The number of students admitted to the eight campuses of the University of California who identified themselves as white declined by almost 9 per cent from 1997 to 1998, according to official data. The number admitted to Berkeley, the most selective UC campus, declined by a little under 2 per cent.
You may not have noticed these numbers in the news articles last month about the University of California’s ban on racially preferential affirmative action in admissions.
The major theme of the coverage was exemplified by an April 1 report in The New York Times that ”the state’s most competitive public universities (Berkeley and UCLA) announced steep drops in admissions of black and Hispanic applicants for next fall’s freshman class.”
That was true. And that is a matter for serious concern. Nobody should be indifferent to the damage done by a dramatic drop in the presence of traditionally unrepresented racial minorities (also including American Indians) at elite campuses. These schools are prime gateways to opportunity in a society still plagued by racial inequality; the drop in black and Latino admissions could have a dispiriting effect on the many who believe–sincerely, if erroneously–that racial preferences are the only way for them to get a fair shake; and a decline in racial diversity can detract from the educational experience of all students.
But the overall picture is far more complex–and the effects of race-blind admissions are far more mixed, and more encouraging–than most news reports have suggested.
Particularly deceptive are claims by Theodore Shaw of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund that the elite campuses are ”returning to a race-exclusive status,” and by President Clinton that advocates of race-blind admissions in California ”think it’s a good thing to have a segregated set of professional schools.”
In the past, advocates of affirmative action often tried to deny or conceal the fact that racial preferences were necessary to achieve the degree of diversity they sought. But now they concede that they were in fact necessary. What’s more, they falsely suggest that ending preferences will exclude almost all black and Hispanic students, and will make elite campuses ”lily- white,” in the words of former California Chief Justice Rose Bird.
To the contrary, the first year of race-blind admissions brought a drop in the number of persons identifying themselves as white who were admitted to the UC system as a whole (down by 1,571). The decline dwarfed the drop in the number calling themselves black (down by 266) and Latino (down by 391).
These numbers tend to support the inference drawn by Peter Scheer, editor and publisher of The Recorder, a San Francisco legal newspaper, in an April 17 column: ”If both white and minority students were helped by affirmative action at UC schools, who was hurt by it? Although UC statistics are not conclusive on this point, it appears that the answer is Asian students. Their numbers were held down to make room for more white students–and a few minority students.”
The main reason the UC statistics are not conclusive is the striking increase–from 2,181 in 1997 to 6,846 in 1998–in the number of admitted applicants who declined to check the racial-classification box on their applications.
If most of these 6,846 were white, then the apparent drop of 1,571 in white admissions would be illusory. But it seems likely that a disproportionate number of these applicants were Asian-Americans, who may have feared that the UC bureaucracy would find subtle forms of replicating the anti-Asian discrimination that can no longer be achieved through overt preferences. If so, then the official statistics–which show Asian admissions to the eight UC campuses inching up from 14,421 in 1997 to 14,427 in 1998–masked a more dramatic rise.
This theory gains plausibility from statistics showing that Asians enrolled at Berkeley under the previous regime of racial preferences have had far higher average SAT scores than others. For example, the median math SAT scores in 1995 were 750 for enrolled Asians; 690 for whites; 560 for Latinos; and 510 for blacks. This means that under the racial-preference regime, Berkeley rejected many Asians who had far higher scores than many admitted whites, blacks and Latinos had.
Some other numbers worth noting:
* While black admissions dropped by an alarming 66 per cent at UC-Berkeley and 43 per cent at UCLA, and while Latino admissions dropped by 53 per cent and 33 per cent, these declines were largely offset by increases in black and Latino admissions at the less competitive (but still selective) UC-Riverside and UC-Santa Cruz campuses.
* Taking all eight UC campuses as a group, admissions of black and Latino students declined by a less alarming 17.6 per cent and 6.9 per cent, respectively. And despite those declines, the number of blacks and Latinos admitted in 1998 (6,537) is still higher than in 1992 (5,963).*If one measures academic success by graduation rates rather than by admissions, the end of racial preferences may well increase the number of black and Latino students who succeed, by reducing their extremely high dropout rates. Under the preferential admissions regime, students who might have done well at campuses such as UC-Santa Cruz and UC-Riverside have ended up at Berkeley or UCLA, where many have had trouble competing against better-prepared classmates.
About 42 per cent of black students entering Berkeley between 1987 and 1990, and 33 per cent of the Hispanics–compared with 16 per cent of the whites–failed to earn degrees within six years, according to an April 7 Op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal by Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, authors of a recent book that was critical of affirmative action. They predict that black and Latino students will graduate in far higher percentages–and in higher absolute numbers–now that they will be as well prepared as their classmates.
* Asians–like Jews before them–have been getting into UC in numbers far disproportionate to their share of the population, and seem likely to do even better now. With 11 per cent of California’s total population, Asians won one-third of all admissions to the UC system for the fall of 1998. Non- Hispanic whites, with 54 per cent of the state’s total population, won only a 36 per cent share.
These last numbers show not only that many Asians have overcome enormous odds through hard work, but also that their efforts have been rewarded by the same American system of democratic capitalism that is denounced by many advocates of preferences as hopelessly racist.
The Asian-American successes also suggest that racial preferences cannot be rationalized as a rough way of achieving fairness or equal opportunity by compensating for poverty or other economic disadvantage. As Jeffrey Hirsch, director of university relations at UCLA, told The New York Times: ”Lots of the blacks we admit are middle-class, second and third generation in college, while many of the Asian-Americans are poor.”
This is not to deny that a decline in the number of black and Latino students at elite campuses has substantial costs. Other things being equal, all students would get a richer cultural education if their classes looked more like America. But other things are not equal. The push to produce racial balance at all costs, by dramatically lowering academic standards, does more harm than good.
The harms have included raw racial discrimination against Asians (and to some extent whites); the stigmatization of the many blacks and Latinos who are plagued by the often inaccurate perception that they owe their success to quotas; the ugly sense of entitlement manifested by those who have come to see preferential treatment as their birthright; the loss of productivity that results from any deviation from merit selection; and the unusually corrosive deceptions that have polluted public debate on this issue.
The political, moral and intellectual energies that have been poured into maintaining racial preferences could be far better invested in providing better early education for black and Latino children, and in teaching all children that the way to gain admission to a top college is to earn it. There is some anecdotal evidence that this lesson may be taking hold.
When The New York Times interviewed some Latino high school seniors about the now-steeper odds against their getting into Berkeley, one young woman observed: ”It’s going to be harder for me. Still, it doesn’t bother me. I just have to work harder.”
A young man added: ”I think that taking away affirmative action has hurt me in a way. But in a way, I think it is better because they don’t emphasize who you are, but what you can do.” Exactly.