"Giving special consideration at elite schools to black applicants who have a high probability of success in college..."
How do you define the probability of success? To bring students into the "upper middle class" through affirmative action it surely must matter which majors they get to enroll in. An A in African American, ethnic etc studies cannot be compared to an A in Statistical Thermodynamics or Human Anatomy - it requires limited skills, capacity or effort and the degree is not that useful.
A precondition for AA should be that one gets to study a subject that will lead to a meaningful and productive career. Preferably STEM, law, business or medicine.
8
It seems that the only time that most people have a problem with affirmative action is when its benefits Black people. This is pure hatred.
4
I found his answers to be reductive and less than compelling. Affirmative action in the best schools has become nothing more than a way to guarantee the children of the black 1 percent professional class remain there. That doesn't seem like enough of a reason given the problems it causes for Asian Americans especially the horrible downgrading of them on social criteria which smacks of the similar anti semitic process in the 1920's.
13
We don’t need affirmative action anymore. No one will be denied access to a school based on the color of their skin. This is an antiquated policy and like other antiquated institutions we eliminated them. Time for this to
Go as well. The professor’s answers sounded hollow and illogical.
12
Affirmative action has been, and remains, the perfect system for our society's elites to insulate their own offspring from competition from below while requiring whites - read usually white males - to wear the proverbial hair shirt and have their ambitions flushed down the toilet so the elites can have their tony wine-and-cheese party bragging rights. The only way it will ever acquire even a modicum of credibility is when those whose waxing ecstatic is the most vigorous are also the ones who tell their sons, daughters, nieces and nephews that their academic and professional ambitions must be sacrificed to help disadvantaged blacks. Pigs will fly before that ever happens.
7
The reality is that elite university admissions staff DOES take into account all the advantages and disadvantages every applicant experiences on their life's path to application. All 'affirmative action' does is make it explicit that black applicants face disadvantages growing up in America.
The people who object to 'affirmative action' in elite college admissions are taking shots at a straw man. It simply isn't the case that any elite universities are admitting all their top X number of black applicants to ensure that Y percent of their student body is black. And of course the white kid who just misses out on Harvard will get admitted to Columbia, so boo-hoo.
Rather, the admissions staff is holistically reviewing all the applications before them and is trying to piece together the best student body for their school. After all, the ultimate success of the graduates is what makes these schools elite in the first place.
As long as an admissions staff doesn't engage in invidious discrimination, such as excluding students of a particular race, or LGBTQ, or physically disabled, then the public should simply BUTT OUT of elite college admissions.
In the end, objections to affirmative action seem to reflect white discomfort with the fact of persistent racial discrimination in American society being made explicit. Suck it up, buttercup.
3
Affirmative action like welfare is destructive,for the people it aims to help.It’s time African Americans stand on their own two feet & help themselves.No one helped the Jews, Irish, & Italians to escape from the slums & poverty, why should we treat them like the misfits of our Society. It has already illustrate that they can help themselves by the number of successful African Americans, who have shown they have the intelligence to compete & win in all phases of life.
11
I like the term affirmative action, but would like to see it happen way before college.
Why are so many Black Americans good at sports? At music? African Americans are disproportionately successful in these fields.
Is this because of some innate, genetic superiority? If you believe that, you're opening the door to the idea that whites are "superior" intellectually, based on their achievements in science, technology, etc.
But Blacks' success in sports and music is not based on superior genes, it's based on dedication to achievement that begins at an early age. Just like White success in intellectual activities comes from reinforcement at a very young age of intellectual pursuits like reading and math.
The rest is statistics. If 90% of Black boys practice hard at sports because they are inspired by role models who've been successful
- or shut out of intellectual pursuits - then 10% will become great at what they do.
If 90% of White kids read and do math from a very young age, then 10% of them will be great at intellectual stuff.
Most Whites are not Einsteins or Wittgensteins (oops, they're Jewish, another can of worms...) and most Blacks aren't pro athletes or musical geniuses.
Point is, it's the culture, not the genes. Affirm intellectual pursuits from an early age to everyone in the community (not a select few) and Blacks will catch up in no time.
1
East Asian, south Asian, middle eastern. All are lumped in with whites when we talk about what “We” have done to blacks. Heck, many times Hispanics are also lumped in.
These policies, **when executed on the basis of race alone** can increase feelings of racial division and racial animosity. By definition it’s discrimination. It’s hard to accept as a fair policy to all.
13
It is very telling that Mr. Gutting chose to avoid questions about how Affirmative Action hurts Asian American applicants. He justifies discrimination against white applicants but cannot bring himself into justifying that Asians should "take a hit for the team" despite growing up with racism themselves.
I guess the mental gymnastics required to argue that Affirmative Action does not discriminate against Asian Americans is still too hard, even for a college professor.
15
Prof. Gutting wants affirmative action for "blacks," no matter what their class or national origin. Okay. Define "black." I've seen too many schools and employers trying to promote mixed-race and even partially black whites as "blacks" in order to make themselves look good and get the government off their backs. People like that don't look "black" and are NOT disadvantaged. It's as much of a scam as giving affirmative action to "white" Hispanics.
6
You'll have to take me at my word on this, but almost forty years ago my brother was admitted to med school, then bumped because a woman wanted in.
My recent ex-fiance' has two uber-brilliant "kids." Ultra high achievers in advanced high school programs. Award after award. Older daughter was admitted to MIT on almost a full ride of grants and scholarships. Son was admitted to most top tier schools, but the financial packages sucked. (Mom makes about $45K/yr.) A number of relatives of his were Rice alumni and he got admitted.........with almost no aid as one for instance. Did not get into Harvard, despite the much vaunted legacy "problem," his dad is alumni.
While knocking 'em dead academically in high school, he also worked about 15 hrs/wk as a MECHANIC, so much for diversity of experience.
He is at University of Texas in an advanced program in the engineering school. First semester just passed, took a full load of sophomore year classes.
I'm old school liberal, but don't tell me there isn't reverse discrimination.
13
@Jus' Me, NYT It is not reverse discrimination. There is no such thing as reverse discrimaination. Either you have been the victims of discrimination or you have not. One thing is for certain, people of color are often the routine victims of REAL discrimination.
1
It would be one thing if for an entering class at a prestigious U if there were some sort of lottery that gave an advantage to Blacks. For example -- let's say the entering class is 1000. The top 600 applicants are offered a place in the class. Let's then say that the next 2000 students are statistically indistinct from each other -- the slight differences in their GPAs, SAT's, outside interests are not predictive in terms of how they will do in college. So let's say in the first 600, you have 30 Blacks -- or 5%. So you decide that for the next 400, you'll give 15% of the offers to Blacks -- for a total of 60. That gives you 90 total or 9%. It's only a slight advantage and no one could really complain as the credentials were roughly equal.
That is a far cry, however, from accepting people who have GPA's and SAT's that are way below what other applicants have simply because of their race -- so that instead of filling out your class of 1000 from the top 2600 applicants -- you are going to a level that is several thousand applicants below that where the odds of academic success diminish dramatically.
I could endorse something akin to the first model. The second is ridiculous
3
@Ralphie what formula would separate applicant number 600 from applicant number 601?
@Kevin Brock -Kevin -- it's an arbitrary cutoff. But you could get all sciencsy and say -- of the pool of applicants -- your cut off is based on x standard deviations of all your applicants. Maybe the number is 200 that definitely get in, the rest are lottery -- but all are qualified.
In any continuous distribution you can take any cutoff and say, well what's the difference between an Sat of 1570 and 1580, Probably zilch. But there is a difference between 1570 and say 1200.
4
The back and forth responses here are interesting and illuminating.
What seems missing is any acknowledgment of a basic principle of fundamental fairness: Two wrongs do not make a right.
Of course there are in practice exceptions to this principle:
A deep, longstanding and unjust wrong can justify a small temporary corrective wrongs.
A last-resort and kept-to-a-minimum wrong can be justified by its warding off some much worse wrong.
Affirmative action is nowhere near fitting with such exceptional exceptions.
Of course, diversity within a student body is a worthy goal. And, of course, no admissions procedure can ever be completely objective and unbiased. However, neither of these two considerations can justify affirmative action as we have known it in America. Using skin color to systematically discriminate is not fundamentally pro-diversity, it is fundamentally racist.
Facts on the ground on also matter. Affirmative action has always been inherently tokenist. Tiny minorities within a few ethnic groups benefit at the expense of tiny minorities of others. Furthermore, historical wrongs are righted by creating a long history of newer wrongs. This is patent inconsistency for the sake of superficiality. What we have can no longer be regarded as a temporary counter-tilting of playing fields. Instead, affirmative action has become a new eternal paean to the spirit of George Wallace:
Reverse discrimination now, reverse discrimination tomorrow, reverse discrimination forever.
11
"Of course, we can’t simply ignore poor Chinese immigrants and other disadvantaged groups, but overall we’ve treated blacks much more badly than we have other groups, so there’s a more compelling case for them."
Affirmative action will never be "fair" unless it is given to all
groups. And that will never happen.The good professor obviously is not familiar with the terrible anti Chinese events
that happened in the West in the last two hundred years. Or
maybe they don't figure into his thesis.Anyhow they happened and are a bad part of history. To blithely ignore these events
and say that blacks were treated worse for longer and that
they are more deserving of AA seems to me to be way too
easy an answer to the problem.
What we must realize with AA is that we are picking winners
and losers here. And this will always be the basic problem with AA. And I don't see any way around that.
16
The fact is that wealthy well connected White people benefit from affirmative action all day, everyday. On the contrary, people of color, of all economic classes, in particular, Black Americans, still suffer from the subtle and pernicious effects of discrimination. Moreover, Black Americans still suffer from the vehement , crippling, rapacious legacy of slavery that still has current ramifications.
While we live in a racially diverse and pluralistic society, our nations history, past and present has been anything but. Our current political environment should make this clear to thinking person. Thus, we still need affirmative action policies for the forseeable future.
5
In the age of Cloud and virtual everything, isn't it time for colleges to scale up? I was admitted to a great school fully accredited in both Canada and the USA for an MBA. The school, Athabasca University in Alberta Canada runs it programming completely virtual and accepts as many students whom are are qualified as apply. The school simply splits the class up into as many cohorts of smaller workgroups of students as required. It was as personal and rich as my experience I had in a bricks and mortar undergrad school and prepared me perfectly for self driven work and discovery from wherever I happen to be. It was an almost 100% raceless experience. We worked within our rotating cohorts as a team with no sense of prejudice or race, only contributing to the team's goals. The experience actually forced you to accept everyone and to engage regardless of race. A situation not very likely on a campus.
3
According to black authors Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele, AA is wrongheaded because it forces top schools to admit underprepared black kids who soon fail and are kicked out. Since there are over 3,000 school choices in the U.S., kids should seek a school of there own level.
7
@Bob so are all white kids admitted to top schools fully prepared and don't get kicked out?
The author essentially ignores the last question:
Q: Why not give affirmative action based on social disadvantage rather than based on race?
A: We can't right all wrongs simultaneously.
So instead we need to protect the status quo policy where the advantages of affirmative action mostly flow to affluent African-Americans and first and second generation African immigrants?
A intellectually honest proponent of affirmative action (who like the author is a utilitarian who believes in "the means justify the ends" to justify this kind of social engineering and reverse discrimination) would not propose a social policy where people are sorted by how they simply check one of 4 boxes (white, black, hispanic, or asian).
But the author isn't quite there yet obviously. In fact, I think the author would probably support reparations payable to Barack Obama (a very wealthy black man who is not a descendant of slaves) based on the justifications presented. I think that would be nuts of course, but could be justified per the author's point of view that the paramount policy goal is "more black surgeons".
11
If people in the States are anything like people in the UK, affirmative action can be a poisoned chalice for those said to be benefiting from it. In my Uni it was common belief that black students were only there because of some PC programme (or on a sports scholarship) - in fact, coming into Uni on a minority scholarship programme was a bit like having a neon sign held over you flashing: Charity case.
5
Talk is cheap. If Gary Gutting really believed what he was saying he'd resign his position at Notre Dame and start driving a cab. He would encourage his children to do the same. Somehow I don't think he will do that. He advocates that poor White Protestants, a group less represented at Harvard than Blacks, should be discriminated against. Somebody else, like Asians, should pay for his charity. I patiently await word of his resignation.
15
"...verall we’ve treated blacks much more badly than we have other groups, so there’s a more compelling case for them."
And there is is, the real reason for affirmative action. It is "compensation" for historic injustice, a debt to be paid my today's population for actions taken 150 years ago. In other words, is is a race debt - a concept that is a racist as anything out there. Affirmative action is heinous racism, period. Abolish it.
13
So Gutting's argument is 1) Certain groups have suffered injustice/ are currently suffered injustice. 2) To compensate them, we should take from other groups to make up for their injustice. The groups that we take from include groups that have done nothing to inflict this injustice on the first group. This is the main reason why people feel affirmative action isn't fair. You don't steal to make up for getting robbed.
15
I agree with Chief Justice Roberts who said the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race. That is precisely what affirmative action does because somebody gets shafted. So who do you want to get shafted?
33
@dudley thompson someone gets shafted, based on what objective standard? What is the impartial algorithm that can differentiate between the last student offered admission and the first student denied?
Because if you're complaining about some unfairness, you need to define in detail exactly what fair means.
6
@Kevin Brock Fair means that a Chinese-American student with an SAT score of 1500 should be admitted before an AA with an SAT score of 1100. Fairness can be measured objectively.
13
@dudley thompson The people who have been doing the shafting.
2
Your argument about applying affirmative action to only the minorities who are equally qualified is a weird hypothetical that ignores the empirical evidence that shows that affirmative action rarely provides a small tip between equally skilled candidates. If anything, the evidence from the Harvard trial indicates a massive bias that only considers race, and the main beneficiaries of which are rich, legacy minorities who stand out the best among their minority group. One would think that by the time the children are high income and both parents are legacies at elite institutions, they shouldn't need to receive affirmative action. Our loss of competitiveness from not investing the right resources, not focusing on science and technology, not having a game plan when it comes to scientific progress is a free lunch to China where all citizens are equal and compete on a relatively equal board. Their main concern is generating the technologies to get to the moon, not deciding how to divide a small pie among a growing pool of people. We should be using a system that rewards pure, objective measures of mathematical, scientific, and engineering understanding. The reason why China has maintained its empire for hundreds of years is partially due to the rigorous standardized examination system that selects the best of every generation to lead, develop, and grow the nation.
6
@Hari Seldon You write: "We should be using a system that rewards pure, objective measures of mathematical, scientific, and engineering understanding."
First, do reading comprehension, writing effectively, and other communications and "soft" skills not matter?
Secondly, what is the pure, objective algorithm that measures mathematical, scientific, and engineering understanding among applicants for undergraduate education? And does that algorithm have the granularity to differentiate between the last applicant offered admission to, say, West Point, and the last applicant denied admission?
I suggest that the reason the United States suffers from loss of competitiveness is that we struggle under the 18th-century anachronism of state sovereignty, and its post-Civil Rights cousin of "local control of schools." Until every child in America has the opportunity for a free, world-class public education, we will continue to struggle. Unfortunately, too many Americans don't believe that every child deserves that opportunity.
