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When Affirmative Action Ends…
It appears likely that the Supreme Court is going to declare affirmative action unconstitutional, on the grounds (essentially) that the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
There have been any number of analyses predicting the real-world fallout from such a decision, ranging from the philosophical let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may to the apocalyptic (there will be No Black Students At Harvard!)
What I haven’t seen predicted is the outcome I believe to be most likely: Black students, and black families, will simply up their game.
Following the Dobbs decision, returning the abortion question to the states, Twitter was suddenly filled with the Tweets of outraged feminists declaring their utter and complete unwillingness to hook up with random men until Roe v. Wade was restored.
Now that the Handmaid’s Tale was coming true, parents Twittered that they were holding family meetings with teen and tween daughters about the need to exercise extreme choosiness re: sexual partners, and encouraging their kids to take a belts-and-braces approach to contraception.
In such communications, these Americans were ironically confirming a pro-life point. Legalized abortion had, indeed, created a culture of sexual license and irresponsibility, one in which women did hook up with random men and parents did not feel obligated to stress self-protection and self-control when discussing sexuality with their offspring.
But the tweetsters also demonstrated a more universal fact about human beings: Alter the incentives, and people will tend to alter their behavior. If abortion becomes less available or acceptable, women and girls will not be left helpless in the face of natural urges (their own or those of their “partners”). They can and shall make different decisions, and assert more control over their own bodies and the uses made thereof. Where abortion is not available as a fallback, parents who care about their children’s futures will work harder to protect daughters and sons from their own immaturity by, among other measures, imparting very different messages about acceptable sexual behavior. The result could easily turn out to be largely positive—fewer unplanned pregnancies, lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and the end of what has been termed “hook-up” dating culture, one that frankly does not serve women well.
At the moment, I believe it is fair to say that the stated goal of affirmative action advocates—equality of academic outcome— has not been achieved. Affirmative action was already operating when I went to college some forty years ago. A kid admitted to Harvard today on the strength of a good application given extra weight because of his black skin is probably the offspring of parents whose own applications to college were similarly weighted. The original assumption was surely that affirmative action would simply become unnecessary, as racism dwindled away and well-educated, middle or upper-middle class black professionals raised bright, educated, ambitious offspring. By now, surely, a purely colorblind, merit-based Harvard application process ought to have been able to generate all the skin color diversity needed to soothe the most anxiously anti-racist Harvard dean?
The problem—Harvard’s problem— is revealed in the following charts:
I would note, here, that the point of the SAT test back when it was first created and administered was to reduce the influence of bias on college admissions. The idea was that the test would provide an objective measure of academic qualification that a prejudiced admissions official would not be able to overlook.
Why—particularly in a “white supremacist” society— are Asian students so wildly over-represented among the top scorers? Why are African American students under-represented?
The racist would say, “because black students are defective by nature.”
The anti-racist would say, “because black students have been rendered defective by centuries of white and white-adjacent anti-black racism.”
Both would agree that the defect is essentially permanent.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that no one now reading these words is a racist.
That is, none of you believe that there is something about having straight black hair and epicanthic eye folds that allows Asian students to excel in an academic context, or something about having brown skin and kinky black hair that prevents black students from doing so.
And let’s assume, also, that everyone reading these words prefers the reality of academic achievement to the mere appearance thereof.
The SAT is a concrete, measurable marker of academic achievement as well as of academic potential. In other words, doing well on the SAT means, among other things, that a student has not only the talent, but the basic skill set required to thrive at college. Math skills and reading comprehension, yes, but also self-discipline, the ability to delay gratification, attention to detail, and a willingness to persist through the hard and boring parts of mastering a subject. It is not a test merely of natural aptitude or talent, but of these gifts combined with a capacity for plain old hard work.
Remember, here, that not all students take the SAT. Only kids who plan to apply to college take that test, so these are the scores of relatively bright children, the offspring almost by definition of parents who are relatively strongly committed to their child’s education.
