Mangling The Mantra

One of the fictions always hauled out to defend racial preferences is that “taking race into account” or being “race conscious” means merely that race is only “one of many factors” admissions officers consider. Of course, if this were remotely true then ending racial preferences would not reduce the number of minority admissions nearly as much as it is always confidently predicted, by its defenders, to do, but never mind.

The “one of many factors” trope is so common, so often repeated, that it has become a virtual mantra among preferentialists, so much so that it usually rolls off the tongue as though it were one word.

Well, usually that is the case, but earlier this year Luis Figueroa, state policy analyst in Texas for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), stumbled over his mantra. He proposed that, in addition to the top 10 percent law, colleges should institute

a limited affirmative action program to allow for race to be considered among one of many factors to attend the universities in Texas.

Well, O.K. Let’s try that.

Say What? (14)

  1. L June 8, 2005 at 10:04 pm | | Reply

    The University of Texas is doing just that, but the administrators are in quite a bind. For fall 2005 over 70% of freshman admittees were admitted under the ten percent law, and there are quite a few angry parents from areas with competitive high schools where if you’re in the top quarter you might be a very good student, but you won’t get admitted. The administrators know they’re missing out on those students, some of whom are National Merit and so forth (newspapers periodically run horror stories of the rejected), and schools like OU and Oklahoma State have apparently been recruiting at good Texas high schools.

    So now with that remaining The University of Texas is doing just that, but the administrators are in quite a bind. For fall 2005 over 70% of freshman admittees were admitted under the ten percent law, and there are quite a few angry parents from areas with competitive high schools where if you’re in the top quarter you might be a very good student, but you won’t get admitted. The administrators know they’re missing out on those students, some of whom are National Merit and so forth (newspapers periodically run horror stories of the rejected), and schools like OU and Oklahoma State have apparently been recruiting at good Texas high schools.

    So now with that remaining

  2. Cicero June 9, 2005 at 9:09 am | | Reply

    I think I know what Mr. Figueroa means by using race “in a limited way” — perhaps limiting the number of white males accepted to zero?

  3. Michelle Dulak Thomson June 9, 2005 at 12:09 pm | | Reply

    L,

    I don’t understand why a National Merit Scholar would have any difficulty being in the, y’know, other 30%.

    I suspect that the truth is that upper-middle-class parents belonging to “underrepresented minorities” are placed in a peculiar bind by 10% programs. Old-style affirmitive action amounted almost to race-norming: you didn’t have to be near the top of your class to be assured admission at a top state university, only at the top of your racial category statewide. That meant that parents sought out the best public high schools they could find.

    Now, on the other hand, being at a good public high school means competing with all the other kids going to it, not just the other kids of your own race that are going to lousy schools in neighborhoods you’ve bought your way out of. Not the same thing at all.

    It shouldn’t be a problem for the kids (who have private universities clamoring for them if they have halfway-decent marks & scores), but it must give state university administrators hives. The incentives to cherry-pick as many “underrepresented minority” students from educated, affluent backgrounds as possible are very strong. Big disparities in (say) degree-completion rates look really nasty in the brochure.

  4. John Rosenberg June 9, 2005 at 5:55 pm | | Reply

    Michelle – Good points (as usual!). In fact, I’ve never understood why race norming was frowned upon, and even declared illegal, since it really is pretty much indistinduishable from the normal operation of racial preferences. But then, as often noted here, I’ve also never understood why people who defend preferences claim to object to racial quotas.

  5. Joshua June 9, 2005 at 6:02 pm | | Reply

    I’m missing something. What was unusual about Figueroa saying “one of many factors”?

  6. John Rosenberg June 9, 2005 at 6:12 pm | | Reply

    It would make sense (though it would not describe what actually happens) to say that race should be one of many factors considered or even that race should be considered as one of many factors, or variations.

    What doesn’t make sense is what Figueroa actually said (or was quoted as saying): that he wants “race to be considered among one of many factors….”

    Considerd among one?

  7. LTEC June 9, 2005 at 8:25 pm | | Reply

    I thought the point was that Figueroa was saying that race or factors attend universities.

