I wish someone or ones with access to better numbers (and whose math skills enable her, him, or them to deal with those numbers better than I) would tackle the question of how many college applicants are rejected each year because of their race.
I addressed that issue briefly in recent posts, here and here, responding to a new study that purports to find that the percentage of white applicants who are accepted would increase by only .5% if racial preferences to “underrepresented minorities” were eliminated.(The study does state, however, that the percentage of Asian-Americans would increase by over 5%, which is pretty dramatic in my opinion.) These conclusions were based on the authors’ review of about 45,000 applications to three elite institutions.
Looking back over some of the material cited in the above posts, and elsewhere, I’m struck by how many actual, living individuals must be victims of these preference policies, and I don’t recall seeing anything that emphasizes these numbers as much as I think they should be emphasized. (Readers: please point me to what I’ve missed, or seen but forgotten at the moment.)
I’m not sure how the authors’ of the study that I’ve discussed came up with their conclusion that, absent racial preferences, .5% more white and 5% more Asian-American applicants would be admitted, but officials at the University of Michigan have released numbers, and bragged about them, that call this conclusion into question. I’ve quoted this material before, but it’s worth returning to again.
First, in a “Q&A re University of Michigan Admissions Policies” on a University of Michigan web site, Michigan argues that the “consideration” it gives to race in admissions does not hurt whites, or rather “a significant number of whites.”
… of the approximately 24,000 applications received each year for admissions to the College of Literature, Science & the Arts, only about 1,800 come from underrepresented minorities. It is not mathematically possible that the small numbers of minority students who apply and are admitted are “displacing” a significant number of white students under any scenario.
Next, from from page 28 of Judge Bernard Friedman’s district court opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, the law school case, discussing the testimony of Dr. Stephen Raudenbush, the University of Michigan’s expert witness:
In the year 2000, 35% of underrepresented minority applicants and 40% of non-minority applicants were admitted. See Exhibit 187. Dr. Raudenbush predicted that if race were not considered, then only 10% of underrepresented minority applicants and 44% of non-minority applicants would be admitted.
So, according to the University of Michigan’s own expert, eliminating racial preferences in admissions would increase the acceptance rate of non-minority applicants by 4%.
Now, if you’ll pardon me, let’s do a liitle arithmetic (keeping in mind I was never very good at it). Recall the numbers from the University of Michigan Q&A quoted above:
of the approximately 24,000 applications received each year for admissions to the College of Literature, Science & the Arts, only about 1,800 come from underrepresented minorities.
Thus 22,200 applications come from non-minorities. If Dr. Raudenbush, Michigan’s expert, is correct in his analysis that eliminating racial preferences would increase the acceptance rate of non-minorities by 4%, that means that each year Michigan is rejecting 888 applicants to the College of Literature, Science & the Arts solely because of their race. Actually, in real life the number will be higher because the number of applicants has been increasing significantly each year.
Moving to California, but back in time a bit simply because I easily found the following numbers regarding Asian-American applications to Berkeley and UCLA: in 1998 10,297 Asian-American applicants applied to Berkeley, and 11,479 applied to UCLA. If the authors of the recent study are correct in arguing that eliminating racial preferences would have a devastating effect on minority acceptance rates but would result in Asian-American acceptances increasing by 5%, then in 1998 Berkeley and UCLA together would have rejected 1089 Asian-American applicants solely because of their race had racial preferences been in effect.
I wonder if the University of Michigan, Berkeley, and UCLA really regard numbers of discrimination victims of this magnitude as insignificant.
I haven’t found the exact numbers of college applicants each year, but it is probably over three million. More than a million high school seniors take the ACT each year, and over 1.5 million take the SAT. It would be quite instructive, I think, if someone would calculate how many non-minority applicants are rejected each year based solely on their skin color.
UPDATE [15 June]
The indispensable Roger Clegg, general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, wrote wisely and well about the numbers of victims of racial non-preference (maybe we should start calling this practice “negative action”) among medical school applicants almost exactly four years ago.
Clegg begins by summarizing a study that found that the probability of admission to five medical schools whose records were analyzed was typically two to three times greater for black and Hispanic applicants with the same MCAT scores and science grades as whites or Asians. Sometimes the odds were much greater.
