Patricia Gurin, a psychology and women’s studies professor at the University of Michigan, wrote a highly controversial report the University used in the Gratz and Grutter litigation to argue that racial preferences are a compelling governmental interest. I have discussed criticism of that report here (“Did Michigan Fabricate Diversity Data?”) and pointed to extensive crticism by the National Association of Scholars in a report and in a amicus brief NAS filed in the Michigan litigation. A small sample from the latter:
The Report purports to measure the relationship between student- body racial diversity and educational quality at the University of Michigan…. It does nothing of the sort.
Gurin did not compare her alleged educational benefits with the number or proportion of Asian, African- American, Hispanic-American, Native American, and white students at the University of Michigan or any other institution. Instead, she relied on students’ answers to questions about whether they had enrolled in ethnic studies courses, had discussed racial issues, or had close friends of a different race. Her chosen measurement (or variable, to use the statistician’s phrase) was not the extent of racial diversity in the student’s university community but how much that student talked (or was talked to) about race and racial issues, in class and out.
As for the outcome – the educational benefits said to result from this talking about race – it is hard to find any evidence in Professor Gurin’s study of the “growth in intellectual and academic skills” that she claims. She did not report effects on grades, standardized test scores, or graduate- school admission rates. Instead, she looked to students’ answers to questions such as whether they believe “causes of behavior often form [a] chain that goes back in time” or how important they think it is to “[w]rite original works” or whether they are satisfied with themselves. Because Gurin did not even look at student-body racial diversity and did not measure improvements in educational outcomes, her study says nothing about whether the latter follows from the former. Her study is therefore irrelevant to this case.
Now she’s at it again, with an opinion piece in the Michigan Daily arguing that passing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI)would be bad for (you guessed it) women. So, despite (or because of) how much her work is a waste product of the “diversity” debate, it is unfortunately necessary to perform Gurinanalysis once again.
Predictably, she begins by asserting that barring preferences for women “threatens equality for women.” Women, in the universe inhabited by Prof. Gurin and like-minded friends, must be treated unequally in order to have equality.
That argument — or, rather, assertion, since she doesn’t really argue it — is so absurd as to be almost humorous, but a much more significant flaw in her opposition to MCRI is that she is either willfully or obliviously blind to the impact of racial and gender discrimination on actual, individual people. For Prof. Gurin, if a racial group is not substantially, statistically affected by racial discrimination, then no racial discrimination is seen to have occurred. Really. I’m not making this up. Thus, she argues:
Supporters of Proposal 2 want Michigan residents to believe that affirmative action greatly reduces the chances of white applicants to the University. In fact, it does not affect the chances for whites very much at all.
….
How can procedures that advantage one group have so little effect on another? It is a simple matter of math. There are so many white students competing for spots at colleges and universities – especially at selective ones – and relatively so few students of color that affirmative action simply cannot reduce the chances of white applicants very much.
Prof. Gurin says that the charge in the recent study by the Center for Equal Opportunity (discussed here) that the University’s racial preferences discriminate heavily against whites and Asians is “false,” but nowhere does she criticize the analysis in the CEO study or confront, much less refute, its more dramatic findings (quoted in my post linked just above):
In the four years analyzed, UM rejected over 8000 Hispanics, Asians, and whites who had higher SAT or ACT scores and GPAs than the median black admittee–including nearly 2700 students in 2005 alone.
The black-to-white odds ratio for 2005 was 70 to 1 among students taking the SAT, and 63 to 1 for students taking the ACT. (To put this in perspective, the odds ratio for nonsmokers versus smokers dying from lung cancer is only 14 to 1.)
In terms of probability of admissions in 2005, black and Hispanic students with a 1240 SAT and a 3.2 high school GPA, for instance, had a 9 out of 10 chance of admissions, while whites and Asians in this group had only a 1 out of 10 chance.
Prof. Gurin doesn’t notice, or care, that 8,000 individual applicants were rejected who would not have been if their race had not been “taken into account.” For her, there is no discrimination unless it is so massive that it not only reduces the admission rate of an entire racial group but does so dramatically.
I have criticized this hugely offensive view of discrimination at some length here, and in other posts linked there.
Needless to say, Prof. Gurin is not willing to apply the standard of discrimination she proposes here to what she regards as the discrimination against women that, she believes, would result from treating them equally. Thus when she charges, cavalierly and with no evidence that a requirement to treat women equally “threatens our capacity to provide opportunities for girls in math and science,” she never says exactly how it threatens or how many girls would be injured by treating them the same as boys. One gets the impression that the state of Michigan is populated by millions upon millions of girls recruited for girls-only math camps who would be forced back into kitchens or caves if equality ever broke out. In fact, I wonder if there are any such camps in Michigan, but even if there are how damaging would it be if the state were forced to recruit on a sex-neutral basis to fill its legions of math camps?
