35 Higher Education Organiazations Repeat Diversity Fallacy

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35 Higher Education Organiazations Repeat Diversity Fallacy12 January 2003

The leaders of 35 higher education organizations have sent President Bush a letter urginghim to support Michigans use of racial preferences to promote diversity.

Diversity is not defined in the letter, and claims for its benefits are vastly overstated:

researchfindingsshowthattheinteractionsdiversityallowsandinstitutionalcommitmenttodiversityare

associatedwithsuccessincollege,growthinacceptanceofpeopleofdifferentraces,lowracialtension,

retentionofminoritystudents,andothereducationalbenefitsforwhiteandminoritystudents.

What I continue to find most striking, however, is the largely unchallenged claim that[t]he freedom to pursue diversity is especially worthy of protection because diversitybenefits all students.

As I have argued here and here, whatever benefits derive from diversity are provided bythe preferentially admitted minorities, not to them. They may well receive some benefitfrom being admitted to more selective institutions than they would have absent theracial preference they received (or course, they are also less likely to graduate), but thediversity benefit they receive cannot justify those preferences because the preferentiallyadmitted minorities would have received the same diversity benefits at the less selectiveinstitutions they would otherwise have attended.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the elite institutions that offer racial preferences areusing minorities to provide diversity to their non-minority students. In return, thosestudents are allowed entry into institutions whose requirements would have excludedthem if they had been judged by the same standards as the other students. This bargainmay or may not be beneficial to the instiutions or to the preferentially admitted, i.e.,differentially treated, minorities, but it is a fallacy to point to diversity benefits allegedlyreceived by the preferred to justify the preferences extended to them. If diversityjustifies racial discrimination, it is because of the benefits received by the non-minoritieswho are exposed to the preferentially admitted minorities. To claim otherwise is lessthan honest.

UPDATE Two posts below I discussed how the Associated Press (and the WashingtonPost, which ran the AP story) badly misreported the case of Taxman v. Piscataway, whichinvolved a school board using race as the sole criterion to fire a teacher in order topreserve faculty diversity.

The American Council on Education, joined by the same large host of familiar suspecteducational organizations, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court defending therace-based firing.

The higher education establishment has put all of its eggs in the diversity basket, and, it

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would appear, is willing to justify just about anything to achieve it, even firing someonebased on nothing other than race. What is perhaps even more striking about its brief inthis case, however, is its obliviousness. It refers on a number of occasions to the fact thatracial preferences are designed to benefit whites by exposing them to minorities withoutrecognizing the grating condescension to minorities this entails.

Some examples:

Students,particularlywhites,whosocializeacrossracialgroupsexpressgreatersatisfactionwiththecollege

experience.(Emphasisadded)

Thus,ithasbeenshownthatapersonsprejudicetowardsstigmatizedgroups,suchasmentalpatientsor

peoplewithAIDS,islessenedbypersonalcontactwithmembersofthegroup.

Suchstudiessupportearlierfindingsthattheinteractionsmadepossiblebydiversitylessenprejudice.

Recruitmentandretentionofminorityfacultymemberscontributestoanenvironmentofracialtoleranceand

equalityonourcampuses,byexposingnonminoritystudentstominorityfaculty.(Emphasisadded)

Of course, the brief also quotes studies purporting to show benefits to blacks fromdiversity.

Attendanceataraciallymixedschoolaffectsdecisionsthatstudents,bothwhiteandblack,subsequently

makeconcerningwithwhomtheychoosetoworkandsocialize.

Blacksfromraciallydiverseelementaryschoolsaremorelikelytohavewhitesocialcontacts,liveinintegrated

neighborhoods,andevaluatewhitecoworkerspositively.

[Ten]or20blackstudentscouldnotbegintobring

totheirclassmatesandtoeachotherthevarietyof

pointsofview,backgroundsandexperiencesof

blacksintheUnitedStates.

It is worth emphasizing, however, that none of these alleged benefits of diversity to thepreferentially admitted blacks requires admission to highly selective institutions. If theUniversity of Michigan were forced to abandon its race-based preferences and theminority students who would have been admitted under the abandoned program insteadattended Michigan State Univ. or Eastern Michigan Univ. or Wayne State Univ. orNorthern Michigan Univ., they would receive all the diversity-specific benefits theywould have received in Ann Arbor. It is only the non-minority students at Michigan whowould have experienced any loss.

In short, it is disingenuous to suggest as virtually all the established higher educationorganizations do that racial discrimination is justified at elite, selective institutions inorder to provide otherwise unobtainable diversity benefits to the preferentially admittedminorities. If such discrimination is to be justified, it is only because of the benefits thataccrue to the non-minorities from being exposed to the preferentially admittedminorities.

I dont like the sound of that, and Im continually surprised when others do.

Posted in Politics



Say What? (7)

RogerSweeny January 13, 2003 at 4:35 pm | Permalink | Reply

I hope this doesnt sound snotty but John, youre being oblivious here. I thinkevery supporter of diversity would say that black students admitted to U.Michigan instead of MSU or Wayne State are getting an advantage. Graduates ofUM generally have more opportunities and make more money than graduates ofthe others.