3
@Kevin Brock
I would argue that if a system is well designed, it won't be perfect, but it will be better than what we have now. The Chinese High Exam (GaoKao) system is a comprehensive tests that covers many subject areas from science, math, literature, history, foreign languages, and writing. It is administered only once a year, making it more fair and objective than a test you can take multiple times if you are willing to pay. The test gauges aptitude and allows colleges to set quantitative thresholds for entry into the school and major based on scores overall and on the subject level. Like I said, it isn't perfect, but it sure is better than what we have now in America.
Ray Dalio wrote an interesting piece on China recently: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/looking-back-last-40-years-reforms-china-ray-dalio/
He mentions that schools in China are dramatically underfunded. But the students are devoted and the teachers are dedicated, and even with bare bone resources, China has generated many companies that are now global leaders in their fields. It not only takes money, but also a change in culture to value education to overcome the competitive difference. If we competed on money alone, America vastly outspends China on education.
2
I wish you'd reply to people like me who are proud that they can make it with the privileged kids. I think I would never have made it as far as I did if I was worried that I hadn't completed the same level of academic requirements as others.
That unintended consequence--"you don't deserve to be here, you got in because of your skin"--is very real.
5
Affirmative Action is just another form of racism: granting special privileges by skin color.
It's widely argued that I, as a European-American (or, as the practitioners of racism like to label me, "white"), have benefited from slavery as it was practiced in the US up to the 19th century; but, that's simply not true.
However, I am often targeted by racists by my skin color, with phrases like "white privilege" or worse, "white fragility."
Slavery has always existed, and tragically, it still exists today. What happened in the USA is not unique, and although it was terrible, it was practiced by many people from many different cultures and of many different skin colors.
How can we reduce racism, and celebrate the great diversity of the USA instead? Racism just begets more racism. In the big picture view, it's very clear: we must stop accepting racism in any form.
That means, for example, no more selecting applicants to jobs or college by skin color. We must end affirmative action.
15
Affirmative Action as we experienced it seems racist. I recall vividly when my son (100% European DNA) applied to universities in 2014. From the images on the home page of each school, through the application process, it was clear that a white, heterosexual, able-bodied male was that last thing wanted. My son said a few times, "I didn't do anything...our ancestors were in Europe during the time of slavery". Then one of his friends received an "Hispanics only" full scholarship to the University of Arizona.
10
When those that oppose Affirmative Action argue with equal passion against legacy admissions to elite universities then I will believe their concerns about fairness. And not a moment sooner.
4
I have worked beside many affirmative action beneficiaries of varying skill throughout a long career. My reason for supporting the continuation of affirmative action programs is this: even if some of the candidates themselves are not the most stellar students or job applicants, the opportunities provided to them will pay dividends to the next generation. In my observation they are motivated to live in neighborhoods that better educate their own children, they strive to enrich their kids extracurricularly and the intangibles rewards of growing up in an educated family are incalculable.
1
Always interesting to see recurring set pieces from anti-affirmative-action voices.
Set piece 1: AA hurts black and Latino students, gets them in above their heads at elite institutions, where they will fail. Well, until I see the very same rhetorical tears shed for white athletes in above their heads, white legacy rich kids in above their heads, I will continue to see this one as racial prejudice posing as sympathy. Besides, black and Latino students admitted to Ivy League schools are stratospherically good. Visions of their struggles en masse are amateur fantasies that (appallingly) tag certain groups as inherently less able.
Set piece 2: AA is not objective. Just count test scores and GPAs for admissions, because they measure merit. No. Merit is not solely discoverable by tests (nor are intellectual promise, creative thinking potential, artistic talent, devotion to hard work).
Set piece 3: a student who achieves at high levels should by rights be admitted to X or Y elite institution. Thus (the "unfair to white kids" argument) it is a moral offense if his/her deserved slot goes to someone imagined to be less meritorious. Well, elite institutions don't owe admissions offers to anyone, and with ten times as many hyper-qualified applicants as slots, be realistic. Unfairness is not an applicable concept here.
There's a complex debate that should continue about AA, but with all these confused ideas and prejudices circulating, the debate gets impeded.
7
Dr. Gutting, I appreciate your taking on this very tough issue (even though you did not reply to my comment). I also credit you for restricting the scope of your claim to 1) blacks applying for 2) college admissions. You thus implicitly recognize that preferences for other races or ethnicities, or for women, especially in employment, are indefensible.
I thus leave you with a quote from former Yale Law professor Alexander Bickel, included in a footnote in Justice Powell's controlling opinion in the mother of all affirmative action cases, UC Regents v. Bakke:
"The great lesson of Brown v. Board is that racial discrimination in public education is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, and destructive of democratic society. Now (with affirmative action) this is to be unlearned, and we are told that it is not a matter of fundamental principle (nondiscrimination against any person) but only a matter of whose ox is gored. Those who found equality under the Constitution now find inequality under the same Constitution."
4
I sit on the SLT (School Leadership Team) of one of NYC’s elite SHSAT merit based high schools (the famous 3 of which have collectively produced more Nobel Prize Winners than all but 14 nations of the world) - so know the inside story of what’s going on.
The elite colleges have formed Questbridge, an organization that processes applications from Diversity students and via a match program assigns applicants to specific schools on Oct 1. Thus before even the date early acceptance applications are due, the elite schools, through the back door Questbridge program, have filled their quotas of SHSAT students with “Diversity” students, who by being rigorously educated applicants, regardless of their class rank, will not flunk out. Thus all AA/PC boxes safely checked.
This of course means that all the non “Diversity” SHSAT applicants have almost no chance of being admitted to the elite colleges, but those otherwise truly outstanding candidates are heavily recruited by the second tier colleges and wooed with merit scholarships.
What will happen in the future, when the bottom 20% percentile of SHSAT accepted applicants are replaced by students from every NYC middle school, remains to be seen. Just remember how CUNY, the finest public college system in the country, was destroyed by open admissions.
15
Regarding his second point to the second letter writer, "But individuals live in social groups, so there’s always the possibility of judging individuals by race, gender, etc. And such judgments are still a major factor in our society. My affirmative action proposal is, in fact, meant to increase the number of highly competent blacks in upper-middle-class positions to the point where we no longer see anything odd in being operated on by a black surgeon or being represented by a black attorney."
Why does this professor think that the antidote to judging people by race, gender, etc. is judging people by race, gender, etc. Better not to care that we have a black surgeon than to want a surgeon based on his race. He makes clear that he wants more black surgeons, which is a judgement merely based on superficial racial characteristics, not character or ability. Judging a doctor by anything other than merit is beyond foolhardy. I don't care what race my doctor is, infact I have a black doctor and I'm white. Why does the race of my doctor matter to you???
3
I think we need to change our attitude about elite education. All of the students at Harvard and Stanford are smart and hard-working—one could say top .1%.
But there are plenty of other people in the top .1% and even top 5% who are smart, hard-working, and capable, too.
We need to stop using the Ivy League as a proxy for competence.
Of course, if you work in HR and have a choice between a Columbia and SUNY grad, either could be a disaster. If you pick the Ivy failure, at least you can say , “but he went to Columbia,” and not be fired for a bad choice.
This kind of attitude leads to opportunity hoarding and contributes to inequality.
That’s bad for people in general, and people of color in particular, whether Yale is 5% black or 20%, and whether that’s through affirmative action or not.
1
In order to end discrimination, one must discriminate. That is the central and hypocritical tenant of affirmative action. So discrimination is illegal except for Big Brother to warp back in time and adjust the future predicated on the past. Good luck with that one.
7
Assuaging the liberal white guilt of the educated upper middle class is a poor reason for any policy, and it is the only reason for affirmative action that hasn't been shown to be specious.
.
Offering spots to students who don't meet the academic standards of a university sets them up for failure, doing neither that student nor his or her classmates any favors.
.
Complex entrance standards clearly favor those with the resources to game them. Scores and grades are fair because anyone can write those tests. A set of national standardized courses for seniors in high schools , with common exams, would go a long way to making entrance standards fairer for the less privileged.
.
Preferences for legacies and children of donors is an abomination that should be illegal, and remains a stain on the honor and reputation of any university that uses them.
.
Solution: Set minimum academic standards for a university in simple terms of tests and grades (preferably with standardized high school courses). Choose randomly from those who apply and meet the standards. That will get you some diversity. Nothing is less diverse than a class of Harvard freshmen who spent the previous 10 years prepping and striving for complex entrance criteria. They are all as identical as peas in a pod, no matter the color of their skins. Set a standard and randomly choose from those who qualify.
4
It is not clear to me why getting more Blacks into "top" schools is the objective. There are not enough “top schools” for this approach to be scalable. A better approach is to get more young Blacks people into “average” schools, have them focus on a major that will provide marketable skills, and to have kids only when they are ready for it.
I attended Brooklyn College (not a "top" school ?) . I lived at home and commuted. I worked part time. All of these things kept the overall bill down and the debt at close to 0.
None of my classmates at the time could have been called “wealthy”. Most of their parents were immigrants, and almost none of those parents had been to college. And yet almost all are living the American dream today. They graduated, got jobs, bought houses, started families and most are now “comfortable”.
The American dream is alive and well and you don’t need to go to Yale to get it.
Brooklyn College will do it too.
58
Really effective affirmative action should begin at conception or immigration. We need to spend more on universal health care, day care, early childhood education and free or low cost public education. "Elite" institutions can prove and improve their reputations and results by eliminating legacy and donor driven preferences and spending their excess endowments on "need blind" admissions but the future of the nation rests on improving the prospects of every child.
5
Two questions:
1) Affirmative action sounds great -- if the cause of academic underperformance of Blacks is discrimination by Whites. However, that is a theory. The actual evidence is Blacks don't do as well on standardized intelligence tests of all sorts -- not only in the US but globally. The difference is about 1 standard deviation v Whites. That is a large difference in terms of the % of Blacks you would project to do well enough academically to be competitive for admission to top schools. We also know there is a lot of social pathology in Black communities -- which may have roots in discrimination and slavery -- or maybe not. But doesn't the burden of proof lie with those like Gutting who believe affirmative action is a good thing to demonstrate that White discrimination is a primary cause of Black underperformance?
2) Let's assume affirmative action works At what point do we do away with it? Fifty more years -- 100? 200?
I believe AA made sense in the 1960's. But at this point why is it still needed? It has at least 2 big negatives: 1) it discriminates against those who have credentials in favor of those who don't; 2) it leads to questions re the academic achievement of any Black.
At the very least, people like Dr. Gutting should be able to say based on research, that Blacks admitted into schools they would not qualify for -- perform as well as other students in terms of Majors, GPA's, grad rates. Is there evidence for that?
11
Look at the narrative focus here on black and brown unpreparedness/inferiority and not white reluctance to integrate. Completely erased from the picture is the reason the term was coined at all.
I am the mother of two white and one black step/children. I got to “secret shop” how differently the school system treated white and black children of the same social strata. The differences could not have been more stark. I counted via a 12-year log, every time one of my children was assumed to be receiving something they didn’t deserve because of the color of their skin by someone in my community vocalizing that belief. It was a ubiquitous amongst whites to feel free to inform me that my black child would get things he “didn’t deserve just because he's black." I heard that feedback over 3,500 unsolicited times about my black child who was an A student and took all of the hardest classes and excelled. I never ONCE heard it about my white children whom were assumed to be deserving of everything they received who happened to be B students and mot nearly as hard working. My black child wasn’t assumed to be deserving of college unless he was perfect in every single way. We need affirmative action because too many educators DON’T develop talent equally. It was my white sons who continually got things they hadn’t earned. Not my higher performing black son. The two the same age graduated from high school in 2008 and from college in 2016. So this isn't the distant annals of the past.
4
I believe that offering opportunities to disadvantaged socio-economic groups is a necessity in our society. I do not believe that affirmative action at top 100 universities best place for our efforts. The focus on changing the racial demographics of top 100 universities is flashy bait that gets headlines and public attention. Instead focus on preparing these disadvantaged groups for college education generally. Increasing the number of African-Americans, Hispanic peoples, and low socio-economic Asians who graduate from schools with degrees in business, engineering, science, technology, and other white collar professions will make a much larger societal impact. These types of careers create generational wealth and raise socio-economic status.
Changing the racial profile of Harvard's 2000 student classes is a not the ideal way to change racial stereotypes in America. Improving low socie-economic groups attendance, graduation, and major choice at college as a whole is more likely to accomplish Affirmative Actions stated goals.
3
The net effect of rigorously applied and enforced AA policies is our current descent into identity politics.
The net outcome of this event will be the devolution of American politics to the level of, say, Belgium, with an inability to even form governments, much less rule.
The answer to this frustration will be a right-wing "populism" with authoritarian leaders willing to cut through the red tape that governs sharing political benefits by race, gender, etc.
5
Nowhere is the big question about affirmative action raised or answered. Is affirmative action a tie-breaker when schools have two or three equally qualified candidates, or is it a quota system where the admission to elite schools of various ethnic and/or racial groups must be a certain percentage of the population. When affirmative action began it was simply a tie-breaker that schools could choose to use to select minority candidates over white candidates of equal ability. Somehow that morphed into an unacknowledged quota system that unfairly discriminates against poor white students or poor Asian students. Why, for example, should a black student who grew up on Park Avenue receive any preference at all over a poor white or Asian student who grew up in the South Bronx or the Lower East Side? And sorry, the response from Mr. Gutting on Tamir's question is morally reprehensible. The problem of students who grow up in poverty and do not happen to be Black or Hispanic is every bit as significant as the problems faced by Blacks and Hispanics.
12
@Cheri Solien Of the 30,000+ applicants to Harvard every year, how many are "equally qualified" based on some objective algorithm? And more specifically, does that objective algorithm have the granularity to differentiate between the last candidate offered admission and the first candidate denied admission?
Racial quotas are un-American.
Affirmative Action is newspeak for racial quotas.
13
Relax. Nobody is going lock your head in a cage filled with rats.That's what happens in "1984." I find it unseemly in the extreme to project that dire novel on affirmative action.
Gutting still equivocates and shuffles away front he elephants in the room-
1) who gets to choose who is “disadvantaged”
And the closely related
2) tell me where/when it all ends ? Hwo will we know ?
He cant be expected to be talked seriously until he supplies soem endpoints. We can’t contemplate and endless policy of AA as he seems to infer-that is unconstitutional and indeed, un american. As John Roberts has stated, ultimately you dont solve discrimination with more discrimation . Clearly we arent there yet as Guttigbn suggest, but The least he could do for some credibility is to say, this will end when entering classes look like our overall population. As to whetehr the burden of historic racism and centuries old slavery are more of a burden that multiple generations of poverty and multiple generations of fatherless children, well that is highly debatable. Most studies have failed to disaggregate these characteristics for fear they might reveal something that is not entirely supportive of AA.
4
The sole justification for Affirmative Action is the premise that AA students do more poorly than others because of their heritage, their history of racial discrimination. Well, Affirmative Action has been in place now for half a century, and the difference in pre-college test performance between races is essentially unchanged.