In short, Prof. Gurin’s views on MCRI and discrimination are no worthier than her paens to “diversity.”
ADDENDUM: Are There Math Camps Just For Girls In Michigan?
Maybe Michigan really is overrun with single-sex math camps that, if they are state-supported, would be forced to open their campgrounds to all regardless of race or sex. But it doesn’t appear that the University of Michigan itself thinks such camps are essential. Here is the “Math Scholars” camp it sponsors:
Math Scholars began in Summer 1997, with funds from the Provost’s Initiative for Community Outreach. According to Carolyn Dean, the program’s director, “We aim to provide talented high school students with a research experience that gives them an idea of the scope of modern mathematics and a feel for why it is so exciting. In many high schools, a student’s enthusiasm for math can mark him or her as unusual. That can be difficult. One of the best things about Math Scholars is the friendships that form here based on the shared interest in our subject.” [Emphasis added]
That was from 1998. Here is from Summer 2006:
The Michigan Math and Science Scholars (MMSS) program is designed to expose high school students [obviously of both sexes] to current developments and research in Mathematics and Science to encourage the next generation of researchers and discoverers.
A picture accompanying the above program description, makes it clear that the camp is bi- (or multi-)racial and has both boys and girls.
ADDENDUM II
Several commenters below criticize me for arguing that “8,000 individual applicants were rejected who would not have been if their race had not been ‘taken into account.’”
They’re right. All 8,000 would not have been admitted. But for reasons I explain at some length in an earlier post, “How Much Discrimination Results From Racial Preference?” I do believe it is fair to say that those 8,000 did suffer discrimination because of their race.
As I argued there (long, supportive quotes omitted here),
One common argument that preferentialists make is that racial preferences do not involve discrimination because most whites, Asians, etc., who are rejected from selective schools are not rejected because of race….
This argument, a foundation of the preference principle, has far more radical implications than is generally recognized, for it in effect redefines discrimination as something that applies only to groups. To say that preferences cannot be discriminatory because the University of Michigan is still 80% white is to say that discrimination against individuals doesn’t count, until and unless it is massive enough to affect the statistical representation of the racial or ethnic group to which they are said to belong. Do “civil rights” groups really want to go there?
That post also demonstrated, based on numbers provided by the University of Michigan in the Grutter litigation, that in the year 2000 124 applicants to the UM law school were rejected because of their race.
I also argued there, however, that
the question of how many whites (or Asians or other non-preferred minorities) are kept out of selective universities because of their race is interesting, but that is not the measure of how much discrimination results from those preferences
To see why, you’ll need to look at that post.
Just a few comments….
#1: If the Supreme Court has set a precedent that “educational benefits” basically override the 14th amendment, this could argue for SEGREGATION, not affirmative action. What if studies show that some mostly all-black charter schools (see link) show that black kids learn better with LESS “diversity”? Using the “educational benefit” precedent, the court could reverse Brown v. Board of education and allow – even mandate – segregated school. So be careful when you start replacing the constitution with meaningless jargon (“diversity”)…you never know what the result will be when a nation lets nine unelected, unaccountable people make all the tough decisions for them.
link: http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=155738&cat=world
There are already many all-boys or all-girls private schools, apparently the logic is that people learn more when segregated by gender. A reasonable argument could be made that segregating kids by race could have a similar benefit.
#2) If the reason why white people will not be handicapped in college admissions is that the ratio of white-to-nonwhite students in Michigan is so high, that argument is invalid in states like California, where whites are a minority overall, and are only about 35-40 of the school-age population.
Another thing…it’s funny how when in comes to racial discrimination (aka “affirmative action”) colleges justify it on the “educational benefit” of people interacting with people of other races….
…but THEN the same college RE-segregates people with ethnic fraternities & sororities,ethnic studies majors, and ethnic clubs.
With this Harvard study “Study paints a bleak view of ethnic diversity”
link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c4ac4a74-570f-11db-9110-0000779e2340.html
there’s now no reason why the Supreme Court cannot mandate racially segregated schools. After all, this is proof of the “educational benefit” of homogenous (non-diverse) schools.
John, I’m tempted to say something about this, but you took most of my thoughts.
