A
DUBIOUS EXPEDIENCY: HOW RACE PREFERENCES DAMAGE HIGHER EDUCATION
(New
York, etc. 2022)
Edited
by GAIL HERIOT and MAIMON SCHWARZSCHILD
Review
by Hugh Murray
This
is a collection of essays on a narrow, but important topic:
affirmative action in higher education. There are overlaps as the
different authors analyze the policy from different aspects on campus
and reactions to it by the general society. A main thrust is the
contention that affirmation action results in a mismatch at
top-flight universities of academically weaker, minority students
with much stronger white ones. This harms the black students. There
is a similar concern about Hispanic students. One chapter details
the new cultural atmosphere on many campuses, while another describes
growing Asian opposition to affirmative action (hereafter, AA). As
part of the current Zeitgeist in academia, there is little discussion
of the effect of AA's discrimination against white males, who in the
new WOKE era are to shut up, listen, (and take whatever the others
decide).
John
Ellis in the Slippery Slope chapter relates how he, a university dean
at the dawning of AA, was encouraged to accept Federal funds for a
program of outreach to minority students. He thought it a superb
idea as the federal money allocated to this program would allow the
university to spend more money on its traditional programs. However,
soon it was revealed that many of the minority students recruited
under the program lacked basic skills and were having difficulties
and doing poorly in classes. There was now mounting pressure not to
disappoint, to hire tutors, and to speak with professors who might be
more sympathetic (and lower their standards). The Federal Government
was paying, but changing the university's quality of education, and
forcing more hiring of diversity staff, as well as more recruitment
of lesser qualified minorities. The newer minority staff became a
lobby inside the university administration to press for ever more
recruitment, retention, hiring, and the concomitant lowering of
standards further. After some years of this, Ellis came to the
conclusion that not only did he oppose AA, but he now also opposed
any special outreach to recruit minorities, for “the one removes
any defense against the other.”(18) Once you lower academic
standards for one, inevitably you must lower them to continue the
spiral downward process.
In
the next chapter Gail Heriot reveals the source of the book's title.
By the 1970s, AA was established as policy at many colleges, and the
U. of California Davis had devised its plan on admissions: 84
openings were admitted according to the best qualifications, while 16
were set aside for “disadvantaged” applicants. In university
liberal NewSpeak, disadvantaged translates as racial minority. A
white applicant, Allan Bakke was rejected, though he came very close
to making the merit based 84. Nevertheless, he believed he had
performed better than the minority hopefuls, and sued the university
to gain admittance alleging he was the victim or racial
discrimination. Bakke was the son of a postman and a school teacher.
He had served in Vietnam as a medic, and had volunteered at local
emergency rooms at night. He wanted to become a doctor. Bakke sued
the university, won in the lower courts, and UC Davis appealed to the
California Supreme Court. In 1976 the California high court decided
6-1 and a liberal wrote the decision, Judge Stanley Mosk. Many
assumed that the university had won the case. However, Mosk ruled in
favor of Bakke and against the university, because to rule in favor
of AA “would represent a retreat in the struggle to assure that
each man and woman shall be judged based on individual merit alone.”
It would “sacrifice principle for the sake of a dubious
expediency”(20) By ruling against AA for minorities Judge Mosk
became the subject of denunciations, protestors screaming outside his
office window in the court, and mobs shouting him down when he spoke
on a campus.
However,
the case did not end there. UC Davis appealed to the US Supreme
Court, and in 1978 that court ruled on the case too. The Supreme
Court ruled in a very split, complex decision – 4 Justices affirmed
the lower courts and Bakke's right to be enrolled, and rejected the
racial discrimination inherent in AA. Four others quite disagreed
and upheld the university's racial favoritism for blacks and
minorities that permitted discrimination against the white applicant.
One Justice, Louis Powell, Jr. found the Cal Davis AA policy too
inflexible, and he therefore found it unConstitutional. So with the
4 conservative justices on board with this part of his decision,
Powell had a majority, and consequently Bakke must be admitted.
However, if the university could propose a more flexible manner to
give a better chance to minorities, that would be Constitutional.
Justice Powell opined that with a flexible admissions approach, AA
would be legal because it bestows the advantages of “diversity,”
on both black and white students. They all gain from learning in a
diverse atmosphere, and to achieve this goal through AA, everyone
gains. On this part of his decision, Powell lost the votes of the 4
conservatives, but gained the 4 liberal justices, so his entire
decision was affirmed 5-4, with different majorities for different
parts of his decision. Therefore, it is permissible to discriminate
against some (who might have better credentials) in order to achieve
a diverse student body which will benefit all.
