The White House and Affirmative Action

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters: "The challenge is to focus on diversity in ways that do not use quotas."

Uh...has anybody not told these dumbasses in the Bush admin that U of M doesn't uses quotas?

 

But by using the term "quota", the Bush admin is able to win a debate-free opinion war among non-liberal voters who don't actually read enough of the news item to understand the UM Law system.

This is a prime example of the reason why sound bites exist in the first place. Use one or two words that are loaded without explanation, get those words on TV and in the newspapers with no other debate, and you've succeeded.

 

Someone needs to learn that Affirmative Action and "quotas" are NOT the same thing.

 

This is interesting:

The only reason why this doesn't cause an uproar is because that I can't imagine a big Texas university like UT or A&M denying admission to any kid in a suburban district who finishes in the 89th percentile of his/her class. If there are highly selective public schools in TX, someone is going to sue on this eventually because it's still not based on pure test-score academic merit.

Meanwhile, an unforeseen consequence of this: If you are a marginal student but want to go to a university in Texas, go to the worst-performing school district you can find to increase your chances that you end up in the top 10%. Oppose any efforts to set up more college prep or advanced placement classes, since they could be filled with classmates who do better than you.

 

Obie, this policy is already in place. But it's a guarantee for anyone in the top 10%. The bottom 90% get judged by the usual criteria.

 

See the thread I started...there's an inverse relationship between knowledge of objective facts regarding Iraq, and support for war in Iraq.

 

Sure, not being in the Top 10% doesn't exclude you from admission, but what I'm asking is what if it ultimately did? Someone who has a better overall record statistically could sue, saying that someone from an El Paso or inner-city Dallas school with a high poverty rate and low standardized test scores is not as worthy of admission as someone from Plano who was captain of the football squad, class president, and has better scores and SAT but just wasn't in the top 10% of his class.

A real rock-solid conservative who wanted to be consistent on this should say that academic merit is the only measure of worthiness of admission, not your relative ranking in your individual high school, where standards for success could be radically different. Not that I necessarily agree with that, but that should be the conservative viewpoint. Discrimination is discrimination, whether it's by skin color or zip code.

In fact, Bush's plan is probably about as pro-diversity as the UM Law one is, but it's just colored differently. Conservatives should be saying that Bush's plan shuffles deck chairs on the Titanic, but since it's not explicity race-based they think it's fine. All Bush has done with his Texas program is eliminate out-and-out racial preferences and replace them with poor-performing school district preferences, which I assume are highly correlated with race and income anyway. What's the difference to the pissed-off white suburban kid who doesn't get to go to UT because he/she thinks some poor black or Hispanic kid got his place?

 

I've got an idea....

Why not come up with some sort of standard test that measures the aptitude of each test taker. You could then assign a score based on some arbitrary scale. Those with higher scores will be admitted first.

 

I disagree. This approach eliminates one of the strongest anit-affirmative action/quota/preference arguments. Namely, that a black kid raised in opulence is judged by a more lenient standard than a white kid growing up in the projects. It acknowledges that while race and class often go together, that's not always the case.

Only Vern Schillinger fans deny that there's a problem with a system in which a white kid who grows up with tutors and private schools and computers has a "score" of 78, and is admitted to a prestigious school, while a black kid who grew up in the projects with a single mom gets an 76 and misses out. This idea addresses this inequity, but in a class conscious way rather than a racial way.

Here in Wake County, NC, we bus kids in order to make sure there's not too high a number on free or reduced lunch. To me, it's an intelligent way to avoid lawsuits that the system would lose (Mecklenburg schools, the first in the nation with busing for racial parity, lost a suit like this, and is resegregating), while still preventing schools from becoming ghettos of low achievement. Same principle.

 

They have. They're called the SAT and ACT. People can be taught to perform well on them. Hence, if you've got the money, you can get a better score than an equal-intelligence kid who is not coached.

 

Dave, I understand and agree with you are saying, but I think you might be missing my original point, which is that this proves how shallow the conservatives' argument against taking race into account in admissions really is.

When Bush implemented this, conservatives should have taken the viewpoint that preferences are preferences regardless of how they are doled out, by race or by class or by whatever criteria exist. Why is it that the people who say "everything by its merit" cannot admit that race plays a role in how merit should be measured, but they're willing to say that economic status does? In other words, they are admitting that social inequity exists when it comes to money, but it doesn't exist when it comes to skin color -- despite widespread prejudice and visible racial fear that manifests itself any time a black kid goes into a shopping mall, or movie theater, or subway, or wherever white people are.

Again, I agree with everything you're saying. But why do conservatives understand this but not the exact same argument when it is framed in terms other than money? Why not have preferences for children who live in single-parent households, or who lived on welfare for X number of years?

If you're willing to throw out the "everyone on his/her own merit" argument for the Bush Texas plan, you have to be willing to consider different measures of merit based on other criteria.

 

I know this. Unfortunately, what I didn't know was how to italicize "standard", "test" and "aptitude" in my previous post.

 

Exactly what I was going to say and well put.

I would have said the public in general, but if are going to say "non-liberal voters" then you might be limiting the power of such wording and spin.

Ari has to be the biggest bastard to ever hold that position. Why? Because he is so good at it while keeping a straight face. I have no doubt that the man either has no conscience or really believes the things that come out of his mouth.

 

This is why the US continues to have racial problems. Set quotas and use them. Heck, FIFA uses them for the world cup. I really don't care.

Two words made evil for political gain:
liberal
quota

 

It isn't an unforseen consequence. It is a planned side effect. By taking students from each school, it will be richer parents demanding busing and more equality of schools so that their children get a more fair shot.