Maybe it's time to shun political correctness and accept the obvious explanation. Anthropology Professor Vincent Sarich at Berkeley gained notoriety suggesting this some decades ago: That, as unpalatable as it is, all the evidence points to fundamental differences between races, and those differences may include intelligence.
5
You meant to say that the fundamental difference between efucational outcomes is directly attributed to post codes. Change needs to start much earlier, before pre school.
1
If we were willing to do the things that are really necessary to, say, level the playing field, we would not need things like affirmative action. Other alternatives are more expensive and would have even more opposition. Such as fixing minority schools. Fixing them would require lowering class sizes and possibly individual tutoring (something that wealthy people get because they can easily afford it) and mentoring. Why not 10 kids in a class, why not 5, to make up for a home life not conducive to education. I'm certain that this type of approach, which is expensive, would fix minority education. But the jealous outcry of whites and the upper class who still have 20+ students in a class would be deafening. So we have affirmative action. Why not just make universities bigger, so more people can get in? Bigger and cheaper. Too expensive. So we have affirmative action. A similar conundrum lies in vocational professions, where affirmative-action-like hiring practices are criticized. Special training, internships for minorities, lead to higher costs and more jealously. So we have...
5
“I need to emphasize that my argument is for just one specific form of affirmative action: giving special consideration at elite schools to black applicants who have a high probability of success in college but, like many other applicants, don’t quite come to the top of the list.” It is important to be clear about what Mr. Gutting is saying here. He favors giving preference to black students over EQUALLY QUALIFIED non-black students. In his original article Mr. Gutting dismissed the idea that surviving and surmounting the obstacles that many black students still face because of their race shows “grit,” a determination to succeed which confers superior qualifications (in special cases) on black applicants whose test scores may not quite be up to stuff. No, entrance decisions are not to be made on the basis of individual cases at all. This would require “subjective” judgement. Admission standards are supposed to take the form of an algorithm magically designed to overcome human fallibility, a.k.a “systemic racism.” If this is the best justification for embattled Affirmative Action its proponents can come up with, it doesn’t deserve to survive the Harvard lawsuit.
9
The second and third most popular comments from the first article by Dr. Gutting (by Beth from NJ and Willis from USA) specifically argue for the replacement of a race-based system to an income-based system. As these comments were very popular with the readers, I am astounded that Dr. Gutting doesn't address this compelling argument.
Dr. Gutting--if blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately poor in this country, wouldn't it stand to reason that such a system would benefit them the most? But we would be getting rid of a race-based affirmative action that would benefit Lebron James' kid. An income-based system would be fairer and, yes, more progressive than the race-based (aka racist) system we currently have in place. An income-based system should also be supplemented by an aggressive push to end the inequalities that accumulate in the formative K-12 years. The goal is to engineer a society in which a race-based affirmative action would not be necessary because applicants of all races would be applying to colleges at comparable rates. This can only be accomplished by fixing the underlying problem.
10
Does anyone actually listen to the Ivy League admissions officers?
The top Ivies get 30,000 applications a year. 80% of those applicants are academically qualified. That leaves a pool of 24,000 students, of whom only 2,000 will get an offer.
Admissions officers have said -- many times -- that they select students, who, collectively, create an incoming class that best satisfies a set of institutional goals.
Notice that's "goals," not "goal." While many wish that the only goal was "admit academic superstars," the reality - and the Ivies make no secret of this - is that there are other goals, such as "put together a winning lacrosse team," "fill unpopular majors," "recruit students who will keep 350 student clubs up and running," etc.
One of those goals is to assemble a diverse class of students; they're not doing this to address historical or current injustices, but because they believe diversity creates a better educational experience overall.
Notice the difference - admissions officers are NOT asking "who is most deserving of admission to Harvard?" or "whom shall we grace with this socioeconomic gift?" but "What combination of applicants meets the needs of our institution?" (If you are academically qualified, then perhaps your application should answer "what do I bring to Harvard?" rather than "Why I deserve to get in.")
With all the ink dedicated to affirmative action, it is shocking how little attention is paid to this point.
8
@HT The meritocracy argument against affirmative action presumes some objective algorithm that will reveal some objective distinction between applicant #1,900 (offered admission in your hypothetical) and applicant #2,100 (denied admission).
And as you suggest, out of 30,000 applicants to Harvard every year, 80% will be top 5% of their high school class, with test scores in the 95th percentile, and extracurriculars out the wazoo.
@HT That's all well and good except that it should be illegal to discriminate based on race. If an institution felt like it had a compelling interest to increase homogeneity or reduce the number of black students would you be equally open to that as well?
3
@HT
That's exactly right, Kevin. Even asserting that the students have been ranked, so that there is an applicant #1900 and an applicant #2100, assumes that merit has been reduced to a single scale. Some of the larger state schools use this approach, but the Ivies, which use a complex system of assessment rubrics and committee meetings, do not.
I agree with you philosophically but I am strongly against affirmative action as it is practiced in American universities. I see that blacks have lingering disadvantages that both inhibit their education and underestimate their potential, but the system frankly is racist and broken.
I also worked in Canada. Our university had an AA policy for hiring where extensive paperwork needed to be filed whenever none of the candidates were visible minorities or women, or when an offer was given to a non-minority after minority candidates were interviewed. I consider it somewhat fair as one could still hire the best candidate as long as one could demonstrate compelling reasons (and perhaps this could act as a check on our biases). I don't know about admissions but by looking at demographics, it's not as prejudiced as the US. The largest university is also considered the best, and the Asian population is large compared to elite US schools.
In the US, AA gives a large quantifiable discrimination against Asians (who are victims of many structural disadvantages), cf. the Harvard trial. It's narrowly focused on race broadly and not nuanced at all, with no consideration of socioeconomic status. Reading Alito's dissent in the Fisher case, the Texas officials said that AA was necessary beyond the "10% plan" to retain wealthy underperforming black prep school kids, who add diversity solely by their blackness. Please read about what current AA plans are like. Are you OK with supporting this?!
4
As a Latina and first generation college student I believe Affirmative Action has its two sides to it. 1. It can help a minority student who is successful despite the zip code up or the circumstances they grew up in. 2. Or on the contrary not give the opportunity to the hardworking students who had all forms of resources and support along the way and were able to meet the academic standards to seek entry into that institution. I honestly feel things should be seen on a case by case basis. I went to college with Hispanic friends that grew up in very affluent neighborhoods and they look very similar to me. Hence I grew up sharing my room with my mom in a tiny 1 bedroom living off of government assistance due to my mother getting stabbed while at work in order to make a living, nevertheless I overcome my odds and I graduated top of my class regardless of my obstacles and circumstances . All in all each applicant should be reviewed individually on a wholistic scale rather than just a few factors that have been checked off in a box.
4
"Admittedly, there’s no algorithm as there is in sports for choosing among very different kinds of values."
And therein Mr. Gutting hits the nail on the head. There is no algorithm which can differentiate objectively the last candidate offered admission from the first candidate denied admission. Of the 10,000 or so applicants every year to the United States Naval Academy (my alma mater), there are likely 5,000 or more who objectively "qualify," yet only about 1,500 are offered appointments. And the difference between candidate #500 and candidate #2500 in some kind of objective ranking per some algorithm is likely not measurable.
So all this talk of some kind of meritocracy for college admissions is babbling nonsense.
5
Should we fix the glaring under-representation of black and Hispanic students in science and engineering PhD programs? Or would this cause the AA ship to run onto the rocks of statistical reality? Everyone wants to focus on Harvard and other elite undergraduate programs, which have no trouble finding qualified applicants from all groups. The problems really stand out in second tier, highly selective programs after the elites have high-graded the pool.
Read "Mismatch", by Sander and Taylor.
4
As a working/middle-class white person from a smallish town that was not a suburb of a thriving city, I feel that I benefited from a form of affirmative action by being given very substantial grants to attend a sub-Ivy, high-tuition private liberal arts college.
Judging by the origins and fates of many of my cohort, I feel that this is pretty common, very effective at improving economic outcomes for those who receive it, and never comes up in conversations about "other types of diversity". No one got mad at me because they didn't think I was inappropriately taking their spot, but the rich kids and rich alums on/from my campus definitely subsidized an education I wouldn't have otherwise been able to access (and had I gone to a state school instead, maybe another rich white kid off the waitlist could've had my spot).
White people are big beneficiaries in these ways that are invisible, yet spend a lot of time talking about "those people" getting more than they "deserve". It's a big problem.
4
It's misleading to point to the self-segregation of minority students in universities in the 1960s as a failure of affirmative action. That was at the beginning of the program, when there were few minority students, and it seems only natural that they would seek out one another in a foreign environment, where the numbers were so heavily weighted against them. More to the point, why does the commenter refer back to the '60s, when five decades have elapsed since? Is that pattern of racial isolation persistent to today? All I have learned of contemporary college students suggests that classes have become more fully integrated, socially as well as academically. They may not have achieved full integration, but they have certainly advanced.
With regard to the unfortunate student whose place is "lost" to an affirmative action beneficiary, the recent articles about Harvard's admissions process (brought to light by the lawsuit brought by Asian American students) make amply clear that there is no clearly entitled applicant (excepting legacies and others cited in this article). Applicants far in excess of the size of the incoming class have the highest possible SATs and GPAs. Clearly, many must be turned away. And of those who are accepted, additional factors must be taken into account. So there is no identifiable Student X who is owed a letter of apology when Harvard accepts an affirmative action applicant. Except perhaps the Asian American students whom Harvard does turn away.
The challenge that Gutting put first was the argument that, because affirmative action has had various justifications, it must be that none of those justifications is sound. But it is perfectly possible for a policy to have multiple justifications that are all correct.
Take Trump's wall (please!). I'm against it because it's too expensive, it won't work, it's not necessary, it's symbolically offensive, it will do significant environmental harm, it will despoil some of our most spectacular national parks, and it will ruin many private properties especially in Texas. I maintain that all of those justifications are correct.
Curiously, Gutting left out one of the most important justifications for affirmative action: ensuring diversity. Studies show that students in diverse environments learn better - and what could possibly be more important for an educational institution than improving learning?
Similarly, studies that more diverse decision-making bodies make better decisions than bodies that are less diverse - so work places in general and executive suites in particular (not to mention juries, legislatures, etc.) will function better if they are diverse.
By the way, the criticism that affirmative action policies aren't perfect misses the point. The first test of any policy is not whether it completely solves every problem, but whether it improves on what went before. By that test, affirmative action has been a smashing success.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
1
Why does the conversation focus on black students and affirmative action? The majority of students eligible for affirmative action in college admissions are not black. Most are whites who have one or more ancestor who immigrated to America from a Spanish-speaking country, as opposed a country where another European language, such as English, Gaelic, Italian, Germany, Dutch, French, Swedish, Greek, Russian, Portuguese, Yiddish, etc., was spoken.
Demographic change has made affirmative action preposterous. In our most populous states—California and Texas—non-Hispanics white students are a minority. They make up about 23.3 percent of California K-12 students while Hispanic students make up 54.30 percent. In Texas, Hispanic students outnumber non-Hispanic white students almost two to one. Texas has 1,445,875 Hispanic K-12 students compared to 777,510 non-Hispanic K-12 non-Hispanic white students. Nearly 70 percent of Texas students are eligible for affirmative action.
Something is wrong when the vast majority of students are eligible for racial and ethnic preferences. Blond, blued-eyed Hispanic actress Cameron Diaz went to Hollywood instead of college, but if she had applied to college, she would have been eligible for affirmative action.
10
Then why is Texas Red? If Texas is predominently Latino, then the dominent population is not getting the best quality education and as a result, not inclined to vote. When it does, Texas will turn Blue.
1
@BBB
Hispanics make cup a much larger portion of students than they do of the Texas voting age population, college students aren't old enough to vote. Many Texas Hispanic students are not citizens. Texas permits them to pay in-state tuition, but they can't vote.
1
The essential flaw in affirmative action is that it is subjective and based on the opinions of a few elites. For instance, the notion of racial equality is peculiar to western liberal elites.
This notion is not shared by Chinese or Japanese elites or populations. Both national cultures date from ca. 200 BC: Warring States in China and Yayoi migration from China to Japan. That is 2200 years of doing their thing.
As to western liberal notions of racial equality, a minority of elites forced the 1807 abolition of slavery in the British Empire but not the slave trade, per se. Elite racial equality theory still requires the force of law, laws that would not survive popular referenda, to put into practice in Canada, USA, and Europe.
5
Apples and Oranges. Japan and China are each monocultures. Racial mixing in Western cultures is still a new thing that we are feeling our way through. The aim is to make society better for everyone who comes together in the new world.
@Burton
Well, by all means, then, let's dispense with this silly notion of racial equality, and bring back the halcyon days when white males were the unquestioned masters of society. That would really make America great again, wouldn't it?
1
"...there’s relatively little objection to discrimination in favor of athletes, children of donors and children of alums." Wouldn't this be a good place to start?
1
What you are saying is that it is okay to discriminate against my white, suburban daughters because we have too many women like that, who studied and worked hard and got the results to show for it, and it would be better to accept underqualified men (we want gender diversity) and blacks (we can omit other races but not them). In the real world, we would send you to diversity training.
15
Your “statistics” need work. You state that only 15% of college students are black. The black population of the US is only 12.3%, so one could argue that blacks are over-represented. Further, you state that only 6% attend the top 100 schools. Very few of the historic “black” universities (yes, they still exist) are in the top 100, but many are terrific schools. Let’s end the fallacy that only the top 100 produce highlly educated students and future employees. Many great students opt out of the top 100 by attending black universities. This is their right and all make their decision for reasons that are right for them. This should be taken into account in the statistics. I do not have the answer to the affirmative action issue, but this article does a very poor job addressing the issue.
8
Commentators appear to uninformed about the following facts about racial and ethnic preferences in college admission.
(1) Most students eligible for affirmative action are neither black nor descendants of slaves. Most are white, middle-class or lower-middle class Hispanics whose parents or grandparents immigrated to America after the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s.
(2) Racial preferences are not awarded to offset the effects of poverty. The U.S. Census Bureau 2017 Poverty Report shows that 26.43 million white Americans, 8.99 million black Americans and 1.95 million Asian Americans live below poverty level. Whites make up 70.72 percent of Americans below poverty level. Poor non-Hispanic whites outnumber poor Hispanic whites. This is why poverty cannot be substituted for racial preferences; it would favor mostly non-Hispanic whites.
(3) At schools that have “holistic” admission policies, race and ethnic preference points are factored on top of all other factors. Family income is factored for all students. A poor non-Hispanic white student gets preference points for overcoming poverty the same as a poor back or poor Hispanic students, but rich, affluent and poor black and Hispanic students also get racial and ethnic preferences.
4
@William Case So, are you saying that poverty should not be a criteria for Affirmative Action preferences because then Affirmative Action might benefit whites? Interesting and revealing point.
1
@me
No. What I am saying is that race- and ethnic-based affirmative action has nothing to do with poverty. Affirmative action advocates oppose encomium-based affirmative action because it would benefit monthly non-Hispanic whites.
1
I still believe that Affirmative Action is a euphemism for two wrongs make a right.