It
is noteworthy how this Justice, and others to follow, dislike a
simple, obvious and mechanical AA formula for discrimination against
whites. Perhaps, if the formula becomes known, it is too easy to see
how unfair it is in traditional terms (it is outright racial
discrimination.) In 2003, when the Supremes next took up the AA
issue, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the majority upholding
AA. She too objected to too rigid formulae, and sought nebula
evaluations so each group would achieve a “critical mass” on
campus. Chief Justice Rehnquist, in dissent, asked why the “critical
mass” for blacks was so much larger than that for Native Americans.
He observed that the critical mass of students in both cases was
quite like a quota for each group (but of course the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 had made quotas illegal). “Critical mass,”
“holistic” assessments, or Harvard's evaluations of Asian's
inferior personality traits, are all performed behind the thick ivy
university walls of secrecy but their purpose is to arrive at the
proper quotas in admissions using whatever discrimination against
whatever race serves their “diversity” goal.
While
Heriot rightly discusses the significance of the Bakke case, she
nowhere mentions a comment by Justice Harry Blackmun, one of the 4
who outright supported U Cal Davis and its AA policy. However,
Blackmun did write: that this decision was a “regrettable but
necessary stage of 'transitional inequality'”, hoping it would end
“within a decade at the most.”(The Civil Rights Era, Hugh
Davis Graham, p.472) Did AA end in 1988? In 2003 Justice O'Connor,
who authored the majority decision upholding AA also wrote that she
hoped the policy would end within 25 years.
Heriot
writes that Powell's decision gave the green light to anti-white
discrimination so long as performed in the name of “diversity,”
and universities, government agencies, and corporations joined the
diversity crusade. What were some of the results? Heriot fails to
mention the case spotlighted by the New York Times Magazine
(July 2, 1995 by Nicholas Lemann). To deflect growing opposition to
AA, Lemann sought to bolster its importance by contrasting the
careers of 2 doctors: Allan Bakke, who had originally been denied
admission to U Cal Med School, and Patrick Chavis, a black applicant,
who though doing less well on objective examinations, and receiving
lower grades, was admitted to that university through its special
program for the disadvantaged. Lemann reported the young Chavis was
indeed disadvantaged: the son of a single mom, he grew up poor. But
Chavis pressed forward, even if he did not get as many A's as Bakke.
Even after graduation Chavis received a Master's in Public Health
from UCLA. He served the poor black community of Compton, and worked
with young mothers and those expecting. In the magazine a picture
showed him holding a new born he had just delivered. By contrast the
white Bakke was an anesthetist working in a white area of the Middle
West; a pedestrian practice by a pedestrian physician. So, even
without the higher credentials of Bakke, Chavis, through AA admission
to Med School, provided a public service to the community that went
beyond just being another doctor. The black AA recipient paid back
to the community in a way Bakke did not, and probably could not.
That is why AA is necessary, for the good of all communities and for
the good of the nation. This is why the AA candidate outshines the
one chosen on mere merit. That was the point of the article.
Lemann
was not alone in making this point. Soon after Tom Hayden, the main
founder of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) who had become an
elected politician in California, wrote a similar article in the
leftist magazine, The Nation. Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy
was informing a Senate Committee about the advantages of AA, as seen
in the careers of Bakke and Chavis. In 1996 not only were several
Republican candidates for President openly declaring AA unfair, one
Gov. Pete Wilson of California, worked with Ward Connerly, a black
member of the U Cal Board of Regents, to place the issue before the
people. An amendment to the state's constitution to repeal AA in
California state universities and agencies wiykd be in the ballot in
the November 1996 election. The usual left forces rallied against
this ballot initiative, and Chavis's name and service was invoked in
the campaign to save AA. As what usually happens when voters can
choose, AA was defeated, the amendment for equal rights passed, and
the pro-AA academics had to retreat to their faculty lounges to
scheme up other ways to discriminate against white males.
Things
changed in 1997. A short, powerful description is in Coloring the
News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism,
by William Mc Gowan, (see especially pp. 1-4) In those few pages Mc
Gowan tells more of the story of Dr. Patrick Chavis, a black admitted
to U Cal Davis through AA the same time as the white Bakke. Mc Gowan
adds information beyond the scope of the New York Times
article: “On June 19, 1997, the Medical Board of California
suspended his [Chavis's] license to practice medicine...unable to
perform some of the most basic duties...guilty of gross negligence
and incompetence in the cases of three patients – one of whom had
died -...” I urge all to read some of the details in the McGowan
book of the horrors Dr. Chavis subjected some black women to. The
poster boy of AA suddenly became the poster boy against AA. But this
addition to the Chavis story seemingly failed to make it to the New
York Times, The Nation,
or most major media.