Such individual and familial attributes do not function in a vacuum. Of course, it is difficult to achieve academically when one is immersed in a subculture that disdains academic achievement, and a lot easier to immerse oneself in studying when your subculture expects it and your peers are doing the same. But students and parents necessarily take their cues from the messages received from the wider educational environment.
“How hard do I need to work in order to be given an A?”
“How many A’s will my report card need to show in order to be admitted to the college of my choice?”
I have one kid (a stepson, so it’s not bragging) who was an extraordinary and ambitious academic achiever. In his freshman college dorm room, pinned to the wall above his desk, was a list of the best law schools in the country, and the LSAT scores and grades required to get into them. Want to know how hard my stepson worked as an undergrad?
As hard as he needed to. Which was incredibly freakin’ hard. (And yes, he got into all the best law schools.)
This study, published by the National Center for Education Statistics, provides a glimpse into why SAT scores might differ by race. It compares the sheer number of study hours put in by students (and checked by parents).
As it happens, my stepson is white and male. His parents, teachers, school counselors, the authors of the SAT prep books (and, later, LSAT prep books) he worked his way through: Every source of feedback throughout his primary and secondary schooling offered the same message: “This is what you must do to get what you want.”
My Asian-American friends confirm that the anti-Asian bias in academia has been well-known for decades, and is accounted for by both students and parents when calibrating the level of effort required to achieve the desired end. The sources of feedback tell them, over and over, “This is the bar you have to clear.” So…they clear it.
Why aren’t black students (on average) studying as hard, or long? Why aren’t their parents pushing them to do so?
Perhaps the answer is exactly the same: Every source of feedback throughout their primary and secondary schooling are telling them: “This is how much you (or your child) must study in order to get what you want. This is the bar you have to clear.” So they clear that bar. If the bar was set higher, they would clear that one too. But the bar isn’t set higher. It’s set lower.
A Harvard dean of admissions, William Fitzsimmons, testifying before the Supreme Court, told the court that Harvard sends recruitment letters to African-American, Native American, and Hispanic high schoolers with mid-range SAT scores, around 1100 on math and verbal combined out of a possible 1600, CNN reported.
Asian-Americans only receive a recruitment letter if they score at least 250 points higher — 1350 for women, and 1380 for men.
As it happens, my stepson is white and a bright young man. But it bears repeating that brightness isn’t enough: Hard work is what makes the difference. And the self-discipline and capacity for delayed gratification he exhibited were skills learned and practiced over many years.
It is essentially the same self-discipline exerted by a successful serious athlete. She forces herself out of bed at five every morning to put in three hours at the gym before school starts. She reduces social commitments to make time for team practices and tournaments. She learns to meet failure with renewed determination, rather than resignation.
If such an athlete belongs to a family that prizes athletic achievement, and to a subculture that rewards it, naturally the effort will require less of her own willpower. The “choice architecture” provided by her culture will make excellence not easy—it’s never easy—but easier.
What if that athlete (and her parents) get the message that an hour at the gym before school is plenty? Or that she can skip practice, or come in second or third at the meet, and still get all the acclaim and gold medals?
We are not talking, here, about someone who is “naturally lazy.” But no rational human being is going to work harder than she must in order to achieve what she desires.
Set the bar high—even unfairly high—and she will work harder in order to clear it.
I believe it is entirely possible that the answer to the perplexing question of why even bright, ambitious, middle-class black students (on average) underachieve and Asian and white students (like my stepson) over-achieve is simple. Affirmative action.
Affirmative action has altered the choice architecture within which students of all races and their parents make their individual and familial decisions.
Study or watch TV? Be content with a B+ or push for that A? Spend four hours grinding through yet another practice SAT, or go skiing with the family? Spend money on tutors, or spend money on a new car?
These aren’t easy choices to make—we’re talking about sacrifices most of us would find at least a bit painful. Asian families don’t push their kids to study more diligently because such parents get their jollies from exerting discipline, but because they’ve gotten the message transmitted by everybody, from Dean Fitzsimmons down to little Tong’s first-grade teacher: Want your kid to have the best chance in life? This is the bar your kid has to clear.