12
If I can delve into a SAT’ism for a bit, AA is to meritocracy as a pail is to a leaky roof whose owner refuses to fix it...yet...keeps complaining about the pail. The pail isn’t there because of some event that came and went in the distant past. No, the pail is here now, because you have a leaky roof now.
You want to take away AA? Fine, then fix the problems we have now with how we achieve and evaluate meritocracy (the incident in Florida over the student who drastically improved their SAT score after receiving tutoring shows how much of a scam it is to leverage SAT scores when talking about meritocracy). Get rid of all the admissions points for non academic related endeavors and statuses (no points for being a child of an alum, no points for being on the glee club, no points for coming from Michigan's Upper Penisula) and every student gets a “class A” education...I know folks will complain about how much is already being spent; however, we spend way more to incarcerate folks and I would argue that we would get more bang for our buck as a society if we spent the same amount on education (and not the social services that schools are being forced to provide due to cuts...social services need to be fully funded as well).
That would cost money though, and unless we’re talking about allocating more money to building more prisons (because that's how we deal with black problems), it isn’t happening.
Leaky roof...here’s your pail.
2
What I take away from this, professor, is that you support some idealized affirmative action program focused on blacks only who are extremely well qualified and not the children of immigrants. This program does not exist in the real world. In other words, you oppose affirmative action as currently practiced in the United States of America.
6
Affirmative action is racist. You are not allowing minorities to succeed on their own merits and hard work. In my opinion this is one of the worst things you can do to someone. It will also lower the quality of education for everyone at the institution including minorities who qualified fairly. You are eliminating that person's opportunity to make it on their own and stigmatizing them.
7
Why target African Americans for affirmative action? Because our society is a cesspool of hatred that targets African Americans more often, more systemically, more viscerally, and more viciously than any other group. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been paying attention to history or the present, or is deeply in denial. Just for the last year, I've kept a list of racial bias and hatred episodes I run into in the papers. It consists of well over 365 entries, all involving African American victims. Poor whites, Latinos, and Asians may struggle against all kinds of terrible odds, but nothing beats what African American kids and their parents have to confront. And that is why affirmative action efforts should focus on them.
2
Thank you. I benefited from Harvard's decision to become a national college instead of a mostly eastern prep oriented school. I left a comfortable, quietly racist and obviously anti-semitic suburb and woke up to classmates who were smart, talented, and often Jewish. My advisor was just beginning to consult with Negro colleges in the south. He remains a hero to me. You can look it up, John U. Monro. The book is Uncommon Educator.
1
Of all the ethnic and racial groups in the U.S. there is only one that did not choose to come here. That is exceedingly evident.
1
The greatest problem that I see with these responses is that they all center on the inferiority of black and brown people and NOT the actual reason that affirmative action was instituted. That is, because white people refused to accept qualified people of color.
All colleges have a range of scores from low to high that they will accept. Only when it comes to black and brown people do whites IMMEDIATELY assume that anyone black or brown is undeserving of any spot they might receive and that a black or brown person MUST have the highest score to deserve a spot. That was NEVER how college admissions work. Yes, you want a doctor with really solid scores, but you also want them to have actual human skills. The phrase Affirmative Action came from the SCOTUS ruling that said entities that received tax dollars of all its citizens must act in the affirmative to ensure equal access. It’s good to remember how it really started and it had little to do with black inferiority.
1
@Wordsonfire And we're still refusing today to accept Asian Americans, this time under the disguise of affirmative action.
For all those soft racists, who don't see the need for Affirmative Action, or who's family never owned a slave. Ask yourself these questions, just how long did slavery exist in this country? (100+ years, during which time a black person could be murdered for having a book other than the bible in their possession)
How long after slavery ended were black people still discriminated against in college admissions? (100+ years, and now the discrimination is more economic but still exists today)
How long was being classified as white the only factor for college admissions? (Let's take William & Mary founded in 1693 (they owned black slaves by the way) and de-facto all white until 1963 so 270 years)
Here's my solution to Affirmative Action, lets take the number of years that a school excluded non-whites, and make it 100% non-white for that same number of years.
1
@Mike
Don't use drugs.
1
I thought the exchange about what to tell white students who are bumped because of affirmative action is hilarious. I imagine no white student bumped by affirmative action has ever been directly told about it. "We are doing this to you in the name of social justice. Thank-you for applying." As Kant would note, part of the moral evil of affirmative action is the charade we go through where no college is transparent about its affirmative action policies, and students whose lives are affected, indeed upended, are left in the dark intentionally. (Really Harvard, whites and Asians just magically have higher rates of negative-personality disorder?) If affirmative action operated transparently, everyone involved would be too ashamed to carry it out.
10
affirmative action is "meant to increase the number of highly competent blacks in upper-middle-class positions to the point where we no longer see anything odd in being operated on by a black surgeon or being represented by a black attorney". Every time a white child is denied something in favor of a black child, the result is more racism and a resulting assumption that the black surgeon is not really as good. Nobody believes that the Asian surgeon is not as good, and only diehard white supremacists resent high numbers of Asians at elite institutions.
8
This discussion is really like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The deep underlying truth of race relations — which affirmative action tries to improve — is that the United States has yet to lay its racial ghosts to rest (the same applies to native Americans, but that’s another story). An essential symbolic start would be a substantial memorial to the enslaved peoples — on whose backs all parts of emerging American enterprise were created — with the highest possible visibility in Washington DC. Instead of tearing down or moving Civil War statues commemorating Confederacy heroes, reframed the historical explanations and erect memorials on the site of every lynching we can authenticate. Invest large amounts of federal funds in strengthening educational and economic resources and opportunities in African-American communities. Fight racial poverty aggressively. With robust education, economic opportunities, good housing, safer neighborhoods, I imagine African Americans will enthusiastically take care of their futures without fear or favor. Right now, all we doing is trying to apply bandaids to the surface wounds. It goes much deeper.
32
@Gerald
Most students elegance for affirmative action or neither. black nor descendants of slaves. Most are middle-class Hispanic whites whose parents, grandparents or great grandparents immigrated to America after the Civil Rights era.
Would you be in favor of limiting affirmative action to African Americans?
1
@William Case
Not at all. My point is that the underlying issues that gave rise to affirmative action in the first place have yet to be addressed. An African-American doesn’t need a direct lineage to slavery to suffer from institutional racism.
6
Unfortunately precisely the class of whites and males likely to be the most injured by the reverse discrimination of affirmative action in favor or minorities and particularly most recently women are the ones least likely to have benefitted from any kind of historical "privilege". Many if not a majority of whites whose families have lived on this continent for centuries have usually been in either the working or middle class, not been slave owners, have not had access to the best private or public schools or had college professor parents. Therefore, affirmative action is a second wrong that does not make a right! It simply is another injustice added to other injustices that injures different individuals who will likely take revenge or seek some similar bad solution in the future. And the tragedy and perhaps more accurately the idiocy of all this is that as the many correct criticisms discussed indicate - many if not most persons in our society really do know better than to believe in the fallacy that 'Two wrongs make a right'.
10
My freshman year at Princeton, I noticed that everyone there was smart, had good grades, etc., but everyone also had "the one thing." It might be a wrestling championship, a science fair, or a parent who attended.
Basically, there are far more people who have the necessary skills and intelligence than Princeton could possibly admit, so they select those who stand out in some way. This doesn't imply that those rejected are less qualified, just that Princeton needs some basis to make a decision.
To my mind, this is the proper role for affirmative action - to take the place of these other things that let a school choose one of many similarly qualified candidates. This makes it no worse than legacy admits or preferences for football players. And if this helps blacks who do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds, well, like what
happened to Charles Blow's son, Yale police might also not recognize the difference.
5
@Robert Stadler I suspect this argument falls apart if you were to actually compare the accepted students by race. I've heard the argument being made that Harvard has enough perfect SAT/GPA applicants to fill its classes many times over and must therefore reject many qualified people. But this is just more evidence of discrimination to me, because how come very few of the black admits are in that category?
5
Are there any reasons to believe that there would NOT be any difference in performance on "school acceptance tests" between average European and African groups, if such tests were administered 300 years ago, BEFORE "systemic discrimination" began?
If so, then the need for affirmative action is obvious and should be implemented.
1
@Mike Well Asians on average score lower than whites on the SAT verbal sections (and many come from homes where English isn't spoken) so maybe they need some affirmative action too.
I think one of the most interesting things Mr. Guttman said is "that though [White people] themselves had no role in establishing our society’s systematic discrimination against blacks, they have nonetheless benefited from this discrimination." This is a point that White people resist accepting. It has become a "thing" to ridicule the notion of White privilege, but part of that is the unease that White people feel with it. There is no question that generations of Whites have benefited from the discrimination applied to Blacks in this country. Had Blacks had equal opportunity from 1700's, when the country was settled, maybe we wouldn't still need affirmation action today. But, the systemic discrimination that began at the very start of our country has made it impossible to know what Blacks may have achieved if they'd been free to. As it is, Whites today still do benefit from the privilege that holding back Black people 300 years ago gives them. Losing a spot at Harvard is a small price to pay.
41
@Ms. Pea Affirmative action for white men seemed to work well for them. We had it for hundreds of years. Why should it not work for other groups as well?
7
@Ms. Pea
There is no factual basis for these claims.
Only a tiny fraction of white Americans are descended from slave owners. How exactly has a hyphenated-American 20th century immigrant benefited from slavery?
Black people are now OVER-represented in colleges compared to the demographic proportions of graduating high school classes. Affirmative action has clearly caused this effect, because college graduation rates still show the reality that black students underperform academically. (So what was the value in forcing these unprepared students into college in the first place?)
Regardless, your needless capitalization of White and Black shows how much of this (baseless) opinion of yours is just identity politics rhetoric, which is unfortunate.
MLK did not dream of a future where his children would be judged based on the color of their skin instead of their skin color.
7
@Ms. Pea, re "losing a spot at Harvard": agreed, but as the current case at Harvard reveals, white admissions will hardly budge if affirmative action is repealed, so it is worth asking where does this presumption--one that Professor Gutting shares, apparently--that blacks and hispanics are taking the "spots" of high-achieving whites at Harvard or other elite schools come from? The very idea that any group believes there is a "spot" reserved for them is, itself, part of the problem...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-benefits-from-affirmative-action-white-men/2017/08/11/4b56907e-7eab-11e7-a669-b400c5c7e1cc_story.html?utm_term=.b1e6a9cea2e0
2
In stating the different justifications for why Affirmative Action is good, and not racism, you failed to mention the actual reason the Supreme court for why it was not unconstitutional. They explicitly state that the purpose is not reparations, but rather to make a more diverse community on campuses. Besides the fact that it doesn't promote integration, but rather segregation on these campuses that admit people based on race, the supreme court failed to realize two things about this coveted diversity.
1. That it is a superficial kind of diversity, not judging by character but merely judging by the color of skin or religion or ethnicity. A less superficial kind of diversity is the type where people are allowed to actually think differently.
2. The most interesting truth is that (and listen carefully) there is empirically MORE difference within any superficially designated group than between said groups. In other words, there is more diversity within the group we call women, or the group we call black people, etc., than there are differences in the generalities between them. In other words, the average black person is more alike with the average white person AND you are more likely to find MORE differences between two randomly selected people of any single group (say between two white men OR between two black men) than between the generality white man and black man. This is enough to defeat the Supreme Court argument that upheld AA. But AA is also just racist.
5
Somehow I find something wrong, given the that I am a veteran who served during Vietnam who was passed over for a government contract that was awarded to a woman from China who came here five years ago. I learned that the federal government prioritizes Asian women over people who serve their country in time of war.
6
Harvard Facts:
- Will Fitzsimmons - Dean of Admissions admitted that Blacks, Native Americans and Hispanics with mid range SAT scores as low as 1100 ( a very poor score) are sent recruitment letters versus Asians need AT LEAST 250 points higher 1350 for women and 1380 for men.
- 40% of black Ivy league students are not native born but immigrants from Africa/Carribean (Princeton, U Penn Study)
- Approximately 1/2 of Harvard's white population is Jewish
As a bi-racials, 1st generation American married to a Jewish woman, I fiercely oppose affirmative action. It acts to demean the accomplishments of those that it is meant to help (Why would people not be skeptical that an Asian or white grad of an Ivy is is more qualified than a Black or Hispanic based on their qualifications?). It excludes people based on race.
Based on the flavor of affirmative action of the day, I would assume that the author would favor a religious litmus test as well. There are clearly too many Jewish students at Ivy's and too few Muslims, Christians, Atheist, etc. Seems that the right answer would be to now exclude people on religion and eliminate the admissions meritocracy that has historically existed and was fought for back in the 20's
11
I didn't convince you, and you haven't convinced me. What it comes down to is whether we want to build a society based on race, or one based one fair rules. I want the latter. When someone doesn't have access to the best education, when the society doesn't give an individual the opportunity to fulfill their potential, it isn't wrong because of the color of the person's skin, it's wrong because they are human. I want to work for a just society. You want to work for one where injustice is colorblind.
52
@Martin
Also highly relevant is the question if we continue to base a society on race, indeed one where government highlights and emphasizes race, where does it end ? By definition AA has to end at some point or we NEVER have an end to discrimination. AA advocates will simply not address this question.
4
@Martin--If the country had been color blind from its inception, if White men had stepped ashore in America and accepted the Native Americans as equals, if Whites had not brought Blacks to this country as slaves, but as free and equal citizens, allowed them to build homes and raise families and participate in government and seen them as equal partners in the development of this country, then maybe we would be where you want to go. But, because none of those things happened, we are not color blind and may never be. From the minute the first Black person set foot on the soil of American as a slave, it was guaranteed that he would never be given the opportunity to fulfill his potential as White men did. Even after slavery was abolished, Blacks endured centuries of discrimination and laws that kept them from full participation in almost every aspect of life in this country. You can pretend that it is not the color of a person's skin that holds him back, but that is simply not true. Black people may never make up for the lost generations and the lost opportunities they suffered. We will never know the contributions that might have come from allowing them full participation in society. A just society would be one that never enslaved Blacks. Where we go from here depends on how much soul-searching White people are prepared to do.
11
@Martin Well said!
In general I usually lean towards some sort of class based AA. But if the author insists on a race based system, he is obligated to explain how a program determines who is "black." Do we have DNA tests decide, a government panel, or what?
As a libertarian I think it is a very dangerous precedent to allow some sort of bureaucratic body to determine our race.
8
The framework being considered seems to be undelineated "diversity" within which the focus seems to be "black," which in so many ways can be and is diversifiable. But this original article and the selected comments do not adequately explore. "Diversity," as a process for creating groups -categories, is at its most basic level an outcome of the criteria being used. Whatever their underpinnings: empirical, principles of faith, traditions, etc. The parameters are potentially many. Transparent as well as hidden. Then there is the all too often not noted agenda(s)/needs of the stakeholder- classifier; person as well as institution. Transparent as well as being hidden. An additional consideration, rarely acknowledged publically is the toxic, ongoing WE-THEY culture, which enables, and even promotes, daily, the violating by words and deeds, of created, selected and targetted "the other(s)." From a THEN. From a here and now. Within a reality in which Identity, self-created as well as labels created and projected by others, and a range of valenced behaviors are mixed up. And WHO I am and WHAT I do/did/may or may not do, are boundary-free from the perspectives of... For example, is "menschlichkeit," a valenced word, term, value, norm, process, outcome, an Identity? A behavior? An amalgam? A consideration when assessing accepting or not accepting
[experienced as being rejecting by some; by many?] an applicant for future study in...? When does/can "affirmative" become "rejecting?"
