AA (Which groups benefit?)--Zero-Sum game

[Earl Maltz]

Lynne makes a very important point.  I would begin to respond by adding a 
small observation.  The beneficiary of AA is liable to go a long way up the 
food chain, while there will be a series of small losers: the last person 
who would have been admitted to Harvard will go to Penn, displacing the 
last person who would have gone to Penn and will go instead to 
Northwestern, etc.

The larger point is that Lynne's works both ways.  We spend a great deal of 
energy worrying about who will get into the "best" of the elite 
institutions because that is what was important to us.  from a societal 
perspective, it is a lot more important that to have a substantial increase 
in the number of inner city youths who are able to attend and graduate from 
the least selective colleges and law schools then to have a small number 
admitted to the most prestigious schools.  This gets back to Matthew 
Holden's question.

At this point, I should say that I am quite pessimistic about our ability 
to have a large impact on this problem from outside.  As a society are 
largely responsible for creating the culture which is the basic problem; it 
is far more difficult to change that culture.  Nonetheless,  some changes 
might make a difference at the margins.

First, although I don't think that equal funding should have a 
constitutional status, it constitutes simple justice; indeed, I would say 
that inner city schools should receive the largest share of educational 
funding.  At the very least, this would remove one of the biggest excuses 
for the failure of inner city schools and force the relevant officials to 
face up to the deeper problems.

Second, all state schools (with the exception of specialized magnet 
schools) should be opened on a lottery basis to all students.

Third, parents in inner city school systems should be provided the 
resources necessary to exercise free educational choice.  Anyone who would 
condemn poor children to a failing public school system they might hear a 
prayer in a better school has their priorities completely wrong.  I'm also 
tired of hearing that such a system would prevent the public schools from 
improving.  To my knowledge, no city public school system--even those 
provided with great resources through desegregation litigation--has proven 
to serve their students at an acceptable level.

At 04:23 PM 11/12/2006 -0800, Lynne Henderson wrote:
>One of the most effecitive political/rhetorical moves of the 
>anti-affirmative action crowd  science *Bakke*& has been the notion that 
>admissions/hiringin/etc. is a "zero -sum game".  Many members of the 
>debate tend to the same bias--not "intentionally' but in terms of 
>focussing on one goal--eg, admission to U Mich. or Boalt Hall.  That 
>presupposes an orientation to "scarcity of resources."  With due respect, 
>the "scarcity of resources" paradigm is itself suspect to empirical 
>critique, especially when you see the stats on leaders of "Fortune 500' 
>companies.  The correlation with "elite institutions" and leadership is 
>not that strong anymore.  And certainly there has been a demographic shift 
>in the "power elite" since the 1970s. . . .
>
>  If I am denied  admission at "Prestige Law School X"  or  job at Corp 
> (or law firm) X, it does not mean I "LOSE" to a minority at University/ 
> law firm/ Corp. Y.  Admissions and hiring are NOT zero-sum games form the 
> broader perspective of those admitting or hiring.  They may not even be 
> zero-sum games from the applicants' point of view-one reason a person 
> applies to multiple schools and multiple employers.  (Can any members of 
> conlaprof say they landed their first job through one, and only one, 
> application?)
>Respectfully
>Lynne Henderson
>
>Prof. Lynne Henderson
>Boyd School of Law--UNLV
>On Nov 12, 2006, at 2:30 PM, Mark Graber wrote:
>
>>I confess to being puzzled when Professor Duncan makes the following
>>claim.
>>
>>   "Moreover, since no one knows for sure which white student was the
>>actual victim of a taken opportunity, many white students reasonably
>>assume they were harmed by the racial preference/racial discrimination
>>resulting from the AA policy."
>>
>>Reasonableness in this context does not depend on the outrageous of the
>>discrimination but on the probability of obtaining the desired benefit.
>>Suppose, for example, it turns out that a state administrator
>>successfully fixes a lottery, arranging for the balls to have the
>>numbers on a friend's ticket.  Assuming further that 100,000 people have
>>bought tickets.  I suspect that all of us would agree that a) the state
>>administrator can be punished severely for this even though b) no person
>>could reasonable assume that in the absence of the fraud, their
>>combination of numbers would have been selected.
>>
>>I would add that, having done some graduate admissions and been loosely
>>involved with law school admissions, while there were clear admits and
>>clear rejects, the boderline cases probably depend on how tired the
>>admissions officer was when reading the file and other such dumb luck
>>considerations.  Again, I think opponents of affirmative action can fall
>>back on the argument about using race as a criteria, but the idea that
>>the borderline accepts are more deserving that the boderline rejects, I
>>suspect, will strike most admissions officers as a bit of a rhetorical
>>exaggeration.
>>
>>mark A. Graber
>>_______________________________________________
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