The diversity supporters may believe this is because of better teachers, or moreaggressive students to interact with, or contacts made, or just the fact that peoplethink UM graduates are smarter or better. Whatever, they think minoritieswho go get an advantage.

This, of course, isnt an advantage to the black students from diversity itself. Itsan advantage from going to a more selective school than they otherwise would.

White students may get the advantages of diversity but in return for givingthese advantages black students get higher incomes and higher self-esteem (I gotinto UM!). I think thats how many people in the 35 higher educationorganizations see it.

JohnRosenberg January 13, 2003 at 4:59 pm | Permalink | Reply

Roger I have received some snotty comments, and so please believe me when Isay that yours is not one.

Now in my defense: I may be wrong in my argument, but I am not oblivious at allto the point you make. I specifically acknowledged that preferentially admittedminorities may well receive some benefit from being admitted to more selectiveinstiutions than they would have absent the preference they received.

I certainly agree that, perhaps with certain exceptions for specialties at otherplaces, in general attendance at the University of Michigan generally providesadvantages not available at Wayne State, Northern Michigan, et. al. My point wasthat these advantages are not derived from diversity, since those otherinsitutions are every bit as diverse.

Racial preferences may be justified on many grounds, but the only ground that isbeing argued in the Supreme Court is diversity.

A bargain, in short, that admits less qualified minorities to selective institutionsso that non-minorities may benefit from being exposed to them may well bejustified (although I dont think it is), but not based on the argument that it isnecessary so that the preferentially admitted can benefit from diversity.

RogerSweeny January 14, 2003 at 10:44 am | Permalink | Reply

Okay.



So the argument is Whites get the benefit from diversity; blacks get the benefitfrom going to a better school. Thats fair. How could you say such a wonderfulthing is unconstitutional?

The argument is simple and emotionally appealing to a lot of people.

JohnRosenberg January 14, 2003 at 1:51 pm | Permalink | Reply

Roger I dunno. I guess Id be reduced to repeating the tired old former truismthat discriminating on the basis of race is wrong.

Anyone who thinks this bargain fair should pause to consider that the benefitsextended to minorities as payment for their providing the experience of diversityto whites are a byproduct, not the purpose, of the bargain. Proof of that can befound in school transfer policies, discussed here, where precisely the samediversity justification is used to prevent minorities from transferring to schoolsof their choice when doing so would reduce the diversity enjoyed by whites attheir base schools.

M.Lynx January 15, 2003 at 1:59 pm | Permalink | Reply

The benefit a minority student gets from the perception that UM is an elite schoolis diminished by the widespread assumption that a minority student at an eliteschool probably didnt belong there, and probably took a watered downcurriculum specializing in grievance collection.

MartinKnight January 15, 2003 at 2:59 pm | Permalink | Reply

Another thing is the amazingly high drop-out/failure rate among minoritystudents in elite schools with racial preference policies in operation. The moreaggressive the preference policy, the higher the failure rate. Of those that domake it to graduation, only a depressing few make it in less than six years forfour year degrees and a lot do so with truly atrocious GPAs. The prestigegained from graduating from an elite school is largely negated.

This little fact is something you will never see any preference proponents everhighlighting. Thousands of black students who could have graduated from amuch less intense academic setting have had their life plans seriously derailedbecause they were put somewhere where they were in way over their heads. Idsooner graduate from CSU Northridge than drop out from UC Berkeley. And Idrather get a 3.4 from Northridge than a 2.4 from Berkeley.

Its not that black students are less intelligent or even less diligent than studentsof other races. Its primarily because the K-12 education recieved by a hugenumber of black children is incredibly substandard. Huge numbers of black highschool graduates, even the best ones, are seriously underprepared for tertiaryacademics. Racial preferences are a band-aid on a serious deep flesh-wound.Ineffective at best, incredibly harmful at worst.

PS: I happen to be black.



PostComment

MichelleDulak January 17, 2003 at 6:05 pm | Permalink | Reply

Roger,

I think John is right on this one. Its the disingenuousness that bothers me, atleast. I doubt that anyone advocating diversity in education is primarily thinkingof its beneficial effects on white and Asian students. I am not claiming that thereare no such effects, but I have great difficulty believing that they are the actualpoint. The point is to benefit underrepresented-minority students, and thediversity line is Bakke-mandated boilerplate.

If universities were serious about exposing all students to a variety of viewpoints,they would do two things they havent done to my knowledge. They would tryactually to measure the difference in viewpoint affirmative action has made;and they would use many factors that they havent. Parents occupation andparents religious affiliation come to mind. (I think it would be unfair to ask anapplicants own religious beliefs, but parental affiliation would surely providesome sort of clue to upbringing, culture, viewpoint?)

If any university has shown the slightest interest in this sort of thing, I haventseen it. The closest things are the geographical distribution preferences thatsome schools have, and these (I think) long predate affirmative action, let alonediversity as an explicit goal.

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35 Higher Education Organiazations Repeat Diversity Fallacy

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