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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
In my wife’s family, most of her aunts and uncles (from the same parwnts) have differing results. One uncle included Greek when none of the others did. Shouldn’t the results be identical for children of common parents?
Mostly, assuming they were actually of the same parents.
Reminds me of how, in Jr High School (later changed to Middle School) science classes, we’d learn about blood types, check our own, etc. They wound up stopping that because each year a few kids would find out they were adopted, or something. (Now that I think about it some more, adoption might have been less of an issue than uncovering extramarital affairs.)
I thought that too, Ed.G, but apparently not.
My brother and I share genes in common, and a DNA lab (like, for instance, the one that traced that murderer in Idaho) could identify my remains by comparing my DNA with his. But we don’t all inherit the same package (unless we’re identical twins).
I think of it this way: It’s as if all the genes of preceding generations come tumbling down through the years and land in a soup. Each baby in a family gets a ladle-full of that gene-soup, but one kid might get more “potato” and another get more “carrot.”
As for the accuracy of the 23&Me profile: I, of course, am no expert on such matters. But I do know that my husband’s family had a story about an ancestor who, in a muddled and uncomfortable sort of way, was always explained as being of a different race. “Blackfoot Indian” was how she was described when I first heard about it.
She was married to a white farmer and then, in the run-up to the Civil War, the family moved to Ohio because “people were nicer there.” That cryptic description made more sense when one realized that Ohio was a free state: Racism was not a consistent thing, but waxed and waned, and it was definitely waxing as the Civil War approached. After the war, some parts of the family moved back to their original hometown which, by then, had become West Virginia.
This was a history pieced together by my sister-in-law, who (not being burdened by racial embarrassment) looked at old family photos, considered the timeline, and drew a logical conclusion.
23&Me provided genetic confirmation of what my sister-in-law had suspected: The African ancestry arrives in just the right chapter of the family story. Kinda cool.
This is definitely something that is happening with gene testing, too. And, of course, there are some concerns about the ability of the government to access the data and use it to find people who don’t want to be found. In the Idaho case, it was a mass murderer, but in theory, at least, the Neo-Gestapo could identify and track down a resistance fighter using the DNA voluntarily provided by relatives innocently interested in their family history.
By the way, for those inclined to believe that a.) SAT = IQ and b.) it is somehow very important to stress racial differences in IQ , I’d offer the following as a kind of caution:
The share of students who scored 14-1600 on the SAT Test breaks down by race as follows:
Asian: 27%
White: 7%
Hispanic:2%
Black:1%
Frankly, by this measure, whites don’t look super-impressive either.
Did anyone claim otherwise? What are you cautioning against?
Granny Dude seems to think there are those here arguing that it’s very important to stress racial differences in IQ.
Whatever race actually is or isn’t, I think some are arguing that there is at least a correlation of some kind. The nature or importance of that correlation isn’t clear. However, when affirmative action or CRT come up, refusing to look at this correlation means we can only operate in the land of structural or been overt racism. Is the correlation inherent? Is it emergent? Is it correctable with behavior change? If we’re not talking about this when we’re talking about affirmative action, then what are we talking about?
But why wouldn’t the children of a given couple, all have the same overall ancestry? Why would – how COULD – their 23&Me results be different?
Each child gets half from each parent, but it isn’t likely that they get the same halves.
So like I wrote before, it’s genealogy, not genetics.
And some get half from the mailman.
Oh! Oh! I know this one!
John Kasich, right?
John Kasich’s dad.
I said John Kasich because John Kasich got half of his DNA from “the mailman.”
Wow, I’m missing this joke. Apparently I stepped into something …
I don’t see why we can “only operate in the land of structural or overt racism.”
Since racism is a bad idea, we agree (probably) that affirmative action, being racist, is also a bad idea—discriminating on the basis of race (skin color, hair texture, eye shape) is unjust and stupid.
So it is wrong on principle. That should be sufficient reason for SCOTUS to overturn it.
However, I agree with many others that affirmative action, while being unfair to Asian and white applicants, has also done damage to black students—the ones the preferences are supposed to help. (Gee, what a surprise! Progressive “help” makes things worse for the intended beneficiaries!) To repeat: People do not work harder than they must in order to achieve what they wish.
I believe that any student who applies to Harvard actually does want to go to Harvard. So, as I said in the OP, I think it is likely that if/when Harvard can no longer choose students on the basis of skin color, likeliest outcome will be that bright, ambitious black students will alter their choices and behaviors as will the families and teachers who support them. I think we will see plenty of black kids at Ivy League schools and, more importantly, we’ll see fewer talented black kids dropping out in despair, or abandoning STEM majors because they were insufficiently prepared. Will the number of black students at Harvard precisely match the percentage of Americans who are black? Will Harvard become majority-Asian, not just in the short term but in the longer term as well? Who cares?
If there are disparate results apparent when grouped by race, and IF we’re uncomfortable talking about causal factors for that which may correlate with race, then there aren’t many reasons left for that kind of result. Are we uniquely lowering the bar for black and hispanic students? If so how and why? Sounds like either structural or overt racism to me if inferior education is being given to black and hispanic students.
I actually tend to think that everyone is getting the same inferior education nowadays (when compared to past curriculum and expectations), yet disparate impact still emerges. I suspect that the driver of the disparity is culture with incidental correlation with race.
The cultural differences seem related to race as well.
That relation is probably incidental, though, is my guess.
Maybe, maybe not. “African Culture” seemed to be “African Culture” already long before Europeans arrived.
I mean it’s incidental in the sense that there is not 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.
That’s my guess anyway. Although I do not consider arguments about biology affecting culture or average traits to be inherently racist or evil. Such arguments often are those things, but not inherently so.
It can be a chicken and egg kind of thing. Culture (behavior over time and populations) can affect overall biology; biology can affect culture. Which is cause and which is effect? To what degree?
I don’t think anyone – at least anyone with half a brain – thinks that having straight black hair and epicanthic eye folds CAUSES academic excellence or something. If anything, like with Trump, it’s a(nother) symptom, or an indicator; not a/the cause.
Then I don’t understand what you’re saying either. I said that cultural differences related to race are incidental, meaning that race – i.e. biological features – isn’t causing the differences. You responded “Maybe, maybe not”.
I’m not sure how else to put it.
Living in houses is not what causes people to be human beings. Living in houses is one of the “symptoms” of being a human being. If you see some animal living in a house with doors and windows etc, it’s probably not a giraffe.
OK so it’s a correlation but an incidental one. Like I said. Right?
But a black person is more likely to come from black/African culture than a white person.
You are adding a “but” as if you’re correcting or disagreeing with something I’m saying, but you’re still describing an incidental correlation, not a causal relationship in either direction like I said. Right?
How commonplace does something have to be, before you’ll admit that it might not be “incidental?” And I’ve said already that “causation” is the wrong way to think about, but you seem fixated on that, like it’s some kind of defense mechanism against “racism” or something.