Newsletter, January 2005 -Text
Preferences
Aren't Necessary
Linda
Chavez
For more than
three decades, supporters of affirmative action have argued that racial
preferences in higher education were absolutely vital if blacks and
other
minorities were to obtain college and professional degrees. In July
2003, the
U.S. Supreme Court seemed to agree, at least with respect to law school
admissions at the
Writing for the
majority in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said, "In
order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the
citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open
to
talented and qualified members of every race and ethnicity," approving
the
use of explicit racial preferences to do so. "We expect that 25 years
from
now, the use of racial preferences will no
longer
be necessary to further the interest approved today," she wrote in the
5-4
decision.
A new study,
however, debunks the myth that those preferences are necessary even
now,
providing stunning evidence that affirmative action may actually hurt
the
chances of blacks to obtain their law degrees.
Richard H. Sander,
a law professor
at UCLA and
a self-described Democrat and lifelong
supporter of affirmative action, has recently completed the most
comprehensive
look ever at the effect of affirmative action on the academic
achievement of
black law students. The study appears in the November issue of Stanford
Law
Review. Looking at the performance of black and other students at 21
law
schools in the mid-1990s, Sander notes in the introduction to his
study,
"there has never been a comprehensive attempt to assess the relative
costs
and benefits of racial preferences in any field of higher education."
Sander focuses on
what he describes as the "costs" and "benefits" of
affirmative action to blacks. He is less concerned about the harm such
programs
may do to better-qualified white and Asian students who have been
passed over
in the admissions process than he is about what happens to the
less-qualified
black students who are admitted in their place. He argues that his data
demonstrate that blacks are harmed by the very programs aimed at
helping them.
Most black applicants, he writes, "end up at schools where they will
struggle academically and fail at higher rates than they would in the
absence
of preferences. … Perhaps, most remarkably, a strong case can be made
that in
the legal education system as a whole, racial preferences end up
producing
fewer black lawyers each year than would be produced by a race-blind
system."
Among first-year
law students, Sander reports, 52 percent of blacks earn grades that put
them in
the lowest 10 percent of their class. Only 8 percent of blacks earn
grades in
the top half of their class. And their performance does not improve
with time.
About 19 percent of black students in this study dropped out without
completing
law school, compared with 8 percent of white students. Of those who
completed
law school, however, about half continued to earn grades that put them
at the
bottom 10 percent of their class. Consequently, only about 45 percent
of black
law school graduates pass their bar exams on their first attempt,
compared with
about 80 percent of white graduates.
Sander estimates
that if black students were admitted through a race-blind process, so
that
their skills were properly matched to the schools' own admissions
criteria, far
more black students would do well, graduate and pass the bar. He
estimates that
the end of racial preferences could end up producing nearly 10 percent
more
black lawyers.
My own Center
for
Equal Opportunity has published
studies of 57 public colleges and
universities and nine professional schools revealing the extent of
racial
preferences, which are both wide and deep -- affecting not only the
most elite
schools but even less competitive colleges, and providing a very
substantial
advantage in admissions to blacks and to somewhat less extent, Latinos.
We've
shown that, judging from their tests scores and grade point averages,
black
students, in particular, are often admitted to schools for which they
are
poorly prepared, and we've reported that they are less likely to
graduate from
these schools. But we've seldom had access to data to show how they
performed
while in school. Prof. Sander has now provided that data -- and the
picture it
paints are gloomy indeed.
Racial preferences
not only harm whites and Asians who are passed over for admissions to
colleges
and professional schools in favor of less qualified blacks and Latinos,
they do
real harm to the very students they were intended to help.
Linda Chavez is President of the Center
for Equal Opportunity.
Townhall.com.,