I’ve written with depressing frequency (most recently here and here) about the seeming inability of critics of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative to avoid distortion and outright misrepresentation. Here’s another example, this time from Frank Wu, dean of the law school at Wayne State University.
He points to statistics showing a 75 percent drop in the number of black students admitted to colleges and universities in California, where voters in 1996 approved a similar ballot measure, titled Proposition 209.
Really? I wish he would point in such a manner that skeptics like me could follow his pointer. I’ve never seen any statistics that come close even to suggesting a 75% drop in black students admitted to colleges and universities in California after the passage of Prop. 209.
Even taking account of the fact (which apparently Wu doesn’t, at least here) that the number of black students applying to the University of California declined immediately after Prop. 209 passed (why apply to a selective school that refuses to give you a preference when so many others do?), I believe it simply is not true that the number of blacks admitted to Calif. universities and colleges declined by anything like 75%.
In fact, quite the opposite. I don’t have time for an exhaustive search now, but all the statistics that I recall indicate that, although the number of minorities at the flagship campuses of Berkeley and UCLA initially declined (they’re back up now), the number of blacks entering the entire University of California actually increased.
For the academic year 2000, for example, a scant two years after the last year of preferential admissions, the New York Times reported that “in the eight schools in the state university system, enrollment of minority freshmen will rise to 7,336 next fall, from 7,236 in 1997.” And this does not even count the large state college system, which was included in Wu’s reported charge.
Critics of MCRI appear to be addicted to this particular misrepresentation (among others). For example, an article in the Michigan Daily a few days ago repeated the canard that
The number of underrepresented minority students at California universities declined significantly after the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996 ended the use of affirmative action by government bodies in California.
Curiously, the author of that article and her editor (if, indeed, the piece was approved by an editor) ignored the contents of a chart included in the article, right next to the passage I’ve quoted, that traces minority enrollment on four UC campuses from 1994 to 2004: Berkeley, UCLA, Santa Barbara, and Riverside. The numbers are down at Berkeley and UCLA, but way up at Riverside and even the more selective Santa Barbara. If the numbers from all eight campuses had been included, the increase in minority enrollment would be even more dramatic.
If Dean Wu can in fact point to statistics that show a 75% decline in minorities at “colleges and universities in California” at any time after the passage of Prop. 209, I’ll gladly withdraw my charge of misrepresentation. If not, he should retract or correct the charge attributed to him.
UPDATE [13 March]
See the UPDATE to this post below for an additional criticism of Dean Wu’s argument here.
UPDATE II [13 March]
I still haven’t had time to research this (and now won’t since I’ll be busier than usual the next several days), but here are some additional snippets that confirm my memory of the statistics on the course of minority admissions to the University of California system after the passage of Prop. 209.
For the UC system as a whole, non-Asian minority students admitted for the fall of 1999 have returned almost to 1997 levels, the last year of race-based admissions.
Even Salon noted in June 2002:
Two months ago, much to the relief of university officials, the narrative changed. “Minority Levels Rebound at U.C.,” wrote the Los Angeles Times. “Admission Up for Minorities in California,” said the New York Times. “U. of California Admits More Minority Students,” offered the Chronicle of Higher Education. For the first time in five years, the stories explained, the proportion of underrepresented minorities admitted to the U.C. system for the coming fall surpassed the pre-ban level of 18.8 percent, inching up to 19.1 percent.
And by April 2005, reported the Sacramento Bee, “[s]ystemwide, African American, Latino and American Indian students combined represent 20.6 percent of the total pool of admitted applicants,” a 10% increase over the numbers for 1997, the last year of preferential admissions. Also in April 2005 the San Francisco Chronicle reported
More Latinos than ever are being accepted to the University of California system….
… A total of 8,438 Latino students from California were offered admission, compared with 5,570 in 1997 — the last year before voters imposed the Proposition 209 ban on affirmative action. [Note: both these articles are in a pdf file of many such articles; keep scrolling until you get to them.]
I would love to see the statistics indicating a 75% reduction in minority students in California colleges and universities to which Dean Wu allegedly points.
I am SO TIRED of lies like this. Unqualified applicants to the premier campuses, UCLA and Berkeley, dropped off. However, the number of qualified minority applicants to other UC campuses rose after Prop 209 passed. What happened is that applicants who were perfectly qualified for second-tier campuses got into those campuses, and not into the premier ones. End of story. As I posted once before, in California anyone can transfer to UC Berkeley/UCLA or elsewhere as a junior. It’s almost guaranteed if you have a 3.0 average in the first two years. The only thing that has changed is that we no longer admit people to Berkeley and UCLA who can’t do the work.
This, from Bill Bagley, was remarkable:
“What you have is your two flagship campuses will be sort of reverse ghettos, with Asians and whites and a lack of color[.]”
That’s right. We have it on authority: Asian-Americans aren’t “people of color.” (Or possibly they’re merely people of insufficient color, or color of the incorrect shade.) Heck, a UC Regent said it, so it must be true.