If and when the choice architecture gets altered (for instance, should SCOTUS end affirmative action), the short-term effect will certainly be a reduction in the number of blacks and an increase in Asians at Harvard.
But in the long run, I strongly suspect that we will see an increase in the academic achievement of bright black children of black parents who are strongly committed to their child’s education.
Since I do not believe that black people are damaged or defective, it wouldn’t surprise me if, within a decade or two, the percentage of black students scoring in the upper 1300s or higher on the SAT will have increased markedly, with concomitant improvements all the way down the scale.
I predict that black drop-out rates (another statistic Harvard, et al., would prefer we ignore) will decline, starting almost immediately, as fewer students will be admitted to college programs they have not (yet) developed the skills to manage.
In other words, the big winners from the end of Affirmative Action will be…black students. Well, the biggest winner of all will, of course, be all of us. We all benefit when young Americans, of any race, fully develop their intellectual gifts and capabilities.
Published in General
If they claim a degree without evidence, how could a potential employer verify that they have the degree?
I didn’t realize that the SAT is an IQ test.
It doesn’t really matter. Perhaps my standard for “genius” is too high? The Ivy grads I know seem (mostly) bright, capable and of course, they are uniformly progressive, which means they accept, apparently uncritically, a lot of nonsense, and don’t seem capable of making a coherent, fact-based argument in support of their positions. Let me just add, here, that Hunter Biden is an ivy grad. Quite apart from his morals, that guy simply doesn’t seem brilliant. But of course, I could be wrong.
I yield to your superior knowledge. But if the typical Ivy student is a genius, then the question remains and, indeed, becomes more puzzling: Why do black geniuses do less well (on average) on standard measures of academic capability than white and Asian geniuses?
By the way, are you sure about those scores? If a combined 1450 is genius, then I’m one. And I know that isn’t true.
I know! Me too! Let the whole edifice crumble!
The concept of “The Gentlemen’s C” came from the Ivy League, didn’t it?
I would say the average Ivy student/grad is probably reasonably bright. Either that or reasonably rich.
They ain’t geniuses.
Genius is genius, there isn’t a separate scale for race. We don’t have affirmative action IQ’s.
I agree. I’ve taken these aptitude tests for college, grad & professional schools and for some reason seem to have a knack for this type of test taking (“genius” level no less!) – but that has never translated into high achievement in an academic setting. I have never before heard that the SAT was in any measure anything other than a reasonably reliable predictor of a student’s ability to succeed in school. Moreover, scores can change significantly with test preparation. That does not sound like a reliable indicator of what is usually described as genius.
My last voluntary mingling with the Ivy League types was mainly in working with a group of McKinsey consultants when I was old, and they were young. Sold to us as “whiz kids” they were bright, but most notably very poised. But they also seemed to have far more confidence in the methodology (they were contracted to apply) than what seemed warranted for our organization – leading me to think that as a group they lacked introspection (or perhaps were not permitted to express any caution). If there was any genius here it rested with those who sold us this contract, as in the end it yielded nothing of benefit.
Mayor Pete is a McKinsey alum. Went from there to a run for Indiana Treasurer. Ran for Mayor on the rebound.
Maybe scores can improve with preparation, but there is an upper limit to each person’s score.
It seems odd to me that this conversation has become about IQ and race. Let alone about “genius.”
That is, it seems to me, a whole other conversation with few, if any, applications to educational, legal or public policy, all of which are (or should be) constrained from discriminating against or for people (geniuses or otherwise) on the grounds of race.
Among many other issues—and maybe Jerry can weigh in—I should think it would be very difficult to tease out what “race,” exactly, a person is. How did the IQ studies that Murray et al relied on identify the race of their study subjects?
Because, thanks to 23&Me, there are Americans who, having spent their entire lives identifying and identified as black, have now discovered they’re actually mostly “white.” That is, the percentage of their DNA derived from sub-Saharan Africa is lower than that derived from Europe.