For instance, the relative odds of admission for a black applicant over an equally qualified white or Asian applicant at SUNY Brooklyn in 1996 were 23 to 1. At Michigan State in 1999, the average black admittee had a science grade-point average that was 0.7 lower than his white counterpart’s: a 2.9 rather than a 3.7. At Georgia in both years studied, there was a 6-point MCAT gap (out of 56 possible points) between blacks and whites. And so forth.
So, if you had applied for admission to the 1999 entering class at the Oklahoma College of Medicine, and you had a mean MCAT of 9.0 and an undergraduate GPA of 3.5, what was your probability of admission? It all depends on your skin color and ancestry. If you were white or Asian, your chances were only about 50-50. If you were black, Hispanic, or American Indian, then your chances were better than eight in ten.
The story for the 1999 entering class at the University of Washington is the same. For example, if you had a total MCAT of 40 and a science GPA of 3.75, your probability of admission was 67 percent if you were Hispanic — and only 28 percent if you were Asian.
Yes, but what of the numbers who suffered from this negative action? Clegg provides a conservative estimate:
Considering only in-state applicants at just four of these schools in just the two years analyzed by the study, over 3,500 individual nonblack students were rejected despite having better MCAT scores and undergraduate grades than the median black students accepted. Multiply this by the number of medical schools in the country, add in out-of-state residents who were also discriminated against because of their race, and multiply that times all the years that these preferences have been awarded — and you conclude that there have been a lot of victims of discrimination.
Of course, Clegg recognizes, not all of these victims of racial discrimination would have been accepted had there been no racial discrimination in admissions, but that does not change the fact that these institutions were (are) engaged in racial discrimination.
If you think not, ask yourself how you would feel about, say, a department that charged blacks more than whites for the same items and, when challenged, replied: “But this policy isn’t really discriminatory because most blacks couldn’t afford our items even if we charged them the same price as whites.”
Be skeptical about those self-claimed numbers!
AA doesn’t affect the top students, it affects the border line students (like me). For example, a black student gets a 5 “points” head start for being black. Unless, you can remove those “points” and see the resulting racial mix, you can’t objectively see the impact. The problem in the analysis is that the racial points are hidden in other various ways such as extra credit for membership in race based societies (Hispanic Engineers, Black high school organizations, volunteering for black organizations). There is a reason that Minorities are in charge and prodominately occupy Human Resources and Admissions Departments.
While I’d love to see this mystery investigated further, I’m not sure if the numbers here add up. Was the expert in the trial discussing acceptance rates/numbers for the law school, undergraduate program or overall university? Unless it was just for the college of arts and sciences, they percentages he cited can’t be used to analyze the undergrad experience because application and acceptance rates may be (and probably are) different.
John:
These universities don’t pay attention to Asian discrimination because Asians don’t have a demonstrably violent and militant group (in my opinion) such as BAMN coercing college administrators on their behalf.
University administrations and AA proponents aren’t concerned with the actual impact of these policies on individuals because they don’t believe in individualism. They see the world as groups and consider that there are enough whites and Asians already admitted and therefore those groups are not hurt by AA. Since whites and Asians aren’t hurt, as a group, then only a bigot would object to giving preferred minorities their “fair share”.
nobody important,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. The big difference I see is that the left generally views people only as members of a group, while the right views people as individuals.
These two fundamental assumptions mean that most discussions are doomed before they even start. Forget about compromise. The basic worldviews are so far apart that ne’er the twain shall meet.
continuing the comments above…
Our civil liberties are based on individual rights. The ‘fairness’ practised by institutions is in equalizing ‘groups’ of people as a proxy for honoring our civil liberties.
It is based on the fallacy that by being fair to groups, this fairness evenly trickles down to their individual constituents.
‘Fairness’ is not measured as colorblindness in assessment of people, but rather in the resultant demographic configuration.
Who needs equal rights when we can rig the system to produce idyllic equal results?
I rather suspect that if 888, 88, or even 8 black students were rejected solely because of their race, BAMN or some other group would throw a fit.
Apparently my white skin makes me insignificant in the eyes of college admissions groups.