Many of the comments seem to ignore an obvious truth, made painfully clear the moment Joe Wilson bellowed "you lie" and became a hero to the right: we are a nation still deeply poisoned by racism and white supremacy. Our current president openly courted these elements with virtually no pushback from his party, which has become (save a very, very few exceptions) almost exclusively white. To posit that all is resolved and individuals will be judged based on merit alone is naive at best, and calculated maliciousness at worst.
30
@Mike
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
- MLK
Is this sentiment "racist" and "white supremacist" now?
1
Most discussions of affirmative action ignore the inconvenient truth that all whites are not created equal. To argue that a student of color from a stable home who attended prep school needs to receive college admission or employment preferences over a white child who attended substandard public schools and whose mother is a drug addict seems ridiculous. Demographers have always had a difficult time distinguishing among "whites" to identify those who are privileged and those who aren't. They have given up trying, and the result is that ethnicity is a marketing concept rather than a means of meaningful differentiation.
10
Two comments that seem absent in the discussion:
1. This whole discussion asks that we stipulate to the idea that the most highly regarded colleges are the best and therefore a prize to be chased. The Ivies, and other so-called top-tier schools, derive their reputations from the game they play, selecting only those students who have glittering scores and GPAs. It is self-fulfilling nonsense. A student can get an equally good, perhaps better, undergraduate education at places like SUNY Binghamton or Grinnell.
2. To the idea that not all black folks are descendants of slaves, please no! Affirmative action is not a form of reparations (although reparations are merited). Affirmative action is justified by today's implicit, systemic, systematic,ubiquitous racism. We white folks are by and large blind to our own unearned privilege.
30
@Barking Doggerel The question isn't "Why should they try to go to an Ivy when they could go to a SUNY school?" but "Why don't they have a fair shot at the Ivies?" The students who play the Ivy game are rich or White. When the legacy kids and Harvard prospies start to enthusiastically apply for and attend their local public colleges, that'll change the discussion. But right now, that's just how it is. Minorities should be given a shot at the Ivy League game too.
4
@Barking Doggerel
Affirmative action IS "systemic, ubiquitous racism," by any definition of racism.
3
@Barking Doggerel
2) If the justification of affirmative action is to rectify systemic injustice, then why must Asian Americans suffer the cost. The Harvard trial shows that Asian Americans suffer the greatest burden of affirmative action, and receive none of the benefits "white privilege" entails. Won't this mean that Asian Americans deserve something in return, say not paying taxes or maybe one out of every NBA ticket that is purchased is donated to a random asian person instead of the person who bought it.
3
I am a professor at a public research university, and also familiar with the quota system enforced for public university admissions in Brazil.
I think an equalization system might be perceived as fair, if it were based on "overall academic quality of the applicant's high school" (as measured, say, by test scores); it is clearly related to college readiness, and largely tracks race and economic status, so the effect would be similar.
I haven't seen a discussion of how "quota students" (as they're called in Brazil) perform academically in college. It doesn't do anyone any good to admit a large group of students whose preparation is below what is needed, who struggle to graduate and drop out at higher rates, unless expensive support systems are built to help them.
And I think too much emphasis is placed on discussion of "elite private colleges", numerically a small fraction of the higher ed enterprise. The benefit of attending one is primarily social connections--do minority students get that benefit? Academically, at the undergraduate level, all those "top 100 public and private schools" are more or less equivalent; they differ mainly in the preparation of the student body. So in terms of policy it would make sense to focus not on numbers of minority/lower income students at individual schools, but systemically, over this whole group of schools; what matters is whether a disadvantaged student is offered a slot (and financial support) in one of them, not a particular one.
4
"A first point is that the pervasive discrimination against blacks far outweighs this single act of discrimination." Mr. Gutting there is no justifiable excuse or explanation for the pre-meditated application of discrimination. None.
13
Gutting's argument boils down to his subjective belief that simply being black is such an injurious experience that any person who is of that race is automatically entitled to the life-changing treatment of being rubber stamped for the best schools in our country.
But he fails to really grapple with whether or not the kids getting admitted to Harvard have really experienced real discrimination or merely the "microaggressions" the far left loves to uphold as evidence of "racism." In other words, does not seeing many black people on TV shows make one deserving of going to Harvard? Should someone get into Yale because a security guard at Macy's once followed them around? Should your grades be treated differently because once you went to a Halloween party and a white kid was dressed up as Dave Chapelle?
Now let's be clear there is real racial injustice in the world. But the thing is, wealth does a tremendous job of protecting people from it, and the upper middle class is where the kids in question are coming from. Overwhelmingly, they aren't experiencing stop and frisk in the streets of Brownsville. They aren't having drugs planted in a traffic stop in the Bronx. They didn't grow up in a crack den in Watts. Those who have overcome this type of adversity deserve extra points in admissions decisions. But the deserve those points not because they randomly happen to be a member of a particular group but because as an individual they have demonstrated extraordinary resiliency.
19
Affirmative action is like using a pail to catch the water from a leaky roof when it rains. Now everyone is complaining about the pail, but no one really wants to invest the money needed to fix the roof either.
You can't provide black kids a substandard K-12 education and then try to make up for that with a couple of points when they attempt to apply for college. And no, we don't already spend a lot on education...most of those dollars go to social services that should be provided elsewhere, yet the schools are stuck providing them due to cuts in other areas.
35
@Mike
Black students have the highest college dropout rates, and underperform academically.
Affirmative action is the pump and dump scheme of academia. If we actually had the best interests for these students in mind, we would focus on their k-12 which is so clearly lacking, instead of trying to make college student bodies meet arbitrary diversity quotas.
Racial equality means equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.
12
@Mike Republicans will do anything to avoid improving inner city public schools. Private school tax credits, creating and pouring resources into charter schools with their buddies, (and pat themselves on the back and give each other awards when the charter school succeeds with the unlimited resources), appointing a lady who has never stepped foot into a public school as the head of the Dept of Education... I grew up going to private school and listening to my dad go on and on about how he shouldn't have to pay for public schools... then he would complain about crime and having to pay city taxes.
Why don't Republicans see they are a victim of their own policies?
4
"A first point is that the pervasive discrimination against blacks far outweighs this single act of discrimination(against a white student)".
Super easy for Mr. Gutting to say as long as he isn't the white student losing his/her spot.
16
@Marigrow
Lose your spot at Harvard, go to Columbia.
Lose your spot at Columbia, go to Amherst.
Lose your spot at Amherst, go to Colby.
Lose your spot at Colby, go to University of Richmond.
Going to a school one spot down the competitiveness ladder doesn't mean a darn thing in the long run! And if you're so overqualified, let's see you be valedictorian.
1
Affirmative action simply requires that consideration be given to the oppression of people because of their sex, skin color, life style, etc., when distributing the benefits society has created. The objective being fairness under the circumstances. Surely we have the acumen to objectively determine that which is fair.
7
@tbs
You've described the professional mission of college admissions officer, but they aren't really so much concerned with fairness as with putting together the most successful student body that will have a lifetime of success, thus returning prestige and charitable contributions on the college.
Some people seem to object to the fact that college admissions staffs have determined that some black candidates with lower test scores and grades will nevertheless be more successful in college and life than higher scoring white candidates.
It's apparent to me that none of these objectors are applying for jobs as college admissions officers, but rather would simply like their own baseless determinations about merit to guide the decisions of the professionals who have taken the trouble to become informed.
1
@tbs
Going by the high college dropout rate and academic underperformance of black students, it seems we do not "have the acumen to objectively determine that which is fair."
That is, unless your definition of "fair" doesn't include academic capabilities...
6
@Sam I Am
"college admissions staffs have determined that some black candidates with lower test scores and grades will nevertheless be more successful in college and life than higher scoring white candidates"
[citation very much needed]
3
In real terms, what Dr. Gutting is arguing for is marginal. He wants Affirmative Action for those African-Americans who "just miss" getting into elite institutions on the basis of grades and test scores. It is marginal because there are so few of them. The average SAT admit to Harvard is over 1500. 25th percentile is 1460, and 75th percentile is 1590. That average score means 750 math, 750 English. However, there are not more than 1000 African-American students in the whole darn country that reach that average score, being competed for by literally dozens of top institutions. How many more "just miss," with scores of e.g. 1460? Maybe 100-200? The actual numbers are vanishingly small. (For backup on all of this, Google: "Race gaps in SAT scores highlight inequality and hinder upward mobility" for the long 2017 report from the Brookings Institute).
16
What an exercise in self-indulgence this was from Dr. Gutting. I could have seen this outcome coming. Of course he doesn't change his mind. But really irks me is that he doesn't address the most compelling argument against affirmative action, an argument I thought was well represented in the comments section in first article by Dr. Gutting. And that is that race-based affirmative action should be replaced by income-based affirmative action. After all, if blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately poor in this country, wouldn't it stand to reason that such a system would benefit them the most? But we would be getting rid of a race-based affirmative action that would benefit Lebron James' kid.
Maybe someone can enlighten me and tell me why an income-based system wouldn't be fairer (and, frankly, more progressive) than a race-based one.
21
@Vince, Fact: whites outnumber blacks at every rung of the income ladder, including the lowest-income category. Fact: admission to elite colleges and universities is a very scarce resource. Consequence: it is likely that enrollments will remain exclusively, or close to exclusively, all-white if parental income is the determining criterion for admission. The same could result for many other benefits (housing, K-12 public schools, etc.) available to the financially disadvantaged if we did not have anti-discrimination laws. But elite universities need more than anti-discrimination policies to assemble diverse freshmen classes that reflect the diversity of the country's population.
I think that Gutting's argument is less than compelling without a focus on the essential value of gender, ethnic, and other differences in education.
@Mary C. The fact that poor white people outnumber poor black people has to do with the fact that there are vastly more white people in this country than there are black people. But in terms of percentage, a greater percentage of black people live in poverty. That's why I use the word "disproportionately". So, I stand by my line of thinking. An income-based system would benefit a greater percentage of black people than it would a percentage of white people. Now, if it comes to pass that after implementing an income-based system that universities become all-white, then the problem must be that poor black students apply to college at a much lower rate (and there is some evidence to support this). That problem would need to be addressed with greater funding for their K-12 education, for more guidance counselors, greater access to scholarships/aid.
My point is that race-based affirmative action merely glosses over the real underlying problems with inequality. By artificially lowering the standards for black college applicants, what are we doing really to solve the problems of inequality that have been accumulating in the K-12 years prior to college application?
3
Perhaps this is too simplistic for a philosophy professor, but I was always taught that two wrongs do not make a right. Admitting students with lower scores simply because of their color is just unfair to the white or Asian students with better records who get passed over. It's wrong.
You want to end up with a society that has many more minority people in top positions? It's not a mystery how to do it. Provide affordable health care, decent housing, and food for everyone. Make good preschools, and excellent elementary, middle, and high schools available to all of our children. Make higher education available to all students who want to attend.
9
I enjoyed this piece, both the arguments against, and the Professor's responses, in favor of AA. I especially liked the absence of rancor and indignation that one often finds on such topics. This is a tough issue. I sometimes think the best take on AA is the line from Ben Affleck's character in the movie Argo: "this is the best bad plan we have." All in all, nice job by NYT and Professor Gutting.
4
It seems as if many of the comments ignore or fail to address a fundamental aspect of America: the systemic racism that pervades all aspects of American life and is permanent. To be sure, we have moved from the overt racism of Jim Crow, through a period of colorblindness (AKA, racial transcendence), and back to a more overt form of racism, but systemic racism is alive and well.
Affirmative action is simply one tool that is being used to counter this all-pervasive systemic racism. Do the children of the well-off, immigrant Nigerian doctor deserve the benefits of affirmative action? Yes, of course they do. American society has allowed them entrance to America, but has NEVER guaranteed assimilation simply because of their skin color - in short, affirmative action isn't to amend or account for socio-economic status, it's to account and amend for skin color. A poor, white person has a greater chance at success than an upper-middle class African American simply because of white privilege. It is this white privilege that destroys the notion of 'meritocracy.' How can one have a meritocratic system when one class of people (whites) have ALL the cards?
The system is stacked against People of Color and has been so since the late 17th century; affirmative action is simply one tool to rectify four centuries of wrong and, perhaps, counter the power of white privilege.
3
@Peter Hornbein
If affirmative action were limited to African Americans, it would not be so controversial, but most students eligible for affirmative action are neither back nor descendants of slaves, Most are white, middle-class Hispanics whose parents or grandparents immigrated to America after the Civil Rights Era. They have never known a time when college admissions were stacked in their favor.
6
“A poor white person has a greater chance at success than an upper middle class black person”
And how exactly did the upper middle class black person’s family become upper middle class in the first place, with all the systemic racism and white privilege holding them down? It’s amazing that the appeal of victimhood is so strong that these silly claims never get questioned.
8
It won't happen, but schools could determine all score-qualified applicants, then do a random drawing. But in this scenario, there might not be a sports team of one kind or another that's "competitive," or the random draw might exclude a bunch of legacy applicants, or the college might suddenly have a huge proportion of low income students requiring financial assistance. One or more departments might be flooded while others have few students. And politically none of that is palatable - schools are invested in any number of quotas for any number of reasons. Follow the money.
1
Affirmative action needs to start at the beginning—a newly imagined Head Start, combined with anti-poverty programs would make sense. University level schooling has mostly become an aptitude test anyway, more concerned with training than education. At least John Dewey, and even Ivan Ilich, Paul Goodman, et al., from another era, had a vision of what education might mean at a policy level.
Affirmative action makes little sense at the university level other than as a “who gets to have a larger share of the pie” program. I’m all for truly equitable sharing, but it has to start much sooner, be in greater abundance, and it has to focus on real education, not more “bureaucratization of the imagination.” And, yes, we need serious progressive taxation to fund it.
1
The problem with this sort of dialogue is that Professor Gutting can't be convinced by any argument. If he were persuaded, he would be in grave danger of receiving the James Damore Prize for Unacceptably Inconvenient Social Thought, which comes with professional disgrace and possible termination. Look at yesterday's article on James Watson and his views on racial difference. Watson is the most eminent geneticist possible, but the journalist involved began by calling his views unfounded without engaging in any actual inquiry upon them. Some views, like differing racial averages, are so politically unacceptable that the strong evidence for them cannot be publically expressed by people who need continued employment.
42
The comment from NYInsider that qualified white students are losing their "spots" because of affirmative action seems to miss a point. There are no "spots" for qualified white students; none of them receives a rejection letter stating their "spot" was given to another because of affirmative action. It is common knowledge that Ivy League schools and their like receive more "qualified applicants" than openings every year. Admissions decisions take many factors into consideration for each class. Also white students are not an injured class eligible for affirmative action under many court rulings on the subject. No one is entitled to admission to a private educational institution based on his or her own assessment of their qualifications, not even under affirmative action.
