I've said many many times that my basic attitude toward "race-bases" Affirmative Action (in education) can be summed up as "meh." My biggest problem is that it expends tremendous political capitol to help those in the black community who need it the least. I think Obama summed up my view really well. I basically agree with everything he said. I'm not really interested in a debate about Affirmative Action at Harvard Law when black kids are dropping out of school at a truly shocking rate. I guess I favor class-based Affirmative Action, mostly because I don't believe my son should be given preferential treatment--at any point--over some poor white kid from Kentucky.
But here is the thing--people who think this will sell better because it's color-blind need to read up a bit. Ostensibly color-blind social programs like food stamps and welfare get colorized all the time. I also resent using Affirmative Action as some sort of Sista Souljah move, and--obviously--I especially resent the idea that it is somehow a reverse version of Jim Crow.
Obama's answer to Affirmative Action is about three minutes in.
« The "Wasn't Me" defense | Main | From the department of Monkeys with Typewriters » For the record07 Aug 2008 03:46 pm Comments (20)
Aha! The comment about the colorizing of welfare is spot on. We're not going to de-racify AA by making it class based. We're just going to stigmatize new class based programs with a bit of racial prejudice (as we currently do with welfare). That being said I'm in agreement that a class based system would be generally preferable but let's not pretend that that reform would end racial tension in America. 
Sigh. Why do we always have to invoke the most extreme and tired hypothetical about a mercedes driving black person getting preference over some poor, hard working kid from kentucky when discussing affirmative action? To go off on a bit of a tangent here, the fact that we always invoke some poor kid from Kentucky or West Virginia, reminds me of the "hard working REAL Americans" dust up from the campaign; the salt of the earth versus those ungrateful, undeserving negroes. Does the data actually bear out this hypothetical? For all the discussion about affirmative action, I feel like there's very little data. I remember seeing some stuff about just how the admissions policies worked after the Grutter case, but very little on the background of the applicants (% applying for financial aid, first generation status, family income, legacies, etc.)
I think you're right that class-based AA won't entirely de-racify AA... BUT it would mean that the people that still want to hurt or dismantle AA programs will need to sputter a bit more to articulate their reasons, and also that those who want to defend these programs won't need to defend the fact that your kids would be advantaged over some poor white kid from Kentucky. In other words, I think you're correct that class-based programs won't make people completely color-blind in their opinions. But it will mean that color will be much more faint, and the programs will probably sell better for it.
As a wealthy white student at an elite school I would say, Race based affirmative action > Class based affirmative action
The major problem with class based affirmative action is that the school would ultimately be much greater. What would be the goal? Build a perfectly middle class student body? Have at least 5% of the class in each income decile? This is much more inefficient. Furthermore there would be the expectation that this type of policy would cut and eventually solve income equality. I would wager that over 50% of the students at my school have parents who are PhDs, lawyers, doctors, professors, own their own businesses, are engineers, or work in finance/consulting. Income inequality is unlikely to just disappear because of a policy like this. Besides whether in the form of UTexas' policy of guaranteed admission for top students in Texas or schools like MIT, Dartmouth, and Harvard favoring valedictorians from hick towns and 1st generation students in admissions. Don't fight social engineering with more social engineering.
When I was in high school back in 1989 I went to Boys State. The only issues anybody cared about were affirmative action, abortion, and Indian fishing rights. This was in Washington State, where outside of Seattle/Tacoma there are pretty much zero black people. The kids were such assholes about AA. Everybody had some bullshit fable about their cousin's brother-in-law who didn't get a job because of AA. The mob hatred was intense. Since then I've wondered if the benefits of affirmative action are even worth the political cost, or, like you're getting at, if it didn't exist they'd find some other reason to be bigots. I wonder too if AA can sometimes set people up for failure. I got to thinking about this because of the bizarre "relative age effect" (more here). It turns out the very few professional soccer players in Europe are born in the fall. The cutoff for youth soccer is January 1st, so kids born in November and December are a little smaller than kids born early in the year, and so they aren't quite as good, get discouraged, and quit playing before they mature. Researchers have found the same effect in other sports and with different cutoff dates. You obviously can't compare a seven year old playing soccer to an eighteen year old going to college, but it's easy to think of a situation where a kid that would have gone to a good middle-tier college, but because of affirmative action gets into a top-tier college, and then is not in the top-to-middle of their class but in the lower half. If you find yourself in the lower half of the first quarter of calculus you're more likely to conclude that "I suck at math" and bail for an easy subject. Except for the affirmative action part (I'm white) that's pretty much what happened to me. If I hadn't gone to a huge competitive state university I would have stuck with science and not wimped out and majored in economics.
