The New Ethnic Calculus
As mentioned in the New York Times article discussed in the post immediately above, Hispanics are now officially our largest minority group. But it is an odd category, since Hispanics can be of any race or nationality.
Which leads me to wonder: does the University of Michigan distinguish white Hispanics from black Hispanics in its distribution of preferences to them? If not, would “diversity” still be served if one year it turned out that all or most of the Hispanically preferred were white (or, even better, conservative Cubans from Miami)?
And what about the preferences for Native Americans. Is any effort made to distribute them by tribe, or would it be diversely acceptable if one year all of them were Zuni or Apache? Should a marginal black be dropped to make room for an even more marginal Penobscot? What if doing so would critically lower the “critical mass” per centage? All this is almost enough to make one feel sorry for admissions committees as they struggle with the equations required by their still experimental new ethnic calculus.
From University to …
Given the repeated assertion by the University of Michigan’s current and past presidents, Mary Sue Coleman and Lee Bollinger, that its mission would be fatally undermined if it is not allowed to award admission by race in order to achieve “diversity,” perhaps we should start referring to it as the Diversity of Michigan.
Or maybe better would be to revive Clark Kerr’s famous term from the 1960s, “multiversity,” except now it would refer to all those elite institutions for whom multiculturalism has become a new mantra that has replaced the quaint old commitments to high standards and the pursuit of truth. Doesn’t the “Multiversity of Michigan” have a nice, appropriate ring to it?
How about triversity since it only concerns itself with Blacks, people of Hispanic origin and ‘others’.
“Triversity” is good, but reader Linda Seeback sends via email a comment reminding us that the “Hispanic” component at Michigan is considerably narrower than, well, Hispanic:
you said this:
>>>>
Which leads me to wonder: does the University of Michigan distinguish white Hispanics from black Hispanics in its distribution of preferences to them? If not, would “diversity” still be served if one year it turned out that all or most of the Hispanically preferred were white (or, even better,
conservative Cubans from Miami)?
>>>>
but Michigan is worse than you think. They don’t give preferences to Cubans.
From the decision in Grutter vs Bollinger:
>>>>
1/ Unless indicated otherwise, the court uses the terms “minorities,”
“minority groups,” and “underrepresented minorities” interchangeably in this opinion to refer to African American, Native American, Mexican American and mainland Puerto Rican students, as
these are identified in University of Michigan Law School documents as the groups which receive special attention
in the admissions process.
>>>
All of Friedman’s opinion is worth reading, I think. Once when I wrote about this I wondered aloud why having an Aleut in class would make it easier for a mainland Puerto Rican to speak out.