6
@J. Benedict-When I applied to a public local medical school, I was told specifically in the interview that I was "not culturally diverse enough". Additionally, a post-admissions workshop (as I did not get in) showed the points I would have received if I was female, hispanic, etc. For someone that was one spot away from getting in on the wait list, I most certainly knew the negative effect Affirmative Action had on me.
8
God bless you for stating the obvious. There is never a discussion of the qualified person of color that lost out to a white person. See Jewish people in the 50’s / 60s or Asians now. Funny how that always works...and by the by why is it always assumed the Black person is unqualified? My grades and scores were always in the 95-99%. I was used to hit a number when I would have more than met any race blind criteria.
1
In your responses below you state “the affirmative action extends only to blacks who (whether or not descendants of slaves) have been disadvantaged by the inequalities still in our society.”
The problem is that’s not how Affirmative Action is practiced by American universities today. The only thing admissions committees care about is whether the student can check the Black or Hispanic box on their application. Whether they experienced and overcame discrimination and/or economic hardship is irrelevant.
Like many, I strongly oppose Affirmative Action as it exists today. I would support a system of preferences for applicants who experienced economic, discriminatory, or other hardships. But that’s not how the present system of Affirmative Action works.
24
And just how would you show that? It is not possible. Ask Ben Carson or Clarence Thomas about that.
A suggestion I once heard for slavery reparations that I think makes a lot of sense and applies to this topic:
Everyone around the world, regardless of race, class or wealth may go to university (or trade school if they choose) fully funded. This is to be financed by governments everywhere with payments into a general fund and prior colonial perpetrator nations paying more into the kitty than all others. Do this for 30 years and we might get somewhere.
To the taxpayer zealots: you are correct, but somehow endless war is more palatable (profitable). Capitalism (or rather, it's beneficiaries) manages to have it's cake and eat it too somehow.
5
@harpla
Most students eligible for affirmative action preference are not descendants of slaves. Most are middle-class white students who have a parent, grandparent or great grandparent who immigrated to America for a Spanish speaking country. Blond, blue-eyed Hispanic actress Cameron Diaz went to Hollywood instead of college, but had she applied to college, she would have been eligible for affirmative action preference.
2
@harpla
The argument against slavery reparations is that African Americans whose ancestors were transported as slaves from Africa to the United States are much better off than the descendants of Africans whose ancestors were not transported as slaves to the United States.
2
Prof. Gutting, your efforts to weigh in on this topic are appreciated. I think the subject of Affirmative Action will always remain a highly divisive issue, one where people's feelings and emotions make it difficult for them to envision any change of their hearts. People also have implicit biases and privileges that make it difficult for them to empathize with realities of discrimination, because it has not affected their own lives. I think it's astounding that many who vehemently oppose Affirmative Action see no problem with legacy admissions or making space for top athletic recruits. I would like to think college admissions panels are not callous dream killers ,but instead thoughtful decision makers who understand the innumerable benefits of a diverse student body.
4
@S. May-Washington I think admission to colleges should be based on merit and not on the color of someone’s skin. If this country is serious about making sure that black people are well represented in all professions, we should start by making sure that all children regardless of color receive the same high quality education from kindergarten through high school. Affirmative action in college admission is a bad temporary “fix” on a far worse underlying problem that this country is unwilling to address.
2
Why does everyone keep arguing about who gets into Ivy League Colleges? Gates and Zuckerberg both quit Harvard to become financially successful and most successful people went to non-Ivy League schools just based on the numbers. America needs way more electricians than Harvard graduates. Is all the fuss because some segment of the American public is obsessed with their "status"? I think that might be the reason.
6
@Mr. Jones
Thank God said it. I had a good friend who was a Harvard Prof. He said he would prefer a strong student from most major state universities as a graduate student than a middling Harvard undergrad. Undergrad is a beginning not an end all.
3
@Mr. Jones You’re correct that higher education — particularly the elite kind — mostly acts as a signal to employers and others that you possess qualities such as intelligence and conscientiousness.
Unfortunately, this system isn’t going away any time soon. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates were able to succeed because they were extremely intelligent and driven, but not everyone will succeed without being able to use their Harvard degree for signalling purposes.
The Supreme Court has ruled that race and ethnic preferences are allowable only to achieve diversity. College campuses seem lacking in diversity only because we treat non-Hispanic white students as if they have no racial or cultural ancestry.
The simplest and fairest way to achieve diversity on college campuses would be to recognize the ethnicity of of all students instead of lumping the majority into the catch-all non-Hispanic white category. Instead of having just African American, Hispanic, Native Americans, Asian American, Pacific Islander and non-Hispanic white students, campuses would also have German American, Irish American, Italian American, Anglo American, French American, Dutch American, Polish American, Saudi American, Lebanese American, Jewish American, and Scotch-Irish American students, etc.
Students now considered minority students would be among the largest demographic on most campuses. For example, Hispanic Americans are not a minority. Hispanics are on the verge of becoming America’s second largest ethnic groups behind only German Americans, who they will probably surpassed by 2020 to become America’s largest ethnic group.
Universities could reach unprecedented levels of diversity simply by adding a more complete ethnicity checklist to their admission forms. Everyone agrees diversity enhances the learning experience, so what not take advantage of the tremendous boost in diversity an expanded ethnicity checklist would provide?
11
@William Case
I sense a Swiftian proposal here.
1
@C.D.M.
The University of Texas applies racial and ethnic preferences to increase diversity at its flagship Auston campus because non-Hispanic whites make up nearly 50 percent of students at UT-Auston. But at its El Paso campus, which us about 85 percent Hispanic, it is working to enhance its Hispanic "outreaches" progress, as if UTEP will be 100 percent diverse once it is 100-percent Hispanic. I think it is more Alice in wonderland than Lilliputian.
Some people may try to pretend that merit is an illusion, but brilliance speaks for itself. You may be able to continue to twist the concept of "equality" and "non-discrimination" into a system that discriminates against groups you prefer, but regardless of who is ultimately admitted to certain colleges, you can't deny the merits of actual intelligence, creativity, and work ethic.
Those bright minds who may have been cheated out of the opportunity to attend a more exclusive college will always outperform the lightweights who were rewarded for having the right complexion in the right time.
9
If, and I say if, you are going to have any affirmative action, it should be based solely on economics, given that family income is the greatest predictor of future success. There is absolutely no rational reason why minority applicants of wealthy families should be given admission preference, nor why non-minorities at the bottom of the economic ladder should be denied this advantage.
However, if you really want to fix the problem of college admissions, you must start much earlier, at the preschool or even toddler level. Knowledge is exponential, the more you have, the more you acquire. Thus a child of lower-income parents entering first grade is at a significant disadvantage compared to his wealthier peers, and this knowledge gap will only grow as the child progresses through school. Give this child a sound educational footing and the need for affirmative action will presumably disappear.
Bottom line . . . Hats off to Lebron James and his Akron school for truly addressing the issue.
12
@Robert Grauer
LJ isn't the first to open a school like this and he won't unfortunately be the last, because we don't see the value in doing what James and others are trying to do for all students.
I mean kids in Detroit sued the school district for the same reasons (for not being provided a quality education) and was told they have no constitutional right to a quality education. That decision is currently being appealed.
Curious how Professor Gutting would have felt if there had been AA when he was admitted to St Louis University, and his seat would have been given away to a lesser qualified student.
15
I would recommend the book the "Shape of the River," which, for me, made the strongest case for affirmative action--particularly, how the candidates who benefited from affirmative action returned to their communities and provided services (e.g. medical, legal, financial), that were sorely needed. Should add, that, having been an educator, somewhat familiar with testing and measurements, the differences in standardized test scores between affirmative action candidates and regular applicants, are a few points, which, in the real world of classrooms, is a meaningless difference--especially, when you consider the future societal benefits.
10
What is the difference between tax incentives for corporations and handicaps for groups?
Clearly there is a legal difference between the constitutionally-granted taxation power and the constitutionally-required equal protection of the laws -- but the mere existence of that tension is not a rationale for eliminating it.
The debate over the allegedly ethical nature of affirmative action, while ignoring the government's inherent interest in ensuring economic opportunity seems to somewhat miss the point.
What about the millions of young black teenagers who can't read and write, who aren't about to go to any college at all? Shouldn't society concentrate on helping them, rather than relatively affluent and educated segment of the population? Sending a few thousand smart teenagers to elite colleges is not going to help them.
24
Nice try Professor Gutting, but your rebuttals all amount to a poor excuse for robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Few people understand that "affirmative remedies" are not unique to anti-discrimination law. In many areas of the law, an appropriate remedy is one that both addresses past misconduct and prevents its recurrence. That was the thought process behind the original court-ordered affirmative action, which was imposed to remedy proven past discrimination. Things became much more complicated when affirmative action became a general mechanism for re-balancing societal scales and attempting to engineer preferred racial outcomes in the allocation of scarce societal resources.
Personally, I am trying to train myself to avoid the concept of "fairness" because it almost always amounts to some highly subjective way of altering naturally occurring outcomes. Virtually all of Professor Gutting's rebuttals acknowledge that he seeks to play God and in so doing victimizes some disfavored group. Yet he persists on the ground that his personal version of fairness is somehow morally superior.
Do we really wish to live in a society in which God-like supernumeraries of fairness are empowered to regulate human activity to this extent. I don't. Our society has made some serious mistakes regarding race, but we keep making it worse by seeking to remedy discrimination with more discrimination.
37
I worry about so many of the affirmative action programs because they are effectively just algorithms. And we have to meany algorithms controlling our lives and the prospects of our children and grandchildren being given the opportunity to study, learn and live productive lives.
I do believe in affirmative action. The kind of affirmative action where professors govern the admissions process, read applications, recognize the talents of applicants and work to level the playing field by admitting applicants who have overcome the obstacles of race and class and have the talent to achieve their educational goals and to succeed after graduation.
I do believe that affirmative action should not lower the academic standing of the institution. That is why the insight of professors who have taught students must be the gatekeepers in the admissions office.
1
"A first point is that the pervasive discrimination against blacks far outweighs this single act of discrimination".
That is not even a point. That is an obvious fallacy that somehow one injustice could be offset or corrected by another. When this so-called "point" is cited as a first one we know right away that we are dealing with a very low level of argument here. Anything but convincing it is.
42
@David
Ok. So what do you do about the current effect of who is getting into the top colleges? Have you spent any time understanding how "stacked" colleges are against anyone not a legacy or not in the know? Because THAT is the issue.
Eliminate affirmative action if you must--but take with it the track for some athletes and the track for legacy and big donors. You can't have welfare for the rich and the complain about welfare for the poor, sort of speak.
1
As a thirty year retired state government worker in California I was a cog in the wheel of affirmative action administration.
The consistent practice of racial affirmative action resulted in countless incidents of humiliation for both the racial minority candidate who was hired or promoted without being qualified as well as the qualified candidate who was passed over because they were not a targeted racial group.
As an office supervisor with hiring power I quickly began to replace the distortion of affirmative action with a merit system of hiring and promotion. This resulted in the return of a semblance of fairness. My own supervisor detested affirmative action and supported my decisions.
As an expat American retiree in France, I observe the French system attempt at fairness by refusing to count any minorities in the country making the government officially color blind. Their census questions do not include any racial or religious identity questions but hiring screening does include photos of the candidates.
The result is gross racial and ethnic discrimination based on these photos which must be submitted. Attempts by candidates to not provide photos or change their name to erase minority status are circumvented by the in person interview which can’t be faked. Therefore the French attempt at racial blindness is a failure and France is shamefully a very discriminatory country!
6
I can appreciate Affirmative Action for the descendants of African slaves brought to the United States and those who are primarily descended from Indigenous people. I also appreciate Affirmative Action for the disabled. As for those who are immigrants or descendants of immigrants (European, Asian, African post US civil war, Latin American, Middle Eastern, etc.) or middle class white women, sorry but you all have to sink or swim with the rest of us. Most of us have had a hard time in some generation in our present or past such as the Irish, Italian, Germans, Poles, Scot Irish from Appalachia, poor whites, etc. ; you or your family just need to figure it out and adapt.
4
Ironically, the readers' objections to his argument for affirmative action, as shared here by Gutting himself, are generally more persuasive than his published responses. He in fact admits his approach is 'a single act of discrimination' which is exactly what the argument anti-AF people have been using for years. Furthermore, what does he mean by 'blacks' - all people who appear to have dark skin or people of true sub-Saharan African heritage? This is vague at best and needs to be clarified - I've met many people from India that are studying and working here in the US that have very dark skin but no direct African heritage. Are they 'blacks' in Gutting's view?
Disadvantaging one demographic in favor of another is fundamentally wrong, even if it purports to benefit 'society' at large. It is, in fact, what brought us to the status quo in the first place. And this is where Gutting's argument ultimately fails.
"The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race".
22
@Steven Robinson
I agree that AF in as applied is "fundamentally wrong." I believe it will never be generally accepted and ultimately 'backfire.' Consider this scenario: will anyone EVER accept someone else cutting into line? Never, not after they followed the rules and waited for their turn.
4
@Ree Bennett
"will anyone EVER accept someone else cutting into line?"
Yes, we do. At an amusement park, it's called a speed pass (i.e.; if I spend a little more money on my ticket, I can "cut" in front of folks who didn't).
And appropriate for this discussion on "meritocracy", we allow people to cut into the line all the time if they have power or prestige (whether we're talking about legacy students getting extra points on admissions or someone getting the promotion because they knew the boss). However, if we think that brown folks have access to "cut" the line, well now there's a problem.
5
To me, it's pretty simple. I measure merit as how far you've advanced in a given amount of time, e.g., high school, vs where you get to in absolute terms in that same period of time.
As a simple thought experiment, if there are two students with the same high SAT scores and GPAs, but one came from a disadvantaged environment and one from an advantaged environment, who do you select? That's easy--the one who came from the disadvantaged environment. She clearly has more innate horse power than the student who had more advantages.
Of course, it gets a bit harder to compare students whose scores are not identical. But there is loads of data that could be analyzed on college performance as a function of high school raw scores and features of the students' backgrounds. Given modern statistical methods, it would not be difficult for top universities to build useful models.
We should take into account a variety of things about the student's relative advantages/disadvantages: the student's race, family status (e.g., single parent), family income and assets, income and wealth of the county the student lives in, racial profile of the county, etc. With careful analysis, even the affects of racism on black students could be quantified with respect to county income levels.
Really, using raw GPA and SAT as a measure of "merit" is ridiculous. To paraphrase: Just 'cause you're on third base, does not mean you hit a triple.
7
Talking from Europe,I think that the general approach to the problem could be different. In USA being poor is really difficult:bad schools in primis. This should be a priority: schools all over the world should be a priority!!! Schools MUST be good in order to improve the level of life of everybody. My feeling is that in USA rich people do not understand the importance of sharing this kind of benefit, which is an advantage for the whole Nation.
8
@Texas Liberal "Obvious explanation"??? Do you really not believe that growing up in an impoverished, unsafe environment with third-world, overcrowded, underfunded public schools might, just might, represent a serious obstacle to a child's ability to fully realize his or her intellectual capability before he or she finishes High School?
And do you really not know that red-lining and other long-term systemic racism has led to many of these dysfunctional environments being heavily populated by African-Americans?