Or, in some cases, from other places. Like, for instance, China—yup! Thanks to anti-miscegenation laws aimed at preventing Chinese immigrants from marrying white women, unattached Chinese men frequently married black women instead, thus introducing Asian genes into the wild mix that is the American black person.
Meanwhile, as I’ve doubtless mentioned, in my family, it turns out (23&Me again) that there’s a surprising amount of sub-Saharan African in the DNA. I don’t mean that in one line of the family there’s sub-Saharan African, I mean that in three distinct and non-biologically connected groups of apparently lily-white people (my first set of in-laws, my second set of in-laws and my aunt’s husband’s family) it pops up. Since I refuse to believe that my aunt and I (both of us, by the way, boringly 100% Northern European) are weirdly drawn to men with “black” ancestry (?!) I have to assume that this is a reasonably common phenomenon, at least in families with relatively deep roots in this country.
As for other countries: My darling husband’s parents each emigrated from Holland. Hubby grew up believing himself to be 100% Dutch. Blond hair, blue eyes, and he looks like a van Gogh painting! Well, guess what? He turns out to be, at most, 25% Dutch. He’s 75% all sorts of other stuff, including Slavic, Ashkenazi Jew, Surinam aboriginal and, yup, a nice dollop of Sub-Saharan African.
I’m not saying it’s impossible for whatever it is that the IQ test tests for (and I believe it is something, don’t get me wrong) to be genetic, heritable and thus likely to be more prevalent in some families and therefore in some ethnic groups, than others. I’m just saying that, given all the complexities bound up in the apparently simply question of “white” “Asian” and “black” it doesn’t seem helpful to bring it into a discussion about American education in general and affirmative action in particular.
Granny, I don’t understand. Isn’t any conversation about affirmative action necessarily about race, more specifically disparate outcomes as tallied by race? Unless you’re allowing for only one cause of the disparity then it seems that discussion of other factors would naturally come up.
I would say that the central flaw and fallacy in affirmative action is that it is about race. The critique of affirmative action from the left is that programs that claim to be about un-doing the effects of American slavery and Jim crow are benefiting the children of African American immigrants who came here voluntarily and created successful lives for themselves.
In other words, it really is about the color of the applicant’s skin and the texture of his/her hair. That’s nuts. But it’s true.
(Wrench, incoming…)
What if it was never about race?
What if it’s only because black people historically vote Democrat 90% of the time?
I’ll repeat this, from a previous comment:
“Americans typically make two primary errors about race. The first is that the racial classifications we use in common parlance–Black, White, Asian, Native American, Hispanic—are somehow natural and arose spontaneously. Very few of us realize that the US government codified them in 1977 in a formal federal law called Statistical Directive No. 15. Before that, almost no one called people of Spanish-speaking descent “Hispanics.” What we now call “Asian Americans” were nothing like a coherent group; Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino Americans had distinct cultures and significant history of inter-group conflict. Americans from India were typically classified as “white” or “other,” but a last-minute lobbying campaign resulted in them being added to the Asian American group.”
Affirmative Action—in part because it originated in the 70s, just as (not coincidentally)Statistical Directive #15 did, places people into those big racial buckets. In the 1950s and 60s, one could speak intelligibly of “Black” and “white” because 81% of Americans were white, and 16% were black, with “other” making up the remainder.
I don’t see why it makes any sense to discuss “black” American characteristics when we are no longer discussing a group descended from black American slaves who occupy a specific social caste, identified in history and by law (e.g. Jim Crow) but are instead talking about a population that is about 20% immigrant-Africans (from all over the continent, BTW, meaning they are not ethnically homogeneous) and has a whole lot of white, hispanic, Asian and what-have-you mixed in.
Occam’s Razor suggests—to me at least—that if black applicants to Harvard (as a group) underachieve academically, it’s because they have been conditioned by schools, families, counselors and others who presuppose the existence of affirmative action, in much the same way that schools, families and counselors could count on admission for an underachieving Kennedy, Bush, Biden or Gore.