 

Or if you go to the local community college and put in a little EFFORT you can get the same coaching for little or no money. My son did his with money he earned at his after school job. I think it was $30 for a 3 week course.

 

The University of Michigan policy is absolutely a quota. How else do you determine if the policy is successul in promoting "diversity" unless you can quantify it with a number? The University seeks to enroll enough minority enrollment to achieve a "critical mass"? Huh? That language will hardly stand up in the Supreme Court. Remarkably, the minority enrollment in the UofM Law School has been extremely consistent percentage-wise, which indicates they have been setting a quota all along.

 

This administration really thinks they are bulletproof since the mid-term elections, don't they?

 

Foos, I only have one thing to say to you on this topic:

Michigan 61, Ohio State 50

 

http://www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/faqs/uapolicy.html

I don't see what's so evil about it, but then, I'm just a center-left moderate.

 

UofM quotas?
I saw one white dude on the basketball team. I would even guess that he gets "paid" less than the black players. It would best serve the players to play with all kinds of folks. Even their coach is black! Oh, what an outrage!

Heck, we should allow teams with more than 3 white guys on the roster to get an automatic 10 point lead at the start of the game. If any of those white guys are starters, give them an extra 3 points!

I guess Ian made his point by making a funny.

 

Liberals, check out the UM policy in more detail before automatically defending. That is NOT Affirmative Action as I understand it; it is "preferential treatment," and it is clearly unconstitutional.

The problem with AA is that it's a good law that has been hijacked. Thus it is becoming an easy target for conservatives because of places like U of M using it to accept clearly less qualified students over better ones who happen to be white. Giving a full 20 points on that scale is simply ridiculous when a 1600 SAT score will only get you 12 points, and a great essay will get you 3. There is simply no defense for such a system.

Ideally, there would be simply 1 point given for being a minority. This is my understand of how the law was envisioned origially: "When you have candidates of roughly equal qualities, race can/should be used as a determiner." So 1 point would break ties whenever a black or hispanic student came up "equal" to a white student, but it wouldn't leapfrog them over huge chunks of more qualified applicants.

UM's defense, by the way, really only comes down to a single claim: that as an educational institution, they have a special need to foster a diverse learning environment. (Note: even they implicitly recognize their policy wouldn't fly in the "real world.") Now this claim is often taken as received wisdom, but I've never seen any empirical evidence that shows that students learn better when they have diverse cultures in the classroom. However, there is tons of evidence about how learning decreases when a teacher has to deal with hugely varying levels in single classes--giving 20 bonus points to minorities would seem to ensure just these types of classrooms.

 

Wow, a thread close enough to my life that it turned me from lurker to user.

I'm a graduate student and TA at Michigan and I've studied the system they use (and support it). A little history on the undergrad admissions policy (and it's important to remember that the law school and LS&A use very different systems given the wide discrepancy in applicant numbers).

The previous admissions system placed African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans in a completely different admissions pool than other applicants. They're applications were considered separately and different threasholds were required for admissions. A philosophy professor (and my former landlord) FOIAed the policy and publicized it. The administration, figuring that separate admission pools would not withstand scrutiny, abandoned that policy for the current policy.

The current policy consists of three different sections in which applicants can gain admissions points up to a total of 160. The first consists of academic achievements: GPA (from 50 to 80 points), school factor (schools are ranked in quality from 0 to 5 with elite private and wealthy suburban public schools ranking at the top and poorly ranked schools at the bottom, applicants get from 0 to 10 points based on the school they attended), curriculum factor based on courses taken (from -4 to 8 points), and test scores (from 0 to 12 points).

The second section is "other factors" which include geography (10 for in-state, 6 for underrepresented county, 2 for underrepresented state), legacy status (4 pts), essay (1 point for a remarkable essay, which was the most shocking number to me in the whole thing), personal achievement (up to 5 points).

The third is the miscellaneous section where applicants can receive 20 points for one of four reasons: socio-economic disadvantage, underrepresented minority status, provost's discretion, or scholarship athelete. There is also a 5 point 'men in nursing' bonus. Applicants can only receive 20 points in this category, thus the previous mention of minorities getting 80 points is just wrong.

If you want to see the chart, it's here
http://www.umich.edu/~mrev/archives/1999/summer/chart.htm
It's from 1999 but hasn't really changed.

I would have more sympathy for the lawsuits had they gone after the entire structure. Attack the points for minority applications, but also attack the provost's discretion, the school bonus points, and especially the legacy points. These three sources of points provide built in bonuses for privileged applicants, of whom an overwhelming majority is white. (Note: 96% of the alumni base of the university is white). Heck, they should seek to throw out everything except the GPA and test scores if they want to be consistent. But they don't want consistency or 'equal opportunity' in a society wide sense, what the CIR (the legal entity pursuing the lawsuits) wants is to protect privilege and entitlement.

In my mind, the policy is complicated and messy, but does a pretty good job admitting students to the university. It's impossible to admit all deserving students given the limits on admission (about 7300 per year). I'll end this long post here and address the classroom concerns that DrJones raised in a bit.

 

Can we just avoid using the misnomers "more qualified" and "less qualified"? You're either qualified -- meaning, you can do the work -- or you're not. The problem with a highly-selective school like UM Law is that there are many more qualified applicants than places, hence the use of subjective criteria to grant acceptances.

Being more or less qualified is like being more or less dead.

And needs, thanks for the insider's view. It's a better explanation of the program than I've seen from either side of this debate so far.