.
these 2 grad students were teaching other students that black people are not all alike
yes!
middle class blacks from immigrant families* do QUITE well in society; that's WHY They need affirmative action
middle class blacks from immigrant families*
Colin Powell
Barry Soetoro
Kamala Harris
etc
McWhorter touches on a major aspect of Affirmative Action that is rarely discussed, even when the focus is on criticism--the bulk of the benefits go to people who don't need it. It primarily helps people who are already advantaged by good upbringings in intact, often affluent, families.
The kids who get a leg up into Harvard invariably would have gone to a good school no matter what. AA does little or nothing to help minorities who actually come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
"these 2 grad students were teaching other students that black people are not all alike."
By being chosen for admission because they're black?
O-kay.
He, McWhorter, and Glenn Loury often debate this issue. McWhorter is always on the race is everything side.
Well the good thing was.. White an Asian applicants that were accepted KNEW THEIR STUFF.
And the blacks and latinos would be labeled 'affirmative action' hires for the rest of their life.
And so it is.
I thought admitting people because their immutable characteristics somehow made them different from others (diversity, so called) was pretty demeaning. But admitting them in lieu of their better-qualified peers to serve as mere totems ("see, they're just like you!") takes the cake.
"I recall two Black applicants we admitted who, in retrospect, puzzle me a bit. One had, like me, grown up middle-class rather than disadvantaged in any salient way. The other, also relatively well-off, had grown up in a different country, entirely separate from the Black American experience. Neither of them expressed interest in studying a race-related subject, and neither went on to do so. I had a hard time detecting how either of them would teach a meaningful lesson in diversity to their peers in the graduate program."
But apparently there was an important lesson that the graduate admissions committee missed.
I had a hard time detecting how either of them would teach a meaningful lesson in diversity to their peers in the graduate program....
I would think that someone from another country would offer plenty of diversity, but again I consider the actual meaning of the term "diverse" when forming my thoughts - of a different kind, form, character, etc. In university admissions settings, "diverse" means black, optionally poor, likely to underperform, but absolutely uniform in terms of political and racial ideology. McWhorter is a very smart guy, and he still got swept into the university definition, hence couldn't see how a foreigner might add to the diversity of a student body.
Maybe our diversity programs should look to bring in black students from outside of the U.S., to provide U.S. blacks with an example that one can strive and achieve academically and not be angry with the world while still being "black."
Careful! Justice Jackson will accuse McWhorter of setting more straw men afire than she can either count or extinguish.
- Krumhorn
John McW can tell the truth and live. Most of the rest of us can't.
Well, yeah. You're not going to choose a minority that will fail. You want the people that the statistics will show that your program is successful.
No inner city Blacks need apply.
Doesn't the "diversity" hustle come from a term used in a SCOTUS decision by Sandra Day O'Connor?
Lefties latched quickly onto that term in order to promote racial quotas, which is what this has always been about.
Interesting that the focus on black people is how they are/were treated by white people, not on the fact that they are responsible for most of the violent crime in America.
Also interesting is that improvements in that treatment reflected by affirmative action, immunity from prosecution for rioting and looting, the proliferation of black millionaires in entertainment and sports, reparations committees, etc., has reduced the violence - mostly directed at other blacks- not one whit.
John McWhorter, a skilled writer, speaker, and linguist, is someone who has overcome the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. Yet that bigotry still pervades our society, outside the ruthless meritocracies of such things as sports and music.
As for the rationale that diversity is shown by introducing students to the normalcy of the Other,the insight that people of all races, genders, and sexual preferences are likely to have ten fingers and ten toes is hardly so critical that we must upend the notion of intellectual rigor in order to prioritize awareness of our common toe endowments. After all, why do we allow students and faculty to wear shoes and socks that hide their toes? We are thereby depriving students of so much critical information regarding the appendages joined to our extremities.