As I mentioned, there is evidence from history that black Americans (of the legacy, descended-from-slaves variety) proved capable of competing academically and intellectually with white Americans before Affirmative Action—e.g. the kids who went to Dunbar High School in DC.
Clarence Thomas attributes his academic success to the rigorous education given him by Franciscan nuns.
“The nuns held their students to the highest academic standards, and did not allow them to make any excuse, even though these students lived under state-enforced discrimination.
As Thomas recounts in “Created Equal”: “You knew they loved you. When you think somebody loves you and deeply cares about your interests, somehow they can get you to do hard things.”
We would agree that Clarence Thomas is a seriously smart man. But how academically successful would he have been had he been subjected to the tender solicitude of even a “good” public school system (e.g. Fairfax County, Va.) or even the now-woke private schools, whose administrators and teachers are clearly inclined to encourage excuse-making and discourage the doing of hard things?
If it’s true that all humans originated from Africa, wouldn’t you expect everyone to have some? It’s essentially meaningless.
But if it’s the educational system that makes the difference, and race is (largely) irrelevant, wouldn’t we expect every student who attended Dunbar (back when it was good) to be a Clarence Thomas?
No it isn’t. Have you done 23&me? It’s quite cool—not only does it tell you your ancestry by percentage, but it can tell you when a given set of genes (e.g. Ashkenazi Jew) entered into your family line. In my late husband/children’s case, it was in the early-mid 1800s.
In contemporary context (and more so in the past several decades) it seems clear that the SAT test becomes part of any discussion on academic institution admissions and affirmative action. The reason being that it was the only thing close to be an objective measure of entering college students’ suitability for the programs for which they were seeking admission. Were it not for the purported objectivity of this aptitude test, there would be little else that would demonstrate a pattern of favoring admissions for those students who selected a particular racial category box.
The IQ test, in contrast to the SAT, is not designed to assess readiness for a college program. But there are those who do argue that the SAT is an indicator of intelligence, and they point to data showing significant correlation between higher IQs, high SAT scores, and success in school. Even though they are not wrong about this, a discussion about intelligence data contrasting groups of people based on racial categories does not move us towards the arguments for and against continuation of affirmative action in admissions.
Supposedly the year 2025 marks a looming crisis for higher education insofar as demographics indicate a likely significant decline in students seeking undergraduate admission. I think the 4-year Bachelor of Arts has outlived its usefulness as an indicator of readiness. What’s worse is that it seems that many schools have been vigorously working to make this looming crisis worse than it need be due to emphasis on programs that undermine the maturing of young people. I have hopes that we will see significant change in the coming decade and that students and their parents will have better, shorter, and less expensive initial educational options. To the extent that this dismays the human resources world, I also think we could do better by leaving more of the career related credentialing to very specific post graduate programs in preparation for particular fields of work.
Yes, but, my previous question was based on the idea (assuming it’s true, for the sake of argument) that if all humans first originated in Africa, how could someone NOT have SOME “African DNA?”
Meanwhile, I’m quite skeptical of the part about when certain genetics became part of a lineup. That sounds like genealogy, not genetics, and isn’t nearly as precise.
Seriously?
Of course we wouldn’t. Where’s the logic in that?
What I would expect is that a rich and rigorous high school education in which students, self-selected for brains and ambition, were consistently held to high academic standards will produce (has been proven to produce, in fact) graduates capable of …meeting high academic standards.
These graduates will be able to compete with similarly well-prepared students, and when they are admitted (wherever they are admitted) and presented with the next set of high academic standards, they will have the chops to meet these, too.
Meanwhile, a student who attends an ordinary, perhaps even kind of crummy, public school but whose family is strongly committed to education, and acts on that commitment by setting and holding high academic standards— supervising homework, paying attention to grades, hiring tutors, providing music lessons and so on— will also be more capable of meeting high academic standards. Because he’s done it.
Dunbar High School sent over 80% of its graduates to college, including Ivy League and other selective white schools, and while most of its alumni (like most of the alumni of elite white schools) did not become famous, it did produce a startling number of America’s best and brightest.
