The Washington Post‘s editors are clearly confused. “Only last year,” says their editorial today,
the University of Michigan won a landmark battle in the Supreme Court establishing the legitimacy of carefully designed affirmative action programs to ensure diversity in higher education. This year, fresh off that victory, the university experienced a sudden drop in African American enrollment.
The WaPo editors can’t get their mind wrapped around a decline in minority numbers after what, to them, seemed like such a clear-cut victory.
It isn’t entirely clear why these numbers look so grim. Part of it, university officials believe, is simply negative publicity from the litigation, which cast the school not as one struggling to be open to minorities but as a place where race was controversial. Even after the school prevailed on the major point at issue in the case, activists sought to ban affirmative action in the state, which may have turned off prospective students.
Maybe I can help, but before trying to do so it may be worth observing that a decline of 60 minority students in the 2004 freshman class (from 410 to 350) and of 85 black students in a total student population of 39,533 may not be as “grim” as the WaPo suggests.
Moving on, it was not “race” that was “controversial” at Michigan but racial preferences. I don’t know why anyone would be surprised that racial discrimination provokes controversy, even when (or perhaps especially when) the Supreme Court approves it.
Where the WaPo reveals its most egregious misunderstanding, however, is the editorial’s assertion that “the school prevailed on the major point at issue in the case.” The case? The Post, thinking only of Grutter, has already forgotten that there were two cases, and in the forgotten one, Gratz, Michigan’s policy of giving racial bonus was invalidated. Although it is not clear whether Michigan’s widely publicized inability to continue awarding 20 bonus points to black applicants was a reason for the decline in black applications, it would not have been altogether unreasonable for that to have been the case.
Finally, let’s look again at the whole sentence from which the above “the case” was taken for a glimpse into another odd WaPo position:
… Even after the school prevailed on the major point at issue in the case, activists sought to ban affirmative action in the state, which may have turned off prospective students.
This sentence makes the effort to eradicate racial preferences in Michigan appear to conflict with the Supreme’s ruling, but it of course does nothing of the kind. The Court did not require Michigan, or any other state, to employ racial preferences. There is no defiance of the Supreme Court involved if the citizens of Michigan decide they wish to cease using race as a basis for preference, just as there was nothing in Grutter that invalidated the anti-race preference provisions the citizens of California and Washington wrote into their state constitutions.
John writes:
>>>Maybe I can help, but before trying to do so it may be worth observing that a decline of 60 minority students in the 2004 freshman class (from 410 to 350) and of 85 black students in a total student population of 39,533 may not be as “grim” as the WaPo suggests.”
Exactly what level of decline in minority students would it take for you to describe the situation as grim?
–Cobra
If racial discrimination keeps one person out, then “one” is grim and the situation should be remedied. If everyone is judged by the same standard, then “underrepresentation” and “overrepresentation” don’t apply, since selective institutions are by definition not representative. In that case, “grim” is what I would call efforts to fit everyone into a racial cubbyhole to ensure that all holes are equitably represented.
The major point at which the proponents won (in both cases) was in finding that diversity in education is a compelling government interest that can survive the strictest of scrutiny.
It is a major victory because previously only 1 justice had come to this conclusion, and it was a major weakness in the firmaments of affirmative action.
So…economics couldn’t have had anything to do with it, then?