It does indeed seem that these people care little about individuals so long as their nice little demographics work out. Maybe white kids as a whole won’t be affected much, but for the students on the cut line, it’s a 100% chance of getting in vs. no chance at all. I think that’s what admissions officials are forgetting… these kids aren’t numbers, they are real people who have to be devastated to find that they are rejected from their schools of choice through no fault of their own, but simply because their skin is the wrong color. Apparently this rejection is better than what the University of Alabama was doing a few decades ago, but I’m not really sure why.
Eric, the numbers given by the Michigan expert referred to applicants to the (undergraduate) College of Literature, Arts, and Sciences at Michigan. Thus, presumably, it did not include applicants to engineering or other colleges. But definitely undergraduate, not law school, applicants.
I reviewed the article in Social Science Quarterly, and found it very interesting that some earlier work by two of the three authors indicated that based on their review of over 100,000 applications that AA was the equivalent of 230 extra SAT points on a 1600 point scale. That is far beyond the “one of many factors” presentation that AA often gets from its supporters. Another issue with their study. It is a reflection of how things would have been different given the 1997 cohort at 3 schools. It is not predictive unless all things remain the same. But I think it is unwarranted to believe that students’ behavior would not change if they knew that race was not a factor in the admissions process.
Cicero writes:
>>>These universities don’t pay attention to Asian discrimination because Asians don’t have a demonstrably violent and militant group (in my opinion) such as BAMN coercing college administrators on their behalf.”
So you’re basically saying that in America, it takes violence, or the threat of violence before the white majority in power will “pay attention” to discrimination against minorities?
Hmmm…that’s actually EXTREMELY consistant with American History. I cite stories ripped from TODAY’S HEADLINES as exhibits A & B.
“Senate Issues an Apology for Inaction on Lynchings”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-lynch14jun14,1,7681839.story?coll=la-news-politics-national
“Jury Selection Begins in ’64 Miss. Deaths”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/14/AR2005061400230.html
Now, far be it from me to dare SUGGEST that the above scenarios rise to anywhere NEAR the level of “violence” you and Jennifer Gratz depict BAMN of “threatening” in another thread on this board.–http://www.discriminations.us/storage/003232.html
Garrick writes:
>>>”I think that’s what admissions officials are forgetting… these kids aren’t numbers, they are real people who have to be devastated to find that they are rejected from their schools of choice through no fault of their own, but simply because their skin is the wrong color.”
Well, Garrick, let me be the first person to welcome you to AMERICA. Why, minorities, especially underrepresented minorities know all about “devastation” and “rejection” through no choice of their own. This is not a simple–“Two wrongs don’t make a right” case, because this is how America’s always done business.
I’m not singling you out, Garrick, but I find it particularly delicious that posters in this thread are using statistics and language that for all intents and purposes, smacks of the same type of “victimology culture” I’ve been accused of promoting. The phrase “hue and cry” has a slightly more ironic meaning, wouldn’t you think?
–Cobra
cobra – You’ve been pretty critical of Jennifer Gratz here on more than one occasion, and you’ve argued, like U-M itself, that not enough whites or Asians have been injured by the racial preferences given to others to worry about. And you’ve also noted that those who disagree with you seem strangely unmoved by facts.
Would it affect your judgment of Ms. Gratz if it really is true, as I argue in this post, that she was only one of 888 victims of racial discrimination the year she applied? Or 1088 or 1188 or 1288 … in later years?
It is silly to claim by statistical percentages which groups are or aren’t harmed by preference programs. The civil liberties we are supposed to respect are individual and not group rights.
Holding discriminatory views against any group is wrong because they are deployed against individuals who take the full brunt of these policies personally. It is a burden not spread evenly across a group, but on the shoulders of a few. The PC-taliban loves to marginalize the costs of affirmative discrimination by pointing to low percentages of those who are ‘bumped’.
AA is not a reduction of racial discrimination, but a ‘victim exchange program’ where the new victims have the politically correct demographics for their proponents to obtusely claim progress.
The PC-taliban seems to hold the view that any individual deprived of a benefit is entitled to full civil liberties only if they possess minority demographics. Apparently the lessons learned in the 1960’s are being remodelled. We aren’t maintaining the principle that it is wrong to treat people differently because of their race. We are doing nothing but that in a hare-brained scheme to deploy discriminatory methods to produce purportedly non-discriminatory results.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. It is that simple.