In
June 2022 Michael Louis, a black man, in notes he left at the St.
Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, wrote that he was going to kill
the doctor who had recently operated on him as well as anyone else
who stood in his way. On May 19 Louis had undergone back surgery by
Dr. Preston Phillips, and had been complaining since because of the
pain. Dr. Phillips, who was also black, was known as the “consummate
gentleman,” a graduate of Harvard Medical School with advanced
degrees in organic chemistry, pharmacy, and theology. Of course,
everyone makes mistakes, even the best. When I undergo eye surgery,
I must sign a paper saying that anything can go wrong. Happily, so
far, nothing has. One possibility is that patient Mr. Louis was
simply a nut. Most people vent criticism by giving a single star on
Yelp for poor service, not shooting several bullets. Or is it
possible that the esteemed Dr. Phillips was an AA graduate, one who
had failed to acquire certain basic techniques in the procedures but
was passed on because he was black? Mr. Louis, true to his mission,
also killed several others who stood in his way; another doctor, a
receptionist, another patient, and then he killed himself.
In
an article by Richard Pearson in the Washington Post
on the murder of Dr. Chavis by a carjacker (23 July 2022), Pearson
noted that the liberal defenders of Dr. Chavis's inadequacies
“pointed out that there was no statistical correlation between AA
admissions to medical school and later malpractice charges.” That
may be true, but who would be the first to demand a halt to any such
investigation, who would be calling it “racist” before any
statistics were gathered, or even seek to block any submission of
such data? And any researcher who tried to perform such research
would be engaged in an academic suicide mission.
Peter Kirasanow, in
his chapter “Segregation Now” describes today's encouragement and
growth of separate organizations, and dormitories on major
universities following the implementation of AA. Particularly, in
the early stages of AA, some of the newly admitted students (who
normally might not be qualified to attend that particular
institution), were experiencing academic troubles, difficulty in
following the professor's lectures, failing to perform required
assignments, and were consequently doing poorly on exams. They might
consult with the university's diversity dean and cluster with their
fellow black students who were encountering similar problems. Not
told their own academic records had ill-prepared them for this
university, they could quickly learn instead to blame their common
problems on the uncaring, racist professors, the arrogant white
students, the university's systemic racism, and racism in America
generally. How to overcome this? Band together and the easiest
method, live together in an all-black dorm. As AA expanded this
might even be the case for Hispanic, Asian, and Native American
dorms, too. The news, interests, and especially the culture of
each minority would be emphasized, and, most important, the political
demands of the group readily organized into action, so as to prevent
a speaker on campus who researched race and IQ, or race and crime, or
who opposed AA, or who was simply a Republican.
Kirasanow
notes that the Supreme Court's justification for AA – bringing the
rewards of diversity to ALL students, was being thwarted by these
segregated, politicized dormitories. With this segregation on
campus, where the races ate separately, often lived separately,
socialized separately, and later even had separate home-comings and
graduations – all of this violated the spirit of diversity. Only
in classes did the races mix, and even these integrated spaces were
in decline as more minorities enrolled in separate racial and ethnic
studies programs. So while “diversity” became the legal
justification for AA on campus (and throughout society), the more
blacks on campus, the more segregated the university became –
physically, intellectually, and culturally. Kirasanow also presents
evidence that the purpose of some of these dorms and organizations is
to prevent assimilation into the larger (white) American culture, and
even to de-assimilate those already there (like some Native Americans
who had been residing in cities). Furthermore, the ideology
underlying much of this is anti-white, anti-Western, and often
anti-American. A view of multiculturalism in the mix is that
somehow all other cultures are equally good, but Western civilization
is oppressive and inherently bad.
Strangely, Kirasanow
does not remark on one phenomena that others have noticed: the one
table in the university cafeteria that might be integrated ls the one
where the athletes gather. Perhaps the main department where blacks
do not require AA to gain admission, the one where all are on an
equal footing, is the one that is most integrated.
Amazingly, somehow
in this chapter Kirasanow fails to mention the HBCU's (Historically
Black Colleges and Universities). For much of the 20th
century, most blacks who received college educations did so at the
HBCUs. Even in the mid-1960s Southern U. in Louisiana was the
largest black university in the world. Although it was not his first
choice (he wanted Harvard), the young W. E. B. Du Bois departed his
integrated world of New England in 1885 to attend Fisk U. in
Nashville, Tennessee, a newly founded black college. (There were no
old ones in the South where before the Civil War, it was a crime to
teach a black even to read in many states.) With Northern victory,
the American Missionary Society and other abolitionist groups joined
with Freedmen in the South to try to establish schools and colleges.
