Last week I discussed (here) the refreshing decision of Texas A&M president Robert Gates to forego racial preferences in admissions. Instead, he is increasing recruitment in minority areas and offering $5,000 scholarships to first generation college students whose family income is below $40,000. As Kimberly Swygert points out today, quoting from a FrontPageMag article, this decision all but insured that Gates would be accused, as he has been by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and State Sen. Rodney Ellis, of attempting to make A&M an “all white institution.”
Gates, to his credit, is sticking to his guns, and he made some interesting points not usually encountered in this increasingly stale debate. According to an article in the Houston Chronicle,
he said race preferences are not needed because A&M does not have a problem in admitting enough qualified black applicants.
The problem, he said, is convincing them to enroll. He said only 44 percent of black students who are accepted choose to enroll. The figures are 48 percent for Hispanic students and 33 percent of Asian-Americans. This sharply contrasts with the 62 percent of admitted white students who choose to enroll.
These numbers have fascinating implications, which are completely lost on Rep. Jackson Lee and Sen. Ellis, who are quoted as saying
they will pursue legal action if they are not satisfied that Gates’ proposal will increase diversity at A&M, which is 82 percent white, 2 percent black, 9 percent Hispanic and 3 percent Asian-American.
….
[Jackson Lee] said several federal agencies might be asked to investigate on the grounds that the civil rights of minorities are being violated
The threat of legal action to protect the “civil rights” of minorities who are, finally, about to be treated without regard to their race suggests a scenario worthy of the talents of Prof. Michael Bérubé (see the discussion here over several posts and many comments last week of his satire in the New York Times.
Consider: if “diversity” is as fundamentally important as its defenders maintain, and if the primary reason Texas A&M is not more diverse is the result not of exclusion but of the refusal of admitted minorities to attend, perhaps Rep. Jackson Lee and Sen. Ellis should consider amending the Selective Service Act to provide for drafting such recalcitrant minority refuseniks and requiring them to attend an insufficiently diverse institution such as Texas A&M for a year or two, especially now that the Supreme Court has determined that they have no constitutional right to be free of burdens based on their race, at least when burdens are imposed to promote the essential benefits of diversity.
Yeah, where Berube when you *need* his satiric talents? If he’s going to make fun of those who focus only on race in college admissions, he can’t stop now. There are too many worthy target out there. :)
Confusing color-blindness with racism
Texas A&M will no longer use race when determining an applicant’s eligibility for admission. This color-blind policy has, of course, resulted in lawsuits by those claiming that A&M is determined to become an “all-white institution”: On December 3, Texa…
Your proposal for “drafting” students to attend Texas A & M was amusing. Not so amusing were the 1970’s when students faced a similar compulsion: busing.
Stu’s comparison to busing is perfectly on point. If little kids could, constitutionally, be drafted, bused across town, and forced to attend schools not of their choice in order to promote “racial balance,” you’d think someone would at least consider the idea of drafting minorities into something that could be called the Diversity Corps and insisting on their enrolling in colleges that were in dire need of the “differences” they embody. Why should a minority student be allowed in effect to waste his or her “difference” by enrolling in an institution that already has a “critical mass” of minorities, at the expense of a place like Texas A&M that can’t even buy enough “difference” to go around? It would be succumbing to the foulest variety of bourgeois individualism to allow the personal, self-interested preferences of individual minority applicants to take precedence over the public’s rightful demand for a fair distribution of the “difference” only they can provide, especially now that the Supreme Court has agreed that there can be no worthwhile liberal education in the absence of “diversity.” The only people, I would think, who could make such a selfish argument are the same people who always seem to prefer what they quaintly refer to as the “free market”
A Step in the Right Direction
Discriminations: Racial Equality At Texas A&M Archives Here’s an example of a university doing the right thing. Which may seem like a minor story, something to be passed over in favor of the latest news out of Iraq, but, sadly, doing the right thing at…
A Step in the Right Direction
Discriminations: Racial Equality At Texas A&M Archives Here’s an example of a university doing the right thing. Which may seem like a minor story, something to be passed over in favor of the latest news out of Iraq, but, sadly, doing the right thing at…