OT a bit. There was a recent Gallup survey showing a dramatic decline over the years in the percentage of Americans who said they were "extremely proud" to be an American. (As you'd expect, it was down to less that 30% for Dems, and down to 60% for Republicans) I'd like to see an analogous poll question directed to possessors of college and advanced degrees asking them if they are "extremely proud" "proud" "neutral" or "uncomfortable" regarding their degrees. There are so many Ph.Ds of the Jill Biden stripe.
John McWhorter, a skilled writer, speaker, and linguist, is someone who has overcome the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. Yet that bigotry still pervades our society, outside the ruthless meritocracies of such things as sports and music.
As for the rationale that diversity is shown by introducing students to the normalcy of the Other,the insight that people of all races, genders, and sexual preferences are likely to have ten fingers and ten toes is hardly so critical that we must upend the notion of intellectual rigor in order to prioritize awareness of our common toe endowments. After all, why do we allow students and faculty to wear shoes and socks that hide their toes? We are thereby depriving students of so much critical information regarding the appendages joined to our extremities.
OT a bit. There was a recent Gallup survey showing a dramatic decline over the years in the percentage of Americans who said they were "extremely proud" to be an American. (As you'd expect, it was down to less that 30% for Dems, and down to 60% for Republicans) I'd like to see an analogous poll question directed to possessors of college and advanced degrees asking them if they are "extremely proud" "proud" "neutral" or "uncomfortable" regarding their degrees. There are so many Ph.Ds of the Jill Biden stripe.
"By not being economically disadvantaged and by not choosing "race-related" major, these 2 grad students were teaching other students that black people are not all alike."
It's the "petting zoo" justification for admitting blacks to educational institutions. They are there so you can touch their hair (it's different than ours!). Of course, when they first thought this up, no one imagined that anyone could be stupid enough to put Exhibit B, Ketanji Brown, on the Supreme Court.
"these 2 grad students were teaching other students that black people are not all alike."
But what if the other students already knew this, and had only adjusted their thinking because this same program provided a mass of counter-examples?
Are we getting past the initial panicked reactions, and now reaching the phase where the real virtue bullsh*tting begins? "Oh, well now, come to think of it, we've ackshually been practicing a unique form of diversity selection all along, and it has nothing to do with race whatsoever! All of our matriculating students are brilliant and unique social specimens, according to our selection criteria. It turns out all this Supreme Court nonsense is because these ignorant conservative justices have wrongly interpreted our Affirmative Action, over-simplistically. We hardly consider race at all, look at our record (no, not THAT record). We're holistic AND holy!"
It's for the brochures and the body count in the statistics. The rest of it is not even hopefulness, it is merely lying. Colleges are selling the idea that you are becoming part of a "community," so that they can appeal to you for money in future years.
As Misinforminimalism noted, the idea that diversity is supposed to show racial minorities are not 'exemplars of stereotypes' is kinda hard to square with the 'an X that looks like me' mantra. Given that we've had a black President, currently have black Senators, Congressmen, and US Supreme Court Justices, plenty of famous black entertainers and sports figures, authors, scientists, doctors, etc, is it necessary to always have a black face in any particular crowd?
I've seen something like this in quite a few of these threads, from various people.
Affirmative action is all about admitting unqualified applicants so the college/university officials can feel good. ... They'll struggle because the K-12 public education system failed to educate them and prepare them for hard academic courses.
Everybody needs to read Facing Reality by Charles Murray. One of the reasons AA has hung on so long is that it actually looked like it was helping for a generation or more, and it probably was. Measures of academic achievement looked like they were on track to converge along racial lines. And then the convergence stopped, and one line appears to have plateaued, and now we have strong evidence other minorities are even outpacing the previous majority. And I don't think it's entirely a coincidence that the drive for 'equity' starts to pick up steam at just about the time that it becomes really hard to notice this is happening, even if nobody really wants to talk about.