Well, you did include “self-selected” but it seems like some of the implications of that, get by you. It’s entirely possible that a portion of any group can self-select that way, while most of the group doesn’t and can’t.
Sure. But that’s part of my point: When John Kennedy Junior applied to Harvard, he was “self-selecting.” Anyone who applies to Harvard is self-selecting, with that term broadly inclusive of all the factors that go into one’s sense of “self” e.g. social class, family background, etc. That does not mean that if John Kennedy Jr. had been named Dwayne Bumgartener, he would’ve been admitted on the merits. And both John Jr. (and his family/teachers) and Dwayne would know this—and have known it from the start.
Not every student who applies to the Ivy Leagues is a Kennedy, and not all grew up assuming that an Ivy League (or even just “college”) education was an option. A few might even be like Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, who grew up in decidedly inauspicious academic milieu but o’erleapt the obstacles by dint of sheer talent and ended up at Yale Law.
Still, most students—and that includes most black students– apply to Harvard because they have been led to believe throughout their young lives that they are “Harvard material.”
My contention is that affirmative action for racial minorities operates more or less the same way as it does for Kennedys, Bidens, Obamas etc. And has the same effect.
It is my impression—I’m open to correction—that it is rare for a legacy student (K, B, O etc) to graduate from Harvard at the top of his/her class, or to go on to an impressive career in a intellectually demanding disciplines (e.g. STEM).
I did read…someplace? Something to the effect of “affirmative action” was more or less a program to ensure that the children of high achieving black professionals got the “legacy” bump. In other words, it was never about lifting the poor and marginalized, but was instead a kind of middle or upper-middle class entitlement.
By the way, Pew Research did a more careful-than-usual study of American attitudes about affirmative action in college admissions. The good news? Most Americans do not feel that race should be a factor—and certainly not a major factor—in admissions.
This argues not only that Americans have a basic grasp of the principle of equality under the law, but also that black Americans feel fairly confident that they don’t need it.
A note on the Pew research result – About 10 years ago, I did a “Diversity Day” presentation* to a group of federal (mostly) HR types. In that presentation I noted that as of that date every time (except for one) an affirmative action measure was included on ballot initiative, the vote result was against the extension or continuation of affirmative action. When Proposition 209 passed in California to end affirmative action in the state university system, on that same ballot was a successful measure to allow for medicinal use of marijuana. It seems pretty fair to conclude (at least at that time) that when voters are given a chance to weigh in on this issue, the vote against AA – and that includes jurisdictions which had higher than average demographics of racial minorities.
*The general theme of my presentation was that organizational communications with respect to (what was then called) Diversity and Inclusion were ineffective in addressing the task of persuading people that these efforts had any organizational merit. As my presentation essentially undermined what later became known as “virtue signaling” it was not warmly received with that audience.
Of course HR types etc would “know” that various minority groups etc need their tender loving care – and Affirmative Action – even if they don’t realize it.
That’s not what is being measured—you’re just talking about the basic human genome, not the variations that make us such a varied and fascinating species. Generally speaking, the variations are held in common with recognizable ethnic groups, ones more or less confined, historically, to specific geographic region, e.g. “Eastern Europe/Slav.” Just as family members, because they share genes, often resemble each other, ethnic groups also have genes (and therefore the visible expression of those genes) in common. There is a recognizable Kung San phenotype as well as a recognizable Scandinavian one. But doesn’t mean you can know someone’s genome just by looking at them.
Here is an example, swiped from the 23&Me website, of the reading for an American black woman:
Notice, by the way, that she is 50% European?
Surely she “identifies” as black, in the sense that if a Harvard admissions form, or the cover sheet on an IQ test asked for her race, she’d mark “black.”
Is she black?
That’s most likely why black Americans have an average IQ of 85 and blacks in Africa have an average IQ of about 70.
And I think DNA test results are a lot more hopeful of being accurate in their claims than are actually accurate.
No, this argues that blacks are only 12% or so of the US population.
That’s a lot of what I was going for too, but these days you never know what might get you “cancelled.”