“Diversity” or Proportional Representation?

Several days ago Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post observed in an OpEd (which I criticized here) that Texas’s 10 percent plan wasn’t producing enough diversity. “Hispanics and African Americans continue to be underrepresented,” he wrote, “with blacks making up only 3.4 percent of the entering class this fall.”

Today the Post devoted a long front page story to the 10% Plan, pointing out that with race-based admissions under attack, and Supreme Court review, the Texas plan could become a “new model” of how to achieve diversity.

For the most part the article is unexceptionable. It accurately describes the lament of university officials that they are no longer allowed to used race-based criteria (since the Fifth Circuit outlawed them). Bruce Walker, the director of admissions at UT Austin, “said one group excluded in many instances by the law is blacks from middle-class and suburban high schools ranked just below the highest 10 percent of their class.”

It’s somewhat odd to say that blacks scoring below the top 10% are a group excluded by the law, since everyone in every group not in the top 10% of their graduating is similarly “excluded,” i.e., not guaranteed admission.

According to Mark Yudof, the former dean of the Texas law school whose racial admissions policy was invalidated, and now chancellor of the university system, the 10% plan is “doing it without doing it,” achieving the benefits of taking race into account without actually, overtly doing it.

Although Yudof’s comment skirts perilously close to indicating an impermissible intent to provide racial preferences, I think plans such as Texas’s do provide an acceptable means of providing some diversity. True, the composition of the student body under such a plan will score lower on most tests than the university could otherwise attract, but sacrificing some “merit” for added diversity is, in my opinion, well within the university’s prerogative, so long as it is not accomplished by formal racial preferences. (Ironically, any court applying “disparate impact” standards would throw these plans out in a flash.)

My problem is with the pervasive mind set now prevalent on campuses, and apparently in newsrooms, that anything short of proportional representation represents some sort of failure. For example, from this article:

After the initial, sharp drop in minority enrollment following the appeals court’s decision, the 10 percent law has helped the numbers of African American and Hispanic freshmen recover approximately to their previous levels. More than 14 percent of this year’s entering class is Hispanic; about 3.5 percent is black.

Still, those numbers fall well short of the overall minority population in Texas, which is about 30 percent Hispanic and 12 percent black. The primary beneficiary of the new rule has been Asian Americans, who are enrolling at UT-Austin and other state-supported schools at levels disproportionate to their numbers in the state. Of this year’s freshman class at UT-Austin, nearly 15 percent are Asian Americans, although they constitute scarcely 2.7 percent of the state’s population.

University officials acknowledge they have failed to attract anything approaching representative numbers of blacks and other groups that have traditionally not produced college-bound students.

The belief that fairness requires proportional representation (of all groups, or just some?) is at war with our traditional value that each individual should be judged without regard to race or religion.

Sign me up for the traditional view.

Say What? (3)

  1. Mike Kerrigan November 5, 2002 at 12:11 am | | Reply

    I find it surprising that you conclude with an affirmation of the traditional value of each individual being judged solely on his or her merits, yet you earlier state that, “sacrificing some “merit” for added diversity is, in my opinion, well within the university’s prerogative, so long as it is not accomplished by formal racial preferences.”

    You cannot possibly claim to stand for the traditional view, yet defend racial preferences so long as they are not too overt. It is quite clear that the 10% rule is a roundabout way of enacting racist policies at universities. The point is made clearer by the attacks it receives for not artificially raising enough non-white students up to university standards.

    Quite simply, any policy designed to pull less academically meritorious students above others because they belong to a race determined to be disadvantaged is a policy that prevents some good students from being able to attend university because they were born the wrong colour.

  2. John Rosenberg November 5, 2002 at 12:36 am | | Reply

    I see your point, and I’m obviously not unsympathetic with it. But you misquote me in a way that is significant. I purposefully did not conclude with “an affirmation of the traditional value of each individual being judged solely on his or her merits.” Instead, what I affirmed was “our traditional value that each individual should be judged without regard to race or religion.” They are not the same thing.

    I believe universities have the right, with very few restrictions, to select students according to whatever criteria they choose. Academic ability/merit happens to be one I prefer, but if in their wisdom some choose to prefer the sons or daughters of alumni, or athletes, or oboe players, that, I believe, is their privilege. What is NOT their privilege, I would argue, at least for public institutions, is to give preferences on the basis of race or religion. I believe the Constitutionn places a wall around race and religion and posts a sign on it telling the state to Keep Out. It does not do that regarding merit (however defined), or legacy status, or athletic ability.

  3. Terry Pell November 5, 2002 at 11:32 am | | Reply

    I had the opposite reaction the Post’s article about the Ten Percent plan.

    I think it showed why such a plan is doomed to fail and very probably is illegal.

    That’s because it’s simply one more effort to disguise a dual standard — one for white applicants and another one for black applicants.

    Yudoff’s comments aren’t merely perilously close to showing an intent to discriminate on the basis of race, they all but prove that the Ten Percent Plan was adopted and operated for the sole purpose of getting a certain racial mix of students.

    The Ten Percent Plan “works” by admitting students at predominantly minority high schools according to a far less rigorous standard than is used for applicants from other schools.

    In other words, Texas is using a thinly veiled racial classification in order to generate an acceptable racial mix of students, namly one that matches the racial make-up of the society as a whole.

    More damning than Yudoff’s comments were the comments attributed to black and white high school students. They see through the double standard and they don’t like it.

    According to the Post, black students are not availing themselves of the Ten Percent Plan because they don’t want to attend a school where they won’t feel comfortable (my paraphrase).

    Instead, principals and counselors (one of which was quoted by the Post) are suggesting that minority high school students consider traditionally black institutions.

    It’s hard to escape the conclusion that admitting students according to transparently different standards is one of the primary reasons that minority students don’t think they’ll feel comfortable at the Texas public institutions.

    As always, the effort to engineer a racially diverse class undermines the educational value of that diversity, at least for minority students.

    It’s important to distinguish between highly race conscious, mechanistic efforts to engineer a certain racial outcome typified by the UT Ten Percent Plan, and other more sensible responses to doing away with race preferences.

    No one thinks that admissions should be reduced to test scores and grades, and schools have quite a bit of room to judge all applicants by whatever standard they want. Many schools are broadening their admissions criteria so that they don’t automatically exclude serious consideration of minority applicants. That seems preferable to any system which tries to manipulate standards in order to achieve a certain racial outcome.

Say What?