John writes:
>>>Would it affect your judgment of Ms. Gratz if it really is true, as I argue in this post, that she was only one of 888 victims of racial discrimination the year she applied? Or 1088 or 1188 or 1288 … in later years?”
Ok, I’ll play along. Let’s ASSUME for a moment, that what you’re saying in your post is “true.”
My judgement of Ms. Gratz is based upon more than just her failed attempt to gain admission to her first choice of college. I wasn’t accepted to MY first choice of college, as a matter of fact. It isn’t a good feeling to see a thin, white business envelope in the mailbox, instead of a thick 10″ X 13″ welcome package, so I’m not without feelings, or empathy on this subject. It gives me no pleasure to see anybody’s positive dreams go unfulfilled.
But here is where I and some of my fellow posters part ways. It would seem that in Ms. Gratz’s case I’m supposed to be “ESPECIALLY moved” by her not IMMEDIATELY getting into her first choice of school (actually, she was put on a waiting list, which has an interesting, not highly publicized twist here.)
“20/ At the time of her deposition, Gratz testified that she could not remember whether she returned the extended waiting list form. (Gratz Dep. at 153-54, 155.) In March 1999, Gratz’s counsel produced documents showing that Gratz still had the original form in her possession, having never sent it to the University.”
[Return to Statement of Undisputed Facts]
http://www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/legal/gratz/gzsumfnt.html
It’s implied that I should be “especially moved” because she, and other posters believe that she is a “victim” of Affirmative Action. It’s implied that I should be “especially moved” by Gratz’s plight more than any of the THOUSANDS of others students of ALL races, ethnicities and creeds who ALSO put on waiting lists, or rejected that year. Maybe there’s a student out there who grew up in Benton Harbor, or 8-Mile on the wrong side of the tracks who’s faced obstacles and disadvantages– perhaps even racial discrimination that we’ll NEVER know about because he or she doesn’t have telegenic looks, high-powered Washington legal representation and voluminous finicial backing from think-tanks and foundations.
It’s SELECTIVE OUTRAGE. I’ve said it from the beginning. I still say it today.
–Cobra
perhaps even racial discrimination that we’ll NEVER know about because he or she doesn’t have telegenic looks, high-powered Washington legal representation and voluminous finicial backing from think-tanks and foundations.
You may want to look at the array of groups aligned against Gratz, in favor of racial discrimination, before you make yet another one of your comments about “financial backing from think tanks and foundations.”
Cobra: Oh, and there’s one person here guilty of “selective outrage,” but it isn’t John.
John has been clear in stating opposition to all forms of racial discrimination. You’ve been clear in stating your favoritism for some racial discrimination; the only type that bothers you is when your favorite race gets hurt by it.
It’s hardly “selective” to oppose actual, open discrimination which we know about (which happened in Gratz’s case) while failing to be outraged by hypothetical discrimination “that we’ll never know about.”
“At Michigan State in 1999, the average black admittee had a science grade-point average that was 0.7 lower than his white counterpart’s: a 2.9 rather than a 3.7.”
A mean science GPA of 2.9?! What was the lowest they would go? I could understand a 2.9 getting in once in awhile if there was something otherwise exceptional about the person’s record (it was one really bad semester early on, they had great recommendations/grades in the higher level classes, etc.), but 2.9 as a mean? For science?! I frankly find that frightening.
David writes:
>>>John has been clear in stating opposition to all forms of racial discrimination. You’ve been clear in stating your favoritism for some racial discrimination; the only type that bothers you is when your favorite race gets hurt by it.”
How do I manifest this “favoritism”? By supporting Affirmative Action? Surely you realize that eliminating Affirmative Action in NO WAY affects the original discrimination it was designed to counteract. My bringing up that reality doesn’t follow the script many posters recite here, and that is probably the most upsetting aspect of my statements.
–Cobra
Cobra, I’ve never so much as seen an image of Jennifer Gratz, so I shall have to take your word for it that she’s “telegenic.” But I’d hazard a guess that there are “telegenic” black students in bad schools, too. And David Nieporent is right, I think: the amount of money, ad space, &c. spent trying to defend affirmative action is quite a bit more than that spent attacking it.
Michelle writes:
>>>Cobra, I’ve never so much as seen an image of Jennifer Gratz, so I shall have to take your word for it that she’s “telegenic.” But I’d hazard a guess that there are “telegenic” black students in bad schools, too.”
