Affirmative Action

The University of Texas Affirmative Action case is being considered at the Supreme Court.  Once again, we can expect a 5-4 decision that involves either 4 or 5 justices making a ruling that completely ignores the United States Constitution.

Affirmative Action is used by Universities across the country to justify admission policies that favor less-qualified students over more-qualified students solely because of the color of their skin.  Universities claim race is only one small factor among many they consider in admission decisions, but simple observation puts the lie to that claim.  My kids went to college and I took each of them to their Freshman orientation.  Each one entered with a group of freshman that included about 1/3 black students.  My MBA class had the same proportion.

As I've written in previous blog posts, when graduation came around, the 1/3 proportion of black students that entered with my class and my sons' classes all but disappeared.  My class was about 100, so there were 30-some black students entering with me.  When we graduated, I counted 2 black graduates from the program.  Both were foreign students.  When my sons graduated, the attrition rate was similarly dramatic.

As a practical matter, the first question about these affirmative action quotas is, how does the program benefit racial minorities when they enter the university ill-equipped to survive the rigorous programs?  How does it help anyone to give a valuable spot in the university program to a student who most likely will not survive the first year?

Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's first Supreme Court appointment, has been open about being a product of Affirmative Action.  She's admitted that her academic performance was inadequate, and by itself would have never allowed her to achieve her education.  She also seems to suggest that even her higher education professors lowered the bar to help her squeak by and attain her degree.  She's proud of that story, but I believe she should be ashamed.  Because it proves what was apparent in her confirmation hearings - that she's woefully unqualified for her position on the court.  The truth of the matter is that she's America's own Affirmative Action Supreme Court Justice.  That should especially offend Clarence Thomas, who earned his seat on merit despite the Democrat show trial with Anita Hill designed to destroy his reputation and keep him from being seated.

Another key question is this:  If we continue affirmative action to promote "diversity", why does it only benefit black persons and to a lesser extent, hispanics?  What about Asians, who tend to achieve way beyone every other racial group and easily qualify on their merits?  Don't Asians represent diversity as well, therefore a race-based admissions policy would necessarily limit their admission rate to approximately their representation in the population?  Universities would end up rejecting Asian applicants in very large numbers, even though those rejected applicants easily outshine the vast majority of admissions from other groups.

Finally, I read somewhere that racial preferences in admissions primarily benefit black students from well-to-do families.  These are kids who come from wealthy families with parents who are doctors or attorneys, but have underachieved academically.  But they still get into the university classes easily solely because of their race.  How does this practice help the underpriviledged find an escape from multi-generational poverty?  If the social aim is to give students from poor families an opportunity to climb out, then why don't universities replace the racial preference with a preference for those from the lower classes?

Based on their recent decisions and the apparent ideological makeup of the court today, I don't hold out much hope for a constitutionally valid decision.  But my hope is that the decision would reflect John Roberts' very insightful statement on the subject,

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race".

Well said.