Many struggled to stay afloat, especially when Republican rule in the
South was challenged by the resurgent Democrats and their Ku Klux
paramilitary forces. Some of Du Bois's friends sought to dissuade
the 17-year-old from leaving the land of freedom for a college in the
land of slavery, but Du Bois, who had an outstanding record at high
school among the Yankees, was excited about his new venture.
Fisk, even before Du
Bois's arrival, and though a newly established college, had already
earned a world-wide reputation! In 1871 the impoverished college
sought to raise funds in a new way. The white choir director,
smitten by the unusual songs of the former slaves, he cleaned up the
grammar, gathered some choir members into an a Capella group, threw
in some popular songs of Stephen Foster, and off they went to sing
and raise money. Their program was more serious than the popular,
contemporary minstrel shows of lighter, comic, but often demeaning
performances. The Fisk Jubilee Singers expanded their tours, and
sang before Pres. Grant in the White House, and before an
international peace group in Boston. Later in the 1870s they
performed for, and won applause from Queen Victoria, who then ruled
over so much of the globe. Is it possible that by 1880 more people
round the world had heard of Fisk than of Harvard?
Not
surprisingly, Du Bois excelled academically at Fisk. He soon edited
the school newspaper. Du Bois developed his powers as an orator, and
he was a popular student. Here he was socializing in a black
environment, noting perhaps different pronunciations, but also
different customs. In addition to learning in class, he roamed the
environs, keeping his eyes and ears open, and he too heard the music
that the singers sang round the world. He also heard the raw,
ungrammatical lyrics they did not sing, and some of this would
provide material for his chapter on music in his classic Souls
of Black Folk (1903). Upon
graduating from Fisk, Du Bois was admitted to Harvard, where again he
excelled academically. But how much more did Du Bois learn by
attending the newly founded college, the segregated college, in
Nashville? Had Du Bois NOT gone to Fisk, would there have
even been the book, Souls of Black Folk? Would Du Bois have
even been aware of the black soul had he not attended Fisk in
Nashville? With his background at Fisk, perhaps the reader will not
be surprised by this quote from wikipedia: ”While taking part in
the American Negro Academy in 1897, Du Bois presented a paper in
which he rejected Frederick Douglass's plea for black Americans to
integrate into white society.”
My
question, if many black students wanted a black cultural experience,
why attend an historically white, still mainly white university with
a ghettoized dorm instead of going to Fisk or one of the many other
HBCUs? The reason – money. Many are unaware that the civil rights
era of the 1960s and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ushered
in difficult times for many (not all) HBCU's. Many black students
who in the past might have enrolled in these colleges, were suddenly
offered numerous, handsome scholarships by the wealthier white
universities, North and even in the South. Many HBCU's were suddenly
starved for students and funds, and many Northern liberals seemed to
think – like the friends of Du Bois in 1885 – that these relics
of the past in the land of slavery and segregation should disappear.
The larger white universities simply siphoned off the students and
grants that might otherwise have gone to the traditional black
universities. A few, like Xavier U. in New Orleans, did thrive,
becoming one of Louisiana's most important dental schools for all
races, while also retaining its traditional black, Roman Catholic
heritage.
While
some HBCU's folded and others neared the brink, integrationists like
former Pres. Obama, seemed to emit a “good riddance” to the
institutions of that horrid era. It was Republican Pres. Trump who
took up the challenge and sought out financial support to keep these
institutions alive, at least for some years to come. And these
institutions continue a strategy of accommodation/conflict that kept
them alive and sometimes thriving through decades of often hostile,
one-party Democratic Party political dominance. They survived.
Their physical facilities were often inferior, a truly negative
heritage of segregation, Yet the content of their character, in
class and out, was distinct. Surely Du Bois encountered that in the
1880s. In the 1960s I recall some conversations with Prof. Lester
Granger, at Dillard U. I was then on the left, I voted (my first
time at the polls) for Kennedy, and my folks had never said a bad
word about FDR (except obliquely, mentioning the rumors that the
order to assassinate the very popular La. Senator Huey Long in 1935
had been ordered from Washington, DC). Prof. Granger informed me
that on a trip to Arkansas, when the FDR motorcade passed a white
neighborhood, all the white children cheered him. And then, in the
black neighborhood, all the black kids cheered him too. But Granger
added; the white kids were being paid to cheer; the blacks were
cheering from their hearts. He had stories critical of Roosevelt and
the New Deal that did not fit my leftwing mindset, but I recall his
words almost 60 years later. Only for this paper, did I look up his
background. On campus, I had heard only that he wrote newspaper
columns. Only now I discovered that for over 2 decades Granger had
headed the National Urban League, and often pushed the US national
administrations to do more for blacks. I do not mean all the faculty
at Dillard was conservative (though in the South, the Democratic
Party was the party of segregation.). I certainly do not maintain
that all professors on the campuses of HBCUs were conservative; they
were not. By contrast, Howard Zinn, famous for his Marxist history
of the United States, which is often required reading in public
schools today, taught at another HBCU. My point is that there was
variety of views, and approaches. There was certainly more
diversity of thought at the HBCUs then, than at the segregated ethnic
houses on white campuses today.