Oh, I’m SURE there are “telegenic” underreprested minority students in bad schools too, Michelle. Apparently, they may not be marketable enough for the Center for Individual Rights to represent.
>>>The group’s search for a camera-ready lead plaintiff ended when Gratz, a blond homecoming queen from a blue-collar family, walked in the door. She had stellar grades, no apparent political leanings and good looks to boot. CIR staffers tipped off the New York Times about her suit, and soon a long line of print and television journalists formed.”
http://www.cir-usa.org/articles/137.html
I can’t make this stuff up.
Hey, those CIR Lawyers aren’t stupid. In America, this strategy is SOUND BUSINESS SENSE. Media trends dictate that a huge ratings/readership magnet is the missing white “Damsel-In-Distress” storyline. Although Jennifer Gratz hasn’t “disappeared”, she has most definitely been portrayed as an innocent victim cruely wronged by “unfair” societal forces.
This phenomenon is explained with more detail by Washington Post Collumnist Eugene Robinson:
>>>A damsel must be white. This requirement is nonnegotiable. It helps if her frame is of dimensions that breathless cable television reporters can credibly describe as “petite,” and it also helps if she’s the kind of woman who wouldn’t really mind being called “petite,” a woman with a good deal of princess in her personality. She must be attractive — also nonnegotiable. Her economic status should be middle class or higher, but an exception can be made in the case of wartime (see:{Jessica} Lynch)…”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/09/AR2005060901729.html
Robinson explains further…
>>>It’s the meta-narrative of something seen as precious and delicate being snatched away, defiled, destroyed by evil forces that lurk in the shadows, just outside the bedroom window. It’s whiteness under siege. It’s innocence and optimism crushed by cruel reality. It’s a flower smashed by a rock…
…Whatever our ultimate reason for singling out these few unfortunate victims, among the thousands of Americans who are murdered or who vanish each year, the pattern of choosing only young, white, middle-class women for the full damsel treatment says a lot about a nation that likes to believe it has consigned race and class to irrelevance.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/09/AR2005060901729.html
Strong stuff, Mr. Robinson.
I know, I know. Some posters are saying to themselves, “Get the straight jacket ’cause Cobra’s even more loony than usual here.” But stop and ask yourself some questions. Michelle says she’s never seen what Gratz looks like, but a simple Google image search would solve that easily with a plethora of pictures, many of which taken long before taking up the mantle of MCRI Executive Director. A Google image search of her CO-PETITIONER in the USSC case, Patrick Hamacher renders only TWO images specifically. This is beyond even RACE, because Hamacher is white as well. Why was Gratz more emphasized and promoted by the media than Hamacher, who was equally as upset about his admissions situation? What effect did this have on the perception of the case and attitudes towards Affirmative Action in general?
–Cobra
Cobra, my point was that I’d never seen her, and if I had I wouldn’t have cared anyway. Not really something that interests me. Why the hell should I Google her?
I don’t know anything about Patrick Hamacher, because he wasn’t the named plaintiff in the case. But what are you saying here? That he was insufficiently handsome? Or that he was merely not an official Damsel in Distress? (And no, I will not Google either of them and find out what they look like.)
Michelle writes:
>>>I don’t know anything about Patrick Hamacher, because he wasn’t the named plaintiff in the case. But what are you saying here? That he was insufficiently handsome? Or that he was merely not an official Damsel in Distress? (And no, I will not Google either of them and find out what they look like.)”
>>>October, 1997: Plaintiffs Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher file a class action lawsuit against University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, charging that admissions preferences for black, Hispanic, and Native American applicants violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”
Gratz v. Bollinger is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Duggan.
http://www.cir-usa.org/cases/michigan_timeline.html
On the Center For Individual Rights website, Hamacher on paper is definitely considered an equal petitioner, and “victim”…
http://www.cir-usa.org/cases/michigan_client_bios.html
We just don’t SEE the guy. We see plenty of Gratz, and even Grutter, the equally blond mother of two from Texas,(although you won’t likely, being an apparent Google-phobe ;-)) but we don’t see too much of Hamacher at all. I won’t describe the man’s two lonely Google images, but I personally believe this is all part and parcel of the Damsel-in-Distress media strategy.
–Cobra