I have a hunch that the Obama's election, if it happens, will be the death knell for race-based affirmative action. Much of the country will heave a sigh of relief, say, "Hey, we elected the black guy. The problem is fixed." And that reaction will deflate the tires of the affirmative-action-mobile
As a white guy, I still think there is something to be said, for having our universities resemble the country. "Quotas", if you will, for the whip-smart poor appalachian white folk, quotas for whip-smart East L.A. Hispanic folk, quotas for whip-smart New Orleans black folk, even quotas for whip-smart Central Valley Hmong's, definitely quotas for whip-smart American Indians coming off the reservations...let's mix the melting pot, and preference ALL these folks, over legacy kids... But otherwise, this is a great post. As you say - the dropout rate is a much higher priority than who gets into Harvard (although again, would like the mixing a lot more). Again, how to help disadvantaged communities goes beyond this race or that. Look at devastated American Indian communities - only being "advantaged" by casinos, at this point...if we start finding successful ways to RAISE UP devastated communities, this can be applied across the nation, from the "resentful" steel mill ghost towns, to LA Barrios, to Indian Reservations, to poor black areas.
Robert, As a wealthy white student at an elite school, you already made it past the 'gauntlet,' so your recommendations ring a little hollow. And I don't know what would be difficult to understand about class-based affirmative action vs race-based -- just substitute "income" for every instance of "race." It's not rocket science (apologies if aforementioned elite school is Cal Tech or MIT). Would it end income inequality? No; but that's not exactly the standard you're applying to race-based AA either.
Bleh old response but, I'm hispanic (so I was occasionally annoyed at MY for having "Yglesias" as his last name but identifying as a Jew) and someone else in my situation going to the same schools, choosing to do the same activities, study the same subjects, play the same games, make the same friends would have it easier than I do if they were white. All things being equal, I start in a hole (though perhaps a little one) compared to "white" MNPundit. So I have no problem taking any advantage of AA that I can and I strongly believe that SOME form of racial preference is good, if only to recognize that non-whites have to come from farther away.
Right on about the misplaced priorities. I think 90 percent of the focus should be on High School and below. The problems at that level are, of course, ridiculously resistant to improvement; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't start. A crucial first step has recently been taken by getting common criteria for dropout rates throughout the state.
I would like for opponents of affirmative action to quantify the negative impact affirmative action has against Whites who are also via women, the disabled, veterans, etc. "privileged" by it. I'm still trying to figure out how AA can be called race-based when White women benefit from it. Beyond that, where are the stats that AA has led to reduced opportunities for Whites? If anything, the opportunities are increased or off-set, even as AA is given, pun intended, a Black eye. Example: "Of Washington state workers who have benefited directly from affirmative action, 60 percent are white women, while only 21 percent of beneficiaries are people of color. Since the disabled, Vietnam veterans and disabled veterans also are protected groups under affirmative action, 19 percent of workers who directly benefit from affirmative action are white men." So, where are the stats that show Whites losing out? How are Whites losing out when there are stats/facts like this? * Desegregation orders at HBCU's like Alabama State U., granting White scholarships, even quotas and lower admission standards for Whites at times. * Research shows that legacies enjoy a 25 percent advantage in admission processes at selective institutions, whereas Blacks receive only an 18 percent advantage due to affirmative action... Currently, few Blacks and Latinos benefit from legacy preferences. * Limiting quotas for Asian-Americans which result in stories like: "Jian Li... was rejected from Princeton and four other elite institutions in 2006 even though he had perfect SAT scores and graduated in the top 1 percent of his high school class... a white classmate from his high school... was admitted to Princeton with lower test scores and grades as alleged proof of racial discrimination." Re: Economic-based AA... Why did people ignore the fact that 20 points were awarded in the now defunct U. of Michigan system on the basis of lower-class economic need when there was such an uproar over the 20 points used for racial diversity? (Then there was the 16 geographic points for a virtually all-white area of the state and other non-racial categories that were virtual preferences for Whites -- not to mention the big chunk of White students who were admitted with lower grades/scores than the White female who filed the suit.)