Heriot
does mention the HBCUs in her chapter on mismatch. Her point simply
put, - major universities use AA to siphon off the best black
students in the STEM areas, and indeed, many, when they first arrive
on the white campuses, are quite interested in science and
engineering. In some, half the black men want to major in those
fields. However, at top universities, most AA admissions are not
among the top students overall on these elite campuses; and they tend
toward the bottom of their class. Within a short time, many of the
new black students cannot follow what is being taught in class. They
begin to fail, and leave the university, fail and are discouraged, or
change majors to ethnic studies or sociology or some subject where
their lack of preparation is not an impediment. She argues that
black students who might get an AA admission to a lesser white
university, might fit in better, and they may well graduate in the
STEM courses. Most important, she quotes National Science
Foundation statistics, that now with only 20% of black enrollment,
the HBCU's graduate many who go on to earn doctorates at non-black
universities, producing 42% of black biologists, and 36% of black
engineers.(36)
The
chapter on Asians by Lance Izumi and Rowena Itchon is interesting
because the challenges facing Asians are often the reverse of those
faced by blacks and Hispanics. For example, by the 1960s when it
became the orthodox sociological view that poverty causes crime,
there were enclaves of extremely poor Asians, yet crime in their
neighborhoods was lower than in those of blacks or whites (the term
“Hispanic” had not yet been fully adopted, and many Hispanics
were simply classified by their race usually white, or black. Having
resided in a black ghetto for a short time, my view was that crime
causes poverty, the obverse of the official approach.
The
other major difference, whether because of culture or genetics,
Northern Asians tend to do very well academically with an IQ to rival
Ashkenazi Jews. Thus, in university admissions, AA (a fancy name for
quotas), tends to greatly increase black admissions, somewhat
increases Hispanics, and reduces the number of Asians. Some Asians
from Southeast Asia seek a separate AA for different kinds of
Asians. Even North Asians in business may gain from traditional AA
disbursements to businesses, so Asians and AA is a mixed bag. But
there is much more open and vigorous opposition to the policy among
Asians than among other minorities.
In
1996 with the aid of California Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, and
Regent Board member Ward Connerly were able to get AA on the ballot,
and defeat it. The Asian chapter notes that Connerly took the issue
to other states, and AA lost when it was on the ballot. The city of
Houston was an exception. In 1996 Democrat Bill Clinton carried
California with 51% of the vote, but AA lost in the same election
with 45.5%. The lgenerally eft hates when AA goes to the popular
vote, and the Bush wing of the Republicans, continuing the tradition
of Richard Nixon, try to keep AA legal by keeping it off the ballot.
Thus, the Bushes obstructed efforts to vote on the policy in Texas
and Florida.
In
2020, liberals believed their time had come, at least in our most
populous state – California. After losing the vote in 1996, for
over over 20 years the state functioned without an official AA
program. By 2020 California had become an overwhelmingly Democratic
Party state, and the Democrats decided to repeal the anti-AA
amendment by placing a pro-AA initiative on the California ballot in
2020. This was the same election as the Biden Trump competition.
In
California, the liberal vote in the 2020 election was overwhelming:
Biden
(Dem) ….11,110,250 Trump (GOP) 6,006,429
63.58%
34.3%
For
AA..... 7,217,064 Against AA 9,655,595
42.77%
57.28%
Not
only did the anti-AA forces win, they won bigger in 2020 than in
1996. Biden, who supports AA, won the state overwhelmingly, but 3.8
million Biden voters did NOT vote for AA. The anti-AA vote was
probably all the Trumpers plus 3.6 million Biden votes. In almost
every state when the people have voted on AA, AA has lost. Only in
Houston did it win. This is why the left does all it can to prevent
it going on the ballot. The Bush family prevented AA from losing in
Texas and Florida, and AA nationally goes back to Richard Nixon (who
made it national policy) and the corporate wing of the Republican
Party. As on many other issues, there is a rift between the elite
and the majority of people on this issue. It is good that we can
still have books that describe the problems of the policy.
