December 20, 2004
THE OWNING OF THE HOUSE:
House of Cards for Black Law Students (Richard H. Sander, December 20, 2004, LA Times)
Traditionally, critics of affirmative action have focused either on its unfairness to those groups that don't receive preferences (usually whites and Asians) or on the inherent conflict between racial preferences and the legal ideal of colorblindness.Over the last few years, however, a new and potentially even more damaging line of inquiry has emerged: the idea that racial preferences may materially harm the very people they are intended to benefit.
For instance, researchers Stephen Cole and Elinor Barber found that racial preferences at Ivy League colleges had a large and negative effect on the academic aspirations of black students.
The mechanism worked like this: Blacks admitted to elite schools with large preferences had more trouble competing with their classmates, and tended to get lower grades. Low grades, in turn, sapped the confidence of students, persuading them that they would not be able to compete effectively in PhD programs. As a result, blacks at Ivy League schools were only half as likely as blacks at state universities to stick with plans for an academic career.
Dartmouth psychologist Rogers Elliot and three co- authors found that the same problem was keeping blacks out of the sciences.
Black students who received preferential admissions were at such a strong academic disadvantage compared with their classmates that fully half of those interested in the sciences tended to switch to majors with easier grading and less competition. Again, the net effect of preferential policies was to "mismatch" blacks with their academic environments.
Anyone who thinks either side in this debate actually cares about the black students must have just fallen off the turnip truck--it's about flexing political muscle. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 20, 2004 10:32 AM
Preferment. You're absolutely right. Nobody cares about these kids. What college administrators and faculty, hypocritical liberals all, care about is numbers. They bring in these kids, give them a couple of weeks of orientation and let them sink or swim on the their own. It's not surprising most of them sink and drop out.
It's heartbreaking. I've had experience with these kids. They mostly come from inner city ghettoes, are brought to bucolia (in my case, rural Vermont) without even the proper clothing nevermind academic or social skills. They don't recognize the food, have no knowledge of basic table manners, or any other kind of manners, don't understand the honor system, don't know how to interact with the other kids and are baffled by the adults surrounding them.
Nothing in their lives has prepared them for college life, so they do what they've learned works for them, they act out and form predatory gangs confirming to everybody on campus that the stereotype is correct and these black kids are just uncivilized animals.
If the college is "very selective" as is the college I'm speaking about, it's even worse. The kids admitted under the non-preferred requirements are light years ahead of regular college students admitted to non-selective institutions, but they might as well be from Mars compared to kids who have never left their neighborhoods, nevermind their city or state.
Of course, this problem could be solved in less than a decade if public schools would identify students with superior academic ability like they identify those with superior athletic ability and encourage and push these kids to the limits of their abilities. Give them the tools to succeed and then make sure they go to colleges where they can succeed. Until this is done, there is absolutely no hope that youngsters won't continue be thrown to the lions of affirmative action and/or preferment.
I posted on this at http://dailyduck.blogspot.com/2004/12/no-such-thing-as-good-theory-that.html
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at December 20, 2004 4:09 PMTom Sowell wrote about all of these things many years ago.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at December 21, 2004 12:30 AM