Supply and demand. A POC is desirable in any position, ergo the qualified will get the top spots and the others will go to the unqualified. I saw it in the academic programs and among the admins.
Quite mediocre scholars and administrators of color were able to command a premium when it came to compensation--and who can blame them?
The Obama girls provided a model of what AA can do.
Their parents were the POTUS and FLOTUS. Hollywood made them rich with a no-work production deal. The girls went to UChicago Lab and Sidley Friends. Malia went to Harvard and Sasha went to Michigan and USC. The colleges got to count them in their AA totals.
Diversity!
When I was a teaching assistant at UC Berkeley (first semester biochemistry), the only black students were African immigrants/foreign students.
I'm sure the mavins of the elite schools are always disappointed when a good minority student chooses a real education instead of taking a X-Studies degree. I wonder if this is the real reason they are offering minority (usually black) graduation sessions, an extra mark to signify the recipients as inferior.
Sorry. Sidwell Friends School not Sidley Friends School.
The competition for minority admissions at the top university level must be extremely cut-throat. I am guessing the two students McWhorter mentioned were merit qualified enough to make it through Cal Berkely (I assume given the ambiguous date in the excerpt). From excerpt, I think McWhorter was questioning why these two were selected versus the ones that were not. I would guess they were selected because they were considered more likely to succeed in getting a degree than the ones, who might more authentically been disadvantaged, who were not selected. Just highlighting that affirmative action, at the top universities still selects for the cream of that particular crop and is not used to admit the most disadvantaged- a kind of hypocrisy.
I recently met a woman who advises applicants for top-10 MBA schools. She helps with applications, edits their essays and coaches them for their interviews, all for a hefty fee and a bonus payment for every acceptance letter. Her favorite clients are black women, who are a 2-fer for the Admissions Committees. She prefers that their parents come directly from the Caribbean, South America or Africa (think Kamala Harris or Barry Obama) - not from the US (think Condi Rice), and they are typically wealthy (top decile financially). She was fearing the SCOTUS ruling that she foresaw, and when asked about Asians, she quietly said they were too boring and elevated the grading curves, making others look less worthy. Our elite schools are corrupted beyond redemption; merit is not of interest to them any more.
"Everybody needs to read Facing Reality [(2021)]by Charles Murray."
For certain. He says things in there that everyone knows is true, but can't be said out-loud if you wish to remain "accepted."
Here's a snippet from the Amazon page,
In his newest book, Charles Murray fearlessly states two controversial truths about the American population: American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have different violent crime rates and different means and distributions of cognitive ability. If we aim to navigate public policy with wisdom and realism, these realities must be brought into the light.
“Facing Reality provides a powerful overview of one perspective that those who allege sweeping forms of systemic or institutional racism find it all to convenient to ignore―or cancel without due consideration.”―Wilfred Reilly, Commentary
“Facing Reality is a bold, important book which should be widely read and discussed.” ―Amy L. Wax, Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, for the Claremont Review of Books
The charges of white privilege and systemic racism that are tearing the country apart float free of reality. Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have different violent crime rates and different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The allegations of racism in policing, college admissions, segregation in housing, and hiring and promotions in the workplace ignore the ways in which the problems that prompt the allegations of systemic racism are driven by these two realities.
What good can come of bringing them into the open? America’s most precious ideal is what used to be known as the American Creed: People are not to be judged by where they came from, what social class they come from, or by race, color, or creed. They must be judged as individuals. The prevailing Progressive ideology repudiates that ideal, demanding instead that the state should judge people by their race, social origins, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.
We on the center left and center right who are the American Creed’s natural defenders have painted ourselves into a corner. We have been unwilling to say openly that different groups have significant group differences. Since we have not been willing to say that, we have been left defenseless against the claims that racism is to blame. What else could it be? We have been afraid to answer. We must. Facing Reality is a step in that direction.