Interesting comments. I think one of the reasons so many white working class people, and many middle class people, hate affirmative action, is that it belongs to that group of policies, busing, moving welfare poor into housing in other peoples neighborhoods, etc, that were always forced on them by upper class elites. An attitude of "This is for societies good, so shut up and get with the program"} arrogance contributed much to the present day hatred of such programs. These lower class whites, quickly noticed that the elites who created and forced the programs on them, never had to suffer from the fallout. Their children were in private schools. their gated communities did not have welfare cases from the inner city living next door to them. When 15 illegall aliens were living next door in a garage, they were told how nativist they were, to complain. etc. Thier children did not have to get up an unholy hour to be bused across town, to make elites feel good about themselves. All of this, in my opinion has a lot more to do with the dislike of affirmative action, than whether white are discriminated against by the program.
I have to start by choking at the photograph posted on the Atlantic front page, pointing to this article. Credited to a 'pingnews.com' flickr user. BUT: I may be mistaken but this looks an awful lot like a crop from a Dorothea Lange photo from the WPA Photography Project from the '30s. Credit given where credit due.
I agree that the dropout rate is a higher priority. But, I'd like to add for the record that for the last 20 years the POTUS has been dominated by Yale graduates and their friends. If Obama is elected, he will be the 1st Harvard graduate to ascend to POTUS since JFK, with the exception of W who went to Harvard and Yale, of course. But, he's a great reason to do away with legacies at top universities.
Nquest, Great points. In regards to the Michigan case, there was a great 60 Minutes interview with Ed Bradley where he pointed out legacy admissions and "geographic diversity" and the fact that more white students who did not qualify as "normal" admits as a percentage were let into UofMich, to one of the plaintiff featured in the segment. Her reply was a classic example of what underlies much white racial resentment, she said, paraphrasing: "that doesn't matter, I want to go here and they didn't get in fairly. It just isn't fair." Ed Bradley looked really disgusted, and pressed her again, but she (and her mother) had no explanation for why they were not as upset about the other admits, especially the donors and legacies (who undoubtedly were majority white). To boot, she had been admitted to all the other tier 1 and Ivies to which she applied and seemed unable to get past her fixation on UofMich. Really telling as she is so privileged, but any perceived denial of that privilege is met with consternation, anger, and frustration, Chauncey DeVega
My favorite way to help level the playing field is for public schools to be funded equally. In Texas, it's all done by local property tax. If you live in have-mores-ville then you go to a great public school with oodles of money. If you live in a low SES area, your public school is struggling for cash. For me, this is just unconscionable. I'd like the public opportunities for children to not be dependent on their parents' financial position. We have private schools for families that want them. But I want the public school systems serving as an equalizer.
Let's ask the question one more time! "Obama, do you think that a muslim could run for the presidency?" I think when you are trying to avoid something, then something is wrong. I am not muslim, but if I were, I would now have to question his integrity. Racism exists and it has since the beginning. That's part of our human nature. We as Americans need to work on our self-sufficient ways before we are abled to truly help others. Think about it...racism is just an excuse for many. The bottom line is that you can persevere and try to help these poor white kids form Kentucky or any other race. The opportunity is always there for families and kids. The bottom line is educating these families. But remember, you can educate families about better opportunities until you're blue in the face, but they have to make the final decisions on their own without force.
NQuest, See, I always thought that "All men are born free and equal," so I've never understood how it is legal to codify some racial, gender, or economic preference into law.
well, I posted this on the "it wasn't me" board, but it really is more relevant here. AA: Much ado about nothing. All a distraction from the real problems, and the real solutions. We've had AA for decades, but the black-white achievement gap remains wide. Blacks commit more violent crimes by a wide margin -- this is an undeniable fact. Single parenthood dominates in the black community, and black men are AWOL. The black neighborhoods of my city are heaped with trash -- someone put it there. These are behavioral problems that can't be solved by services, programs, policies.
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interesting.. it says it's "no longer available" but you can still hear it and sort of see it too, though it's still very dark. maybe the data's been only partially removed so far.
anyway, sensible answers from the senator. I don't agree with him on a number of things (this isn't really one of them) but he always comes across as thoughtful and intelligent, although obviously not above the artful, verbose dodge at times.
Posted by sv | August 7, 2008 4:44 PM