Every individual receives a unique genetic endowment, but intelligence is primarily attributable to societal nurture.
You may want to consider that the "obvious explanation" you refer to has been posited throughout our history, in reference to the Irish, Italian, Asian, Eastern European and Hispanic immigrants who subsequently made enormous contributions to our society.
1
The only problem with Affirmative Action is that the loudest voices in the room seeking to characterize it are the misinformed voices in the room. Republicans merely don't like Affirmative Action because it doesn't favor their beloved demographic, affluent white men who don't need it. If it did, they'd be all for it. Unreasonable minds will NEVER understand the inequality that spawned the need for Affirmative Action nor the inequality that still very much exists that continues to make it necessary for future generations. Just look how the cards are stacked against minorities. The most exposure my coworkers get to blacks is via television. Unfortunately Hollywood's penchant for stereotyping blacks (e.g., over weight/unattractive black women and subject matter revolving around sports, music, gang/prison life, pimps, etc.) only adds to the flavor of reinforcing negative stereotypes and my coworkers can be led to believe the reason so few blacks are around is because they're simply no good. Affirmative Action is unfortunately still necessary, but it would be ever so nice for it to be implemented properly and have a chance to succeed without the loud ill-informed voices preventing forward motion.
25
@David Why is affirmative action an imperfect tool? Because when put into practice it leads to quotas which are against the law. If you want to see Affirmative action's future come to California. For decades Asian Americans here had complained that they were being short changed in UC college admissions. They not only argued that race-conscious policies were unfair but proved convincingly that they were victims. In 1996 voters amended the state constitution by voting for Prop 209, to prohibit state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, in public education. By law admission to UC colleges now had to be race neutral. Since Prop 209 passage African American graduation rates at Berkeley increased by 6.5%, & rose even more dramatically, from 26% to 52%, at UC San Diego. Prop 209 restored & reconfirmed the historic intention of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The basic and simple premise of Prop 209 is that every individual has a right, & that right is not to be discriminated against, or granted a preference, based on their race or gender. Since the number of available positions are limited, discriminating against or giving unearned preference to a person based solely, or even partially on race or gender deprives qualified applicants of all races an equal opportunity to succeed. It also pits one group against another & perpetuates social tension. Prop 209 has been the subject of many lawsuits but has withstood legal scrutiny. This public policy is no longer defensible.
20
@Bill Brown Unfortunately much of what you stated was predicated on the loud ill-informed voices I mentioned. I remember well Prop. 209. More importantly I remember much of the wrongheaded beliefs many spoke of denouncing Affirmative Action, as if it was little more than throwing unqualified blacks in classrooms and office cubicles - it's not. Affirmative Action will never make everyone equally happy, but to pretend this country will ever overcome centuries of oppression without Affirmative Action is to not fully grasp the extent of the problem. I sincerely wish it wasn't necessary, but as a black American who feels like a first in everything I do I can honestly tell you, it (or something like it that achieves the same end) is absolutely necessary still.
3
"How about White people who lose their spots?"
There's a simple answer to that: "Affirmative Action" has been in place for less-than-qualified White sons and daughters of the wealthy and well-to-do for 300 years. It's how a "C" student like George W. Bush got into Yale, how most of the Kennedys got into Harvard, and how all the Trumps got admitted to the University of Pennsylvania. It's called "Legacy Admissions" and it far out-strips, and has always out-stripped Affirmative Action for those who were not born to the privileged families.
Some of the prestige schools have as much as 20% legacy admission, and every one of those who don't otherwise meet the admission standards (like every single Trump) is equally denying a qualified White student a slot.
So get rid of Legacy Admissions and the "problem" of Affirmative Action admissions "using" a "White Slot" goes away!
2
@Dadof2 - legacy admissions tend to have the ability to pay full freight tuition, while an affirmative action admit will most likely require financial aid package/reduced tuition. Unfortunate, but true. College is big business, which enormous payrolls and expensive benefits that needed to be funded.
3
I too believe in affirmative action, but only to correct previous discrimination or current ones. Not to say right some wrong from the far past. Almost no college is discriminating today, in fact they are giving preferences based on criteria not related to performance. School is to become educated, not a social experiment, at least public schools should be that. If some private schools want to experiment with social engineering they are free to do so.
2
The problem with this argument is it takes the lack of merit as an excuse for moving even further away from it. Colleges should stop taking legacies and football players and also stop taking people on the basis of race. It isn't all that hard.
4
Group equality in the US is a nonsensical goal because the composition of groups is not random but is highly shaped by immigration law. In practice, the data shows that affirmative action has little impact on white enrollment and is mostly about transferring spots from Asian-Americans to other minorities. But Asian-Americans are overrepresented at elite schools relative to their overall population in the United States not because they have any advantages in society but simply because it is much easier for high-skilled Asians to immigrate here than low-skilled ones. The overrepresentation is actually a sign of the discrimination faced by Asians in immigration which keeps the Asian-American denominator artificially low. If we kicked all African-Americans out of the country and only let the ones who would qualify for a student, employment, or other merit-based visa back in, you bet African-Americans would be highly overrepresented in elite schools too. But no one in their right mind would suggest that this shows African-Americans were advantaged; quite the contrary.
Affirmative action should be individualistic, i.e. look at each applicant’s individual circumstances and determine if they as an individual had to overcome abnormally more obstacles than others.
6
I support laws which guarantee equal protections for all races and ethnicities. when legislation favors one race there will eventually be problems. Affirmative action and other race-based assistance programs are racism in sheep's clothing.
15
The problem with meritocracy is proving that it indeed rewards merit. I cannot imagine a worse system than one where the participants believe merit is rewarded when, in fact, it is not. I think that’s where we are now. We somehow think that AA or some other formula will allow the proper reward for merit to emerge. While I believe that AA is generally a good thing, we should not be fooled into thinking that it is feeding into some kind of functioning meritocracy.
At least in the bad old days we knew, right off, that favoritism was a fact of life. Those who were rewarded were provided opportunity for who they were, not necessarily for how well they performed. Of course with the advantages they had (wealth, social standing, education) they were in a position to perform well enough to keep their status.
So, I differ with the fundamental thesis. I don’t think we live in a meritocracy so we’re just fiddling with the knobs of privilege. That, to me, is what the fight is about and why it is so visceral and divisive.
1
@Phil Perhaps I am incorrect, but a privilege is something you get automatically due to some criteria. So if a legacy student gets an advantage that is a privilege, if my relative with a very high IQ, great preparation, a lot of drive, and family who gives him many advantages performs better that is merit. So there is almost no privilege (if there was white privilege no whites would be poor). What exists is residual advantage to those groups that are considered disadvantaged, that needs to go.
1
@vulcanalex. Your logic is faulty. The fact that there are poor white people does not prove that white privilege does not exist. Look at the rates of incarceration, average wealth, the quality of schools, and life expectancy of white people against others and what do you conclude? Clearly something is going on and unless you subscribe to some sort of hard to prove and complex genetic argument you are fooling yourself. I conclude that it is the result of discrimination and racism and until that is repaired there can be no general assumption of reward based on merit in our society.
1
I lost faith in the meritocracy on my first day in grad school. A professor showed up to a welcoming barbecue for new graduate.students. Over cornbread and beans, he pontificated on how women who get As on physics exams don't understand physics. Instead they've managed to learn the answers by rote.
There is no process consistent with the laws of physics that allows a person to learn by rote the solutions to an exam that is still in their future light cone. So he was basically arguing that women use some kind of faster than light supernatural power to cheat on physics exams. This man was responsible for grading exams and supervising a research team. He rendered the concept of meritocracy in physics into a sad tragic joke. As did the people who hired him and unleashed him on the women students.
Affirmative action is necessary, because professors like that don't just suddenly change their ways.
11
@Patricia So one idiotic professor is the total answer. I know something about Physics, and that professor surely is not competent or he is in some other field and just commenting on something he knows nothing about. And how would AA address this at all, better to report him to the administration and get him either fired or adusted.
10
@vulcanalex This happened at Caltech, where he was a tenured professor and the head of a large magnetic monopole research program. Thee faculty members witnessed tjis verbal attack and did nothing. By the time I finished my thesis. he'd been made department chair. His ugly views seemed to be supported by the instition that hired him. Because they never did anything, and they even promoted him.
You cannot fire people like that. I have never heard of any professor even being reprimanded for things like that.
They are embedded in the system.
I graduated from high school in NYS in 1960.
At that time NYS had a scholarship program.
Seniors took a special scholarship exam.
Each county depending on population had a certain number of scholarships.
The highest scorers on the exam won but the scholarship had to be used at a NYS college [public or private].
I won one.
I lived in a rural county.
I'm sure there were students who attended NYC schools [the NYC schools were then still excellent because the high quality teachers who became teachers during the Depression had not yet retired] who scored higher than I on the exam were not awarded scholarships.
Was this allocation of scholarships by county fair.
Was it fair or was it politically motivated.
I think it was appropriate.
We should not penalize students just because they attended an academically weak high school.
That is different from today's AA where the only thing that matters is skin pigmentation.
9
I am the second generation of college graduates in my family. I still feel as if social mobility may take an ugly turn for me at any time. I was an unabashed tiger mom to my kids. They are great kids and they worked very hard in high school. I reminded them often that some kids did not have whip wielding cheerleading mom, a quiet comfortable house to work in, cable internet, a live in proofreader and a live in college counselor. They got into excellent public universities. They didn't get into the ivies. They resent the rich kids that got in because of their parents financial contributions. They do not resent the poor kids and kids of color that got in because to even be in the running is a massive acheivement.
6
I strenuously oppose AA,
and disagree with Gutting's justifications for AA on nearly every point, especially the point about group rights versus individual rights.
But at least Gutting has laid out the pros and cons,
point-by-point.
That's more the can be said of most proponents of AA.
27
People helped by AA today were not discriminated against.
People hurt by AA today did not discriminate against anyone.
Why should a black student from an affluent family be given preference over a white student from a poor family.
71
@david That's a pretty stunning claim. That the people helped by AA today "aren't discriminated against." If a university has the mandate to “educate the leaders of tomorrow” then it is incumbent upon them to take a strong cross section of the community who rise to at least the MINIMUM level of proficiency required. Only when we talk about black and brown people do we insist that they only deserve a spot if they are at the MAXIMUM level of proficiency, not within the range of proficiency for that school. Is a person who suffers from historic trauma who got a 34 on their ACT truly less deserving than a person with every advantage who got a 36? Why don’t we think it unfair when a flautist from Kansas with a lower score gets a place in school, or they bring in students with lower scores to play golf, crew and LaCrosse? Why aren't you angry that the white LaCrosse player displaced a white student?
I always said that Obama was the argument FOR affirmative action. When he was elected many said “he only got into college because of affirmative action.” Regardless of public policy preferences, if you truly believe that Obama didn’t deserve a place in college, although he clearly maximized every opportunity, that’s why we still need affirmative action. Not because of black and brown people being undeserving, but rather because of the continuation of the belief in black inferiority by whites. The reason that affirmative action was required in the first place.
10
@david
I agree with you, David.
I am fine with giving preferences to students from under-performing poor schools and neighborhoods - directly addressing social-economic disadvantage that would indirectly benefit more black students, but why should a black kid from a rich school with two well educated parents get an advantage over a white kid in a poor intercity school with a parent in jail?
9
Let's be clear.
I am only writing where the only criterion is race.
I have never said test scores should be the only criterion.
Certainly account should be taken of the quality of high school an applicant attended. A student from an affluent suburb school will have higher SAT scores than a student from a weak inner city or rural school.
If a college wants a flautist or an athlete or wants to have geographic diversity that is their business.
The question is should a black flautist be automatically given preference over a white flautist etc.
That legacy applicants [mostly who are white] are given preference does not mean that poor whites should be discriminated against. These poor whites are not responsible for legacy preferences.
Affirmative action buys off affluent blacks but does very little to help poor blacks.
Improving the status of poor blacks means changing to the economic system in this country which would lower the wealth of rich whites who do not want their wealth decreased.
Black unemployment is still do high. Stimulative policies would cause inflation and the rich do not want that. So it is easier to victimize poor whites who are not responsible for the high black unemployment.
Trump has demagogued this issue.
6
College admissions and hiring is certainly not a meritocracy. It seems to be a form of theater, with a director who keeps changing the play because he or she thinks the play, as written, needs to be fixed and lines reassigned because the mix of "voices" is never quite right.
This is all a rather senseless Kabuki. Fix our economic system, eliminate the vast wealth inequality in our country, work to create decent work for all, give real help to those in trouble and with health needs, and frankly no one will care who gets into Harvard.
Admitting a black student to an Ivy does more or less nothing for systemic racial economic inequality in our country; that student, if successful, will simply move into the same gated communities of their white peers, and will soon enough be voting for Republicans and tax cuts along with them.
I do not think Dr. Gutting actually understands how tokenism works. It is, and always will be, a sop to those who hope for broader change. Affirmative Action is red herring.
That is, if we want to talk about real change. Do we? Dare we?
22
@pjc Fix our economic system?? First it really does not need any fixing, and what process would you use? Now I would be fine with me in charge, not so much if you were. The market works best, improve the way the market works, not anything else.
2
Let me come at this from the other end. When my daughter was applying to colleges this fall, she specifically chose schools that would have diverse student bodies. She sees diversity as an inherent value of a campus and education. Therefore she is also willing to accept that she may not get into a college when a minority student with a lower gpa might. She is willing to put her money where her mouth is and I couldn’t be prouder of her. That tells me she is going to do great at any college and more importantly that she is an exceptional human being.
14
@JA Great for her, but for many college is an investment for the future of work. So if your choice is a school that will get you a great education and a job or one with a more diverse population many should take the one that best prepares you for a job. The rest can be done in other ways that spending a lot of money on college.
2
@vulcanalex,
I’m not sure if you misunderstood this: we think diversity is what leads to a superior education all other factors being equal, that includes preparation for a career/job.
3
@vulcanalex
the elite colleges and universities we are talking about are not teaching a person how to do a specific job, per se. They are teaching young adults to be serious thinkers and leaders. They will graduate and be sought after for high positions in the arts, government, and business. Having an emotionally mature appreciation for diversity of thought, appearance, culture, and faith is a key part of the preparation. That elite school admissions seek to build a diverse student body is part of their mission should be no surprise, and is not adverse to their goal of putting forth the most prepared graduates.
2
I grew up in the 1970’s San Francisco Bay Area as an African-American with a lot of Asian friends.
Whenever this subject comes up these days, my friends always make some version of the following remark: “White people seem to think we've forgotten about the Chinese Exclusion Act."
As history says, after these twenty-first century folk, outraged by the dastardly unfairness of the college system, have gotten their way, they will decide just as their ancestors did when the transcontinental railroad was finished, that they have no more use or sympathy for Asian students.
14
This is the kind of the debate is necessary for the topic of affirmative action. But, it's very funny that people are only concerned about affirmative action at Ivy league colleges, public ivys, but not other institutions. Affirmative action is the attempt of rectify past discrimination but the argument is not considered that...it's about self preservation... I worked hard so I deserve to get into harvard..not true. Most black and brown kids don't think that way when applying.. We don't live in a meritocracy. The same people attack race based(although where a person comes from is a part of affirmative action) know that attacking athletes and legacy applicants wouldn't change anything...it's sad. Even if it becomes class based, it would be black and brown and poor whites.
