"Affirmative action era is over, longtime foe says"

[DavidEBernstein at aol.com]

In a recent article in New York magazine (don't have the link handy), a  
Manhattan admissions counselor (one of the people who get big bucks to help rich  
kids get into the college of their choice) was asked about the admissions  
prospects of various candidates.  One of the candidates was a young woman  with 
perfect score on her SATs, a desire to go to MIT, and a strong interest in,  
and talent for, math and science.  The counselor was a bit dubious  about her 
prospects, in part because she was competing with many other math and  science 
types for admission, "in particular other Asians."  Is their any  industry 
other than academia where it would be not be considered scandalous to  suggest 
that the industry is  limiting opportunities for Asian-Americans  based on their 
race?  And talk about "Eurocentrism", I don't recall what  ethnic group the 
applicants' name suggested, but I find it rather  appalling that in university 
admissions, apparently Chinese, Hmong, Vietnamese,  Koreans, Phillipinos, etc., 
all of whom are from different linguistic and ethnic  groups, and whose 
ancestors lived thousands of miles away, are all simply  considered "Asians."  
Admittedly, this admissions advisor is only one  person, but given that her job is 
to read the minds of admissions staff at elite  universities around the 
country, I think we can safely assume that this attitude  is widespread.
 
 
In a message dated 11/26/2006 6:27:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
SLevinson at law.utexas.edu writes:

I recommend that people read the following article in today's Boston  Globe, 
concerning a lawsuit filed by a Yale first-year student, Jian Li,  against 
Princeton (which rejected his application).  He claims systematic  discrimination 
against Asian-Americans.  For almost three decades now,  white students have 
been explaining their failure to get into, say, the  University of Texas Law 
School on the basis of our having preferential  programs for African-Americans 
and Mexican-Americans.  (It should be  immediately obvious that very few of 
the rejected white students would  actually have been admitted even if there 
were no African-American or  Mexican-American admittees, simply because there are 
so many more of the  former than the latter, but that is irrelevant to the 
victimization narrative  that white rejects like to portray.)  I'm curious what 
the response will  be if the consequence of getting rid of affirmative action 
will be a giant  leap in the admissions rate of Asian-Americans and the 
continued difficulty of  many whites to get into the relatively few selective 
universities that  actually practice race- or ethnic-oriented affirmative action (as 
opposed to  the far more important legacy and athletics preferences).  
Indeed, I  wonder what will happen in Michigan if an increasing number of 
Arab-Americans  from Dearborn choose to apply and gain admission to the  University. 

None of this is meant as an argument against getting  rid of affirmative 
action, though I continue to be an ambivalent  supporter.  My own view is that its 
life is limited far less because of  Ward Connerly than because of the 
increasing presence of "mixed race" persons  who bring out the problematic features 
of how we decide who is eligible for  such preferences in the first place.  
(The most powerful critique of  affirmative action, in my opinion, can be found 
in Justice Stevens's Bakke  opinion evoking the Nuremberg and South African 
laws regarding racial  definition.)


_http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/11/26/victim_of_success/
_ 
(http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/11/26/victim_of_success/) 

In  the late 1980s, in response to complaints, the Office of Civil Rights  
investigated whether Harvard had been discriminating against Asian-Americans.  
It found that while Asian-Americans faced longer odds than whites at  
admissions time (a 13.2 percent acceptance rate, compared with 17.4 percent  for white 
students, from 1979 to 1988), the difference could largely be  explained by 
the fact that few were legacy kids or recruited cornerbacks. The  investigation 
did, however, turn up some embarrassingly stereotypical  descriptions of 
rejected Asian students in Harvard records ("he's quiet and,  of course, wants to 
be a doctor").

To bolster his case, Li has cited  work by two Princeton researchers, Thomas 
Espenshade and Chang Chung, that was  originally framed as strengthening the 
case for affirmative action. In  articles published in 2004 and 2005 in Social 
Science Quarterly, Espenshade  and Chung analyzed the admissions fates and 
qualifications of 45,500 students  who applied to three very elite, unnamed 
universities in 1997.

The  chief finding, according to the authors, was that ending all admissions  
preferences -- for athletes, legacy kids, and minorities -- would cut the  
number of black students at elite colleges by two-thirds, and Hispanic  
enrollment by one-half. Ending just legacy and athletic preferences, meanwhile  -- 
something often proposed by egalitarians -- would, on its own, not help  black 
and Hispanic students much.

But Li's complaint draws attention to  other aspects of the study: 
Asian-American students faced by far the lowest  admissions rates of any ethnic group 
(17.6 percent, compared with 23.8 percent  for whites, 33.7 percent for blacks, 
and 26.8 percent for Hispanics). What's  more, contrary to the Office of Civil 
Rights report from 1990, legacy and  athletic preferences trimmed 
Asian-American enrollment by only a few  percentage points. But if preferences based on 
race, legacy status, and  athletic talent were all done away with, 
Asian-American enrollment would jump  40 percent (while white enrollment would drop by 1 
percent). To Li, it seems  Asian-Americans alone bear the burden of affirmative 
 action.


 
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