  8. L June 10, 2005 at 12:55 am | | Reply

    Michelle,

    There were anecdotes (and probably, in the early years of the law, the problems were exaggerated) of kids who got scholarships to Boston University yet were rejected by UT, or who had to take summer school (because of not being wait-listed/provisionalized) despite being just three spots below the top ten percent (at Bellaire, which is highly, highly competitive), and having a SAT of 1380. (At Bellaire you can have a 4.0 and not even make the top quartile. One of the counselors noted that since schools generally know how good it is you don’t have to worry about the ten percent unless you want to go to UT (Houston Chronicle, 9-5-2003)). Given the problem is worse now (because it’s up to over 70% in the top ten percent), there will be more anecdotes, especially if the non-ten percent also face affirmative action. Anyway, if you have Lexis you can look up the various stories, if you’re really bored.

    “I suspect that the truth is that upper-middle-class parents belonging to “underrepresented minorities” are placed in a peculiar bind by 10% programs.”

    I’m a bit confused–why are upper-middle class minorities in a peculiar bind any more than upper-middle-class whites or Asians? Ahh, I guess you mean they lost more because they lost the advantages of AA that whites/Asians didn’t lose (because they never had them) but still have to compete for the ten percent…OK, took me a second. Well, they’ll get that back now with the change in UT policy.

  9. Michelle Dulak Thomson June 10, 2005 at 12:21 pm | | Reply

    L,

    At Bellaire you can have a 4.0 and not even make the top quartile.

    Sorry, but that’s just mystifying to me. Are you talking about class rank? Because in my world, class rank is done by GPA, and 4.0 is the top grade. If more than a quarter of the class is getting all A’s, we’re not talking stellar achievement but massive grade inflation. (And if more than a quarter of the students have 4.0’s, how on earth is it determined who’s in the top quartile and who’s not?)

    Of course, maybe they add a whole point for AP classes, as UC does when computing senior GPA.

  10. Laura June 10, 2005 at 1:54 pm | | Reply

    In the high school my daughter just left, an A in an honors class netted 5 points, and in an AP class, 6 points. Believe me, based on the difficulty of those courses, that was justified. Her AP English class beat my college lit to pieces for difficulty and the amount of work expected.

  11. Michelle Dulak Thomson June 10, 2005 at 2:22 pm | | Reply

    Laura,

    I’ve never seen them go up to 6 before. Wow.

    But what this means is that a C in the AP class is equal to an A in an “ordinary” one. I’m not saying that a hypothetical C student in the AP class couldn’t get an A in the ordinary class, but I doubt very much that there would be any C’s given at all in the AP class. There weren’t in mine, at least, though there were in the ordinary (NY) “Regents” and “Non-Regents” levels.

    In other words, there was . . . I don’t want to say “grade inflation,” exactly, at the top, but at least a sense that every student in such advanced classes deserved at least a B unless they positively didn’t do any work at all.

    Which means that the kid who would’ve been a C student in the AP course and gotten a 4.0, and an A student in the “ordinary” course and also gotten a 4.0, in fact becomes a B student with a 5.0 by virtue of taking the AP course. I’m oversimplifying, obviously, but I see how this could happen. And it would mean that a kid’s GPA might depend quite a bit on whether her teachers let her into AP classes in the first place.

    My AP English was pretty intense, btw, but as a result of having aced it I never took an English course in college, so can’t compare. It hasn’t stopped me reading, though . . .

  12. superdestroyer June 10, 2005 at 4:19 pm | | Reply

    Does anyone know how UT (and others) rate private school students who go to schools that do not rank students versus public schools? Also, how do they fit in home schooled students versus those from competative public schools like Bellaire or Plano?

    I bet the rules are easier for private school students than public school students.

  13. L June 11, 2005 at 1:35 am | | Reply

    Michelle,

    I should have mentioned as someone else did–you can get GPA’s over 4.0 for taking AP classes. One of the articles I read said that 33 Bellaire students had 4.0s yet were in the second quartile.

    I knew a few Bellaire kids, and the ones I knew studied all the time. They always have a ton of National Merit students and so forth too. At that school at least, I’m guessing grades were truly earned, especially since other very good universities recognize Bellaire as unique and therefore will accept students from there who aren’t at the absolute top of the class. Just a guess, but an educated one.

    Superdestroyer–I thought the rules for private school students were the same as public schools. Pretty sure, anyway. UT does accept homeschoolers, but I have no idea how they deal with that. Apparently so does Harvard.

  14. Claire June 13, 2005 at 10:32 am | | Reply

    Okay, I’m going to ask a question that I’ve not yet read an answer to. Just exactly what ARE those ‘other factors’ besides race that colleges use to screen admissions? Have any of these actually put them in writing anywhere?

    More importantly, is the racial screen applied BEFORE or AFTER the others?

    I think it would be interesting to know.

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