One of the reasons AA has hung on so long is that it actually looked like it was helping for a generation or more, and it probably was. Measures of academic achievement looked like they were on track to converge along racial lines. And then the convergence stopped, and one line appears to have plateaued, and now we have strong evidence other minorities are even outpacing the previous majority.
Makes me wonder whether this is similar to the second-generation sudden jump in physical stature that has tended to happen among immigrants to the US and other developed nations. When your living conditions suddenly and dramatically improve, it seems you - as a group as well as individually - can reach an abrupt "new normal." But once that jump has happened, your only remaining choice is to mix your genetic material with stock that has the thing you lack or want more of.
I married the tallest and broadest member of a generationally short and "gracile" (as the anthropologists say) family, which means that he was exactly average height and, at the time, on the very light side of a normal weight range. All three of our kids inherited my side's height and more... robust, shall we say, build (we can't quite pull the plow ourselves, but...), Being above-average in height and in the middle of normal weight (the youngest is the tallest at 6'2" and is still very light, but my family's men tend to bulk out in their early 20s, so I think he'll break 155 someday). They're all also very bright for white kids, which is great... but I'm kind of pulling for them to find nice Asian mates eventually, though I'll be happy with whoever makes them happy.
is it necessary to always have a black face in any particular crowd?
Based on current tv commercials, advertising agencies say "Yes"!
John McWhorter is like a guy trying to keep his feet in two canoes.
Can we all just agree that "diversity" isn't the reason for affirmative action in university admissions? Literally no one actually believes that this was ever the primary motive, so why are we all still pretending? In defense of Justice Powell's memory?
The reparative idea is the only one that works, the only one that onlookers might feel inherently just. But for the last 45 years we have pretended, assiduously, that no one in our system owes anyone else anything, and that we're only putting a thumb on the scale for Black people because having them around will enhance the education of white people. I'm not exaggerating.
I'm sorry that Powell got stuck with this; he likely just wanted a way out of a very contentious decision, and saw one. But no one ever took "diversity" seriously, though obviously a gazillion people immediately started peddling the thing, and by now it's deeply entrenched. That doesn't change the fact that no one actually believes it.
In my history grad programs, it was often assumed that the minority students--including those with the best preparation and test scores--would be primarily if not exclusively interested in B/black or A-A history.
OTOH even in those courses the non-minorities were generally more numerous and interested.
I recall two Black applicants we admitted who, in retrospect, puzzle me a bit. One had, like me, grown up middle-class rather than disadvantaged in any salient way. The other, also relatively well-off,
That's because black "affirmative action" is EXPLICITLY implemented for the benefit of well of black people, NOT the economically disadvantaged.
I finally ran across this, the expert opinion from SFFA in the Harvard case:
https://studentsfor.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-415-1-Arcidiacono-Expert-Report.pdf
I found this part most interesting. When Bruce Hayden has pointed out that "AA" is about payoffs to "black elites", he clearly knows what he's talking about:
Notably, Harvard’s preferential treatment of African-American and Hispanic applicants is not the result of efforts to achieve socioeconomic diversity. Rather, preferences for African Americans and Hispanics are significantly smaller if the applicant is economically disadvantaged. While students flagged by the admissions office as disadvantaged generally receive a modest boost in admissions, this is not true for African Americans (who receive no such boost) and the boost is cut in half for Hispanics.
In other words, Harvard is not employing racial preferences in an effort to benefit disadvantaged minority students. Harvard admits more than twice as many non-disadvantaged African-American applicants than disadvantaged African-American applicants. This would not be the case if Harvard eliminated racial preferences, but provided a uniform preference for socioeconomic status. Under that scenario, disadvantaged African-American admits would outnumber the non-disadvantaged African-American admits
That's what McWhorter was seeing
I note that this excellent and honest piece in the NYT did not have a comments section. Heads exploded in the readership.
"...ungracious to expect as much..." is a delicate way of referring to the practice of expecting less.
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