Actual systemic racism resurging in California
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| Affirmative action march in 2013 // photo by Joseluis89 |
This allows using race as a factor in admissions at public schools. Hence, racism. This is what would be enshrined in the system. Hence, systemic racism. Not sure quite what people mean these days when they haphazardly throw that phrase about, but if we're using English in its formal sense, that is what this is.
Doesn't this run counter to what the Civil Rights Movement was all about? To end the government's ability to institute laws like Jim Crow? Of course it does. But people that grasp for power always think that when they're in power, they'll do a good job. It is never considered how history consistently proves central planning does poorly, that there is never sufficient information for any one group of people to effectively plan for millions of individuals, the consistent case of corrupting influences (how quickly we forget that we are only one year removed from a major college bribery scandal), or even the obvious notion that someone they do not like may, in the future, win the election and be presented with the power implemented today (remind me who the President is, right now?).
The left wants this ability because they want affirmative action. Affirmative action is, by definition, an ideology based on racism. I'm not even using the term as a pejorative. I'm simply using the word racist in its formal definition, of judging people by their skin color as opposed to their character.
The underlying premise is to institute equity as opposed to equality. Equality is where the law treats everybody the same; equity is where the law gives preferential treatment (which requires negative treatment of another) to set outcomes no matter the inherent merits to do so.
Equity is a good goal for society to have. It just tends to end in disaster when the government attempts to mandate it. It's not like we don't have case studies to turn to when it comes to affirmative action. Thomas Sowell wrote a book on affirmative action studying the effects of affirmative action.
Affirmative action does show increased enrollment of black and Latino students at universities. However, simply being accepted into a university doesn't really do anything to help someone. Getting a diploma and actually learning something with market value to improve job or entrepreneurial opportunities is what actually matters.
Affirmative action does not help with any of these. In fact, it often detracts. According to a UCSD study that looked at the effects of before and after affirmative action in California and Texas, affirmative action students graduate 8 percentage points lower than other students at the academic cutoff for admissions and double that compared against the normal admits as a whole. Affirmative action candidates graduate at only a 57% rate. The study shows that academic preparedness is the overriding factor, which is the factor affirmative action skews.
Similarly, a Duke study found that following the end of affirmative action in California in 1996, although minority students were admitted at a lower rate to prestigious universities, minority graduation rates increased. It concludes that affirmative action was a poor basis for matching minority students to universities.
A professor emeritus at CSU Chico wrote of the continued acceleration of minorities and women in academia after the passage of Proposition 209.
When looking at the bigger picture, accelerating minority students to universities of higher prestige often hinders their advancement. Often, one or a multiple of three things happen. One, those minorities will spend time in that university and then transfer to a "lesser" university later after receiving poor grades or even academic probation at their former school. This is like buying an option contract to purchase a Ferrari but you end up buying a Ford Focus after eating the cost of the former contract. Two, those minorities switch majors from a degree in a more profitable degree to one that has lesser market value in the job force. This is like paying for a Ford F150 for your construction business but you end up getting a Fiat 500. Three, those minorities will end up dropping out of school altogether, resulting in nothing marketable to show for their effort. This is like paying for a whole car, but only getting a piston and a set of rims.
All of these result in a waste of time, effort, and tuition dollars. I used the car analogies because the cost of each year at college is similar to the cost of buying a new car each year. Of course, there will be students that make it through just fine, but affirmative action does increase the chances of the above happening.
Some will argue about the value of diversity within classrooms. While I certainly agree with this, and take it further to where diversity of viewpoint is at least as critical as differing cultures and racial demographics (many affirmative action proponents will often be staunchly against any political viewpoint other than their own being offered, as evidenced by the violence in recent years at speaking events at universities), do we really want to, given the above, mortgage the futures of minorities to benefit the rest of the generally more affluent students' educational enrichment? How can this possibly be ethically justified?
More telling yet, the reintroduction of race as a component in grouping people is akin to the legal basis that actual racists and white supremacists used in the early twentieth century for Jim Crow laws. Allowing the government to use race to group and judge people is at the fundamental legal thesis for both Jim Crow and affirmative action.
Indeed, some have utilized this for their own gain to the detriment of others. Most recently and famously, Elizabeth Warren claimed American Indian as her race on affirmative action forms when applying for professor positions at Ivy League Schools. She has, of course, predominantly white European blood with as much as 1/32 to as little as 1/1024 American Indian in a DNA test, hardly what most people would say should qualify someone for affirmative action, even if we ignore Cherokee Nation's dispute that a DNA test is what makes someone Cherokee in their eyes. Additionally, according to Sowell, high performing San Francisco schools have utilized affirmative action to deny Asian students acceptance in favor of white students, a result I doubt was the goal of people pushing this agenda. An Indian student, Vijay Chokal-Ingam, wanted to get into medical school, but found that due to affirmative action, his much better performing friend, also Indian, was rejected to all the schools he applied to. He looked into the statistics, found that with his scores, his chances were very low as an Indian, but as a black student, his chances were very high. So he applied as a black student and was accepted into a medical school.
It's no wonder that affirmative action breeds resentment between races and further aggravates race relations in the country, with Asians even filing a lawsuit against Harvard due to affirmative action.
Meanwhile, as everybody winds up for a fight on racist application metrics, real solutions that can address the foundation of inequity among minorities go ignored. Targeting failing public schools at inner city schools, addressing the disaster of drug laws among minority populations, removing the social engineering of the welfare state, removing welfare cliffs, removing laws that artificially increase the cost of living, removing government incentives to promote universities at the cost of trade schools and apprenticeships, removing business regulations that effectively prohibit minority and other low income populations due to the artificial high barriers to entry, are all extremely effective ways at increasing equity for minorities.
Unfortunately, we're busy squabbling about affirmative action to do anything actually efficacious for minorities.
