Friday, Sep 5, 2008
Does this mean that racial diversity is not a desirable goal? Hardly. In a nation that embraces the ideals of equality and yet must live with a shameful history of racism, no person with a conscience can be unperturbed by the scarcity of African-Americans in our best colleges. The growth of the black middle class and greater racial integration can be seen, in part, as benefits of affirmative action. But what about the costs?
According to advocates of colorblind policies, these costs include not only the injustice to white and Asian victims of reverse discrimination but the harm that affirmative action in its present form is doing to its original goals of racial equality and integration. Racial preferences, critics say, have the perverse effect of helping keep blacks in the back of the bus -- and perpetuating the very racial gap in educational achievement that makes it impossible to achieve diversity without lowering standards.
The argument that racial preferences stigmatize their own intended beneficiaries, sending them a none-too-subtle message that they can't compete with members of other groups, has been made by a number of black conservatives, from Clarence Thomas to Shelby Steele. It is given a new twist in the powerful, controversial recent book "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America" by John McWhorter, a black associate professor of linguistics at Berkeley.
McWhorter's principal concern is with the persistent educational underachievement of black Americans. The standard explanations of socioeconomic disadvantage and underfunded schools don't hold up. Only 14 percent of black college students are from poor families. More depressing, in 1995, black students from homes with an annual income of $70,000 or more had lower SAT scores, on average, than white students with a household income below $10,000, and black students with at least one parent who had a graduate degree scored lower than the children of white high school graduates. It's not just on the SAT that the academic gap shows up. In Shaker Heights, Ohio, a racially integrated, affluent suburb with high levels of school funding, black children make up about half of the students but fewer than 10 percent of the top fifth of their class and 90 percent of the bottom fifth.
Racism isn't the explanation either, argues McWhorter, since the black children of West Indian and African immigrants generally do quite well in school (a fact that should also rebut theories of genetic racial differences in intelligence). In his view, the real problem is that African-American culture is infected by a "virus" of hostility toward learning and academic excellence -- a product of internalized racist stereotypes of black mental weakness combined with distrust of the values of the dominant culture. A smart, bookish black kid risks being taunted for "acting white."
The result, according to McWhorter, is that even middle-class black students who seem to value educational opportunities often perform far below their potential -- not because of laziness but because of a "cultural disconnect," a lack of commitment to schoolwork.
McWhorter believes that some affirmative action is needed in public contracting and the corporate establishment, where racism can still hinder black advancement, but strongly opposes preferences in education. "Lower standards in college admissions only preserve the problem," says McWhorter, interviewed by phone from his Berkeley office. "If a culture is already saddled with a legacy of racism that makes it distrust school, the last thing you want is a policy that doesn't expect the best of its young people. Lower the bar, and you're encouraging them to only do as well as they have to."
Some corroboration for McWhorter's thesis comes from the testimony in the hearing on the University of Michigan Law School's admissions policies -- ironically, offered by the university to support its claim that LSAT scores don't reflect merit. Jay Rosner, executive director of a foundation that provides LSAT preparation courses to minorities, testified that despite outreach efforts and reduced fees, black students generally show far less interest than whites in taking these courses, to such an extent that he once had trouble filling the 15 seats in a prep course at Howard University.
One might object that cramming for the LSATs has nothing to do with real qualifications. But maybe the attitudes Rosner described do reflect on qualities that are relevant to success in law school, be it study habits or motivation.
The system of racial spoils not only fails to challenge black students but also puts them in an environment where they are likely to lag behind their white and Asian peers -- which is bound to have a further demoralizing effect. In their much-hyped 1998 book "The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions," William Bowen and Derek Bok (former presidents of Princeton and Harvard, respectively) brush this issue aside, pointing out that "77 percent of black graduates who ranked in the top third of their class were 'very satisfied' with their undergraduate educational experience."
But that's not very comforting, considering that some 200 pages earlier, Bowen and Bok acknowledge that the average black student at the 28 schools whose data they examined ranked in the bottom quarter of their class. And those in the top third would have had a good chance of being admitted under race-neutral standards.
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