4
Professor Gutting ignores the most significant argument against affirmative action - it's bad for its beneficiaries. Any black person admitted to an elite university is automatically assumed to be less qualified than his/her peers. That may or may not be a correct assumption but as long as racial preferences exist it will be the operative assumption - thought by blacks, as well as whites, and Asians.
The other issue is that it doesn't address the real issues in the black community. Malia Obama may or may not have needed a racial preference to get into Harvard (we'll never know) but I can assure you that inner-city blacks from Chicago aren't benefitting from racial preferences at Harvard.
58
The two basic purported benefits of racial preferences are weak: Race is not a good proxy for disadvantage, nor for students who are likely to provide their classmates with insights they would otherwise never have. The Supreme Court has rejected the former justification anyhow.
But even if you think there is something to these purported benefits, they are overwhelmed by the costs of racial discrimination: It is personally unfair, passes over better qualified students, and sets a disturbing precedent in allowing racial discrimination; it creates resentment; it stigmatizes the so-called beneficiaries; it mismatches blacks and Latinos with institutions, setting them up for failure; it fosters a victim mindset, removes the incentive for academic excellence, and encourages separatism; it compromises the university's academic mission; it creates pressure to discriminate in grading and graduation; it breeds hypocrisy within the school and encourages a scofflaw attitude among officials; it papers over the real social problem of why so many African Americans and Latinos are academically uncompetitive; and it requires states and schools to decide which racial and ethnic groups will be favored and which ones not, and how much blood is needed to establish group membership – all of which is untenable as America becomes an increasingly multiracial, multiethnic society and as individual Americans are themselves more and more likely to be multiracial and multiethnic.
84
As someone who sued the Canadian Government and the National Film Board in 1994 over our countries affirmative action program (Employment Equity), Rejected white male takes NFB to court,
https://newspaperarchive.com/winnipeg-free-press-jan-22-1996-p-1/
I found both columns by Professor Gutting very informative and also very telling.
From my perspective, the main problem with affirmative action has always been about compensation for those who lose out. Unfortunately, Professor Gutting's response to this issue of compensation is less than adequate.
For too many academic or political activists today, they ignore the reality of their own injustice perpetrated upon society in the name of doing good. Thus, the real issue that clouds the issue of affirmative action, is in fact a concept that Professor John Rawls called 'fairness.'
If I lose out on something, in an unjust way, I should be compensated. Thus the reason why I sued the NFB. Now, not everyone has a winning court case like me.
However, if affirmative action is too be implemented in such a narrow way as professor Gutting states, at the Ivy League level and for one certain group, then my thinking is that those students who do lose out to this program must then be financially compensated.
It is well known, that these Ivy League schools have millions in endowment funds. If they are so interested in the importance of diversity, and they are flush with cash...
compensating those who lose out would be fair.
22
What is the percentage of white players in the NBA perhaps we should have a quota system that insures only 13 percent of the NBA is black to or a 50 50 male to female ratio to match the demographics of the US sounds silly right. exactly ,whoever is the best should get the job or position regardless of race sex or whatever criteria you want to use. Stop use slavery as an excuse I came to this country legally in1971 never none in my family ever owned a slave so why should my kids have opportunities taken from them because they are white
73
@EAH
I’m pretty sure you don’t need to play for the NBA to ensure one’s future. The same cannot be said about college.
5
@Gwe I am absolutely sure you don't need to go to college to ensure your future. Plenty of opportunity for trades people. And I seem to remember a very wealthy person who dropped out of college. Not everyone is college material, but everyone is human and with hard work can ensure their future. Perhaps not the wealthy future you see, but a good one.
7
@EAH I will never forget the old eastern European woman who refused to rent me an apartment because of my skin. No one in her family ever enslaved anyone either. My family built this country, yet she came here and felt perfectly comfortable discriminating against me, despite my excellent education and employment status. It wasn't worth the effort to pursue the matter in court. "Winning" would give me the opportunity to enrich her. This woman benefited from the history of this country, and whether you want to admit it or not, I am certain that your family does also.
4
Another reason for affirmative action -
It's well established that humans and the institutions they form are prone to subconscious discrimination against minority groups, often to harmful degrees. So, for example, even if the minorities in a class of college applicants were equal to the rest of the class, the admissions process would be unlikely to produce truly meritocratic results. And over time, such non-meritocratic results would feedback on themselves, leading to greater discrimination and less meritocracy. Therefore tools, such as affirmative action, are necessary to encourage institutions to look for their inherent biases and modify processes to reduce them.
7
@Andrew So use computers and mostly objective criteria to address your issue. I think that for educated and trained people such bias can be identified and eliminated without AA.
3
It sounds like Professor Gutting is calling for major cutbacks in affirmative action, since many of the current systems beneficiaries are those least harmed by American history, such as those of immigrant stock, the affluent, the privately educated, and the biracial, such as Barack Obama.
As the NYT reported in 2004:
"While about 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates were black, Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies department, pointed out that the majority of them -- perhaps as many as two-thirds -- were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples.
"They said that only about a third of the students were from families in which all four grandparents were born in this country, descendants of slaves. Many argue that it was students like these, disadvantaged by the legacy of Jim Crow laws, segregation and decades of racism, poverty and inferior schools, who were intended as principal beneficiaries of affirmative action in university admissions."
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more-blacks-but-which-ones.html
53
This is a fantastic find and belies the complex truth about who is counted as a minority
Elite universities now use the term "underrepresented minorities" as a clever ploy to boost their diversity numbers. Are transgender students counted as "underrepresented"? This expansion of the term minority is now stretched far beyond its original purpose.
Cliche as it may be, we need diversity of thought.
When I went to college I had met exactly zero white people who thought Abortion was murder (lucky me!). Having a kid on my freshman floor who literally prayed for my salvation struck me as bizarre and weird but he and others opened my eyes to a huge swath of the country raised quite differently than me.
Most people, myself included, are fine with colleges saying they want a diverse student body even if that means letting in kids with lower scores. What people don't like is colleges pretending the system is a fair shake for everyone, and represents some high moral calling, because it certainly is not.
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@Steve Sailer Those West Indian and African kids had *less* opportunity in their earlier years, in many ways, than the Af-Am kids with 4 American-born grandparents (perhaps with a few exceptions).
Maybe there simply is a need for a certain group here in the U.S. to make some changes in its culture and its child-raising practices.
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@Arturo Or like a famous not "Native American" for another example.
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It's not surprising that many Americans see affirmative action as unnecessary, undeserved or even reverse discrimination. And why not? That's what theyv'e been told.
But what they haven't been told is that affirmative was originally conceived as a re-balancing for past AND ongoing discrimination.
That made easy sense in 1965 when President Johnson first introduced the policy. The Civil Rights Act had just been passed and the Voting Rights Act was still under consideration.
But because of the massive resistance that school desegregation met Johnson knew that formal equality was quite different from actual equality.
But since then we have been fed a steady diet, mostly from the court, declaring that formal, legal equality and actual equality were one and the same. Here I use equality to mean equal opportunity. That is members of all races being able to navigate through society free from racism.
While anyone who views police conduct on cell phone videos knows we are far from that point, many still argue that affirmative action has no valid legal or social basis.
The answer to this argument lies in Brown v. Board of Ed. The district court found that discrimination, racism, imposed harm on black children. Those kids didn't know the difference between de jure or defacto discrimination. But they knew they were relegated to a subordinate place in society place in society because of their race.
As long as those conditions continue, then so should affirmative action.
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@drspock I agree but those conditions are already addressed especially in college. Just how long do you think AA should be applied for past and now very reduced discrimination? Until there is no discrimination anywhere? That would be forever, thus AA in most cases is obsolete.
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@drspock Affirmative Action was first introduced by JFK, in Executive Order 10925, signed on 6 Mar 1961.
Affirmative action has hurt colleges. College degrees mean very little to employers now. In many cases, top companies are requesting college entrance exam scores and even administering their own tests during the application process, because they don’t trust that top colleges are turning out the most qualified people.
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@Mark I do not believe top companies are administering their own tests during the application process because they don't trust that top colleges are turning out the most qualified people. Google the SCOTUS case Griggs v. Duke Power from 1971. What you are suggesting just might be unconstitutional, so I don't believe top companies General Counsel would allow that risk to be taken. Try again.
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@jerry brown Where was it indicated that top colleges were the target here?? And why are those even relevant, they educate only a small number of individuals compared to the rest of the colleges.
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@jerry brown
"As part of our recruiting process you may be asked to take a brief test, depending on the role for which you apply. The test you take may be conducted either in person or online and will typically focus on different aspects of your knowledge or abilities, such as technical or coding skills, or problem solving skills.?
https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/interviewing
Why should African Americans be given exclusive access to affirmative action? There is no common sense reason for this. We should strive to recognize all disadvantages and weigh them appropriately. Admissions should be made fair for everyone and the perceived difficulty of this task should not dissuade us.
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@Evan Or better not look at any "disadvantages" and allow competition. Thus those best capable will get the top spots, the others can get an education from say community college to start. Nothing wrong with that I did it so can they.
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@Evan
Blacks have a unique experience in their history with slavery and the Jim Crow-attitudes that still pervade our society. That's not necessarily an argument for AA, but it's an argument for saying blacks deserve "more AA treatment" than any other group should AA policies be implemented. (Still the question remains, Why should Denzel Washington's kids be assumed to have had a tougher time of things than a white working class kid?)
I frankly don't see why, say, the child of an illegal immigrant should receive special treatment. The parents sneaked into this country without playing by the rules. Now their children should enjoy special benefits because of their last name?
I see the good Dr. Gutting resisted the challenge to produce a simple Valid and Sound argument supporting his primary thesis.
As my ol' Philo prof used to say - if you can't structure your argument using basic sentential logic then you really don't have an argument.
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Dr. Gutting never answers the question, For how long? When would he say affirmative action preferences are no longer needed? I assume he would say, when there is complete equality in society, when black incomes are the same as white incomes, when there are as many black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and partners in Wall Street Law firms as is proportional to the number of blacks living in the US. Of course that day will never happen - it has never happened in any society ever in the history of the world - so what he is actually calling for is a permanent regime of racial spoils like there is in Malaysia.
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@Douglas Let me propose a length of time for AA. Given roughly 200 years of slavery and another century of Jim Crow, I think we can spend the next 300 years doing Affirmative Action, and then take another look. Yeah, that's about right. Oh, wait! We've already done about 50 years. OK. The next 250 years, then. Re-assess in 2270. We can continue the discussion then, Dougster.
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@Jack Walsh Jim Crow??? Surely not in New York or outside of the south. Same with slavery, and how is slavery in this country 200 years either. Bad math, time for AA in general is way past especially in college.
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@Jack Walsh Actually, slavery has existed for thousands of years. Slaves brought to the Americas were first sold into slavery by fellow Africans - white slavers only had to arrive at slave ports to easily buy their "product . Since this practice went on for hundreds of years, Jack, by your logic and math AA should have been abolished a long time ago.
I am hispanic. Growing up I knew nothing about anything. The night before my SATs, my parent's made me stay up all night babysitting my sister who was having a slumber party. They thought, as did I, that the SAT was some meaningless standardized test that our guidance counselor had suggested. We had zero idea what it meant and for that reason, I will carry my SAT score with me to my grave.
Fast foward. I miraculously got into college, precisely because of affirmative action. I managed to do well because I was smart, SAT score aside. I graduated. I read a lot about business on the side, including books that detailed how to behave in the workplace. I began to climb and now my children are privileged children with every advantage one could want, including parents who pay attention and understand the game.
Those same children of which I speak will also qualify for affirmative action. I know for a fact that it's hardly fair. I know there are white children with blue eyes in rural communities not as wealthy as the one i live in who will lack advantages my kids now have in abundance.
Fair? Heck. No.
So with that in mind, I think affirmative action should be executed with a 3 point system that takes into account many factors including ethnicity but metered with economic considerations. After all, wealth is the biggest predictor of future success which means poverty begets the opposite.
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.... and to be clear, our family would have qualified as middle class. My disadvantage was cultural more than racial or economic. My parents were immigrants and since either graduated college they and I had no idea what we were doing.
That’s why it needs to be a nuanced system that includes whites at the bottom of the economic barrel. It won’t be a perfect system but it would improve on the current problems.
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Applicants who are the first of their family to attend college are already given a preference in admissions. There is absolutely no reason to give an ethnic preference on top of that as you are suggesting. This is racism pure and simple.
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@Gwe Your post is eloquent and your proposal is very reasonable. But I fear that a certain minority in the US will resist it because it considers factors other than race, and therefore may not get them what they want just for the demanding.
If their rate of admissions is not a certain %, the formula will be racist. If choices of majors aren't in a certain distribution, the departments will be racist. If the grades aren't equal, the classes will be racist (even if, as in some classes, exams are submitted without names, just ID numbers). And so on.
We've conditioned African-Americans to assert this, and whites to blame themselves for everything, over and over. And what has it given us? The working class that voted for Johnson and Obama has turned to Trump, and the nation is more divided than ever. It is hard to feel hopeful.
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What a shock to discover that white readers never run out of reasons to oppose affirmative action for non-whites (particularly for blacks) and defend to their cores the notion of "merit." Whose merit? Well...
In New York, several specilized high schools admit freshmen based solely on an admission test ("merit"). So, today, the student populations at Bronx Science, Stuyvesant & Brooklyn Tech are more than of 60 percent Asian. At UCLA and Berkeley, the percentage is inching above 45 percent. At Stanford and MIT, above 25 percent. Apparently, Asians, like whites, have lots of "merit."
As those numbers rise--when the NYC high schools become 80 percent Asian, and the prestige colleges become 60 percent Asian--I think we can safely predict that the definition of "merit"--invented by white, refined by whites, defended by whites--will be subject to change.
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@camorrista
You realize that Asians are 'non-white?
And many of those Asian admits come from poor families and many are first generation Americans who have none of the benefits ascribed to rich whites?
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@camorrista I hope not, what I would like is that anybody who wants those places works harder, prepares better and competes. Like the market says you should, or if you don't want those places that is also fine, plenty of other great options to get an education. You sound like a racist to me.
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@SteveRR,
That may be true but their ancestors weren’t ripped from their homeland and dragged abroad in chains. And unlike African Americans who were not able to build generational wealth for over 250 years, immigrants can escape poverty in one generation.
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the number one beneficiaries of affirmative action for unqualified applicants who have unearned admission: legacies
#2: athletes
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@true patriot,
legacy admission rates can be quite high- 34% at Harvard. At least athlete pools are separate from general admission.
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@true patriot Do you have any evidence of legacies? I would bet they are not that unqualified. Now athletes in some sports, especially male ones I totally agree with and there is plenty of evidence.
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@true patriot
The way to test your points is easy. Look at the exiting academic numbers on students. For years conservatives have pointed out that weakest exiting achievements are amongst recipients of affirmative action admissions.
Affirmative action is more pervasive and problematic than even many of its critics realize.
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