Did you know that Patricia Gurin as an award at Arizona State University named after her? It’s the “Patricia Gurin Scholar-Activist” award!
The last I checked, my understanding of scholarship and science is that it involves the pursuit of truth, not necessarily advocacy either for or against change. That is, activism implies a distinct political predisposition. Of course, Gurin’s scientific work actually incorporates activism in her definition of variables. As she euphemistically calls it, “Democracy Outcomes” are measurable by the number of her students that eventually, when questioned after taking her courses, agree with her political views on how to protect the environment (which is kind of like diversity – I mean, I want to protect the environment, and I want diversity, but I have a different understanding of the means to those ends than she does).
It’s nice to see Gurin deviate hear from her traditional analysis of race and focus on women. She’s reading straight out of the OUM playbook – it’s coordinated.
It’s interesting how she attacks CEO and then leaves that attack hanging without evidence.
I’ve looked at Gurin’s earlier work on the benefits of diversity, and I agree that it is seriously flawed.
But, I just wanted to point out something in your post that I’m not sure is quite correct.
After noting that 8,000 applicants with higher scores than the median black admittee were rejected during the years in question, you write:
“Prof. Gurin doesn’t notice, or care, that 8,000 individual applicants were rejected who would not have been if their race had not been ‘taken into account.'”
I don’t think you can look at the numbers rejected within a certain score range, and equate them with people who would have been admitted in the absence of affirmative action.
For example, assume in a given year 15 black students are admitted to Michigan through affirmative action, and these students have a median (simplified) score of 5. Assume that the median score of white admittees is 10.
If 8,000 white applicants with scores higher than 5 are rejected that year, that doesn’t mean that those students would have been admitted had the 15 black students not been admitted through affirmative action. Presumably, 15 white students would have been admitted instead. And they probably would have had scores very close to 10.
Re Math Camps-
It is my understanding that few people of any subgroup are interested in being math or physics majors. Some of this has to do with the stigma of being a math or physics geek.
From a societal point of view, if we think more highly competent math and physics people are of value, we need to encourage anyone interested in math or physics to study those subjects. If the pool is sufficiently small, the luxury of favoring one group over another is counter productive.
Some of this is related to aspects of Gifted and Talented programs. The idea is that geeks need socialization and also need a cohort of people who like and are sympathetic to their interests. This makes geeks less socially inept while at the same time increasing socialization and the ability to get along with others. I gather that there are indications from the Johns-Hopkins Gifted programs that this can work on both counts.
John —
I think there is a huge amount of discrimination going on here, but these statistics are tricky.
1) If the Black cut-off were 1240-SAT and the White cut-off were 1242-SAT, then a Black student with 1240 would have a 100% chance of admission and a White student would have a 0% chance. But this wouldn’t mean there was a lot of discrimination.
I believe this is why the concept of “odds ratio” is used.
2) It would be really good if someone somewhere could give an explanation of “odds ratio” that a lay-person can understand. (I’m more or less a mathematician and I don’t understand it.) The only thing most CEO articles say about it, is to refer to a statistics text.
3) If UM rejected over 8000 non-Blacks who had higher scores than the median Black admittee, this doesn’t necessarily mean that those 8000 people would have been admitted if only scores were used to determine admission. Consider my example from (1) above. Imagine there was only one Black applicant with a score of 1240 and 8000 white applicants with a score of 1241, and room for only one more admittance. Only one of those White students would have been admitted.
Patrick Anderson! Is that the same as the one who ran for Regent in 2004, and runs Michigan’s respected Anderson consulting? If so, excellent.
I agree with you regarding the 8000. First, that’s a high number, I believe it is all of the rejected per year, and only about 1% of them would have actually been admitted without preferences according to U-M’s most dire predictions. Indeed, U-M uses the 1% odds in its legal defense, arguing that its a small amount or chance of discrimination against each (and U-M even argued in damages phase I believe that since no one individual of the 8000 could prove a greater than 50% chance of not being admitted, that it didn’t owe anyone member of the Gratz/Hamacher class money).
That’s the point – although most of those 8000 won’t get in, no one knows which of them would. Each of the 8000 suffered discrimination because none were given the equal odds – and although its tiny (I’ll admit that), should we allow government to shield itself from the consequences of its actions by spreading out the risks?
Now, I agree with Patrick Andersen on a main point. I don’t think our side’s documenting of the scope of discrimination against whites is what we should be spending time on. It occurs. We know it occurs. On one hand, U-M argues the consequences of MCRI would be vast, on the other it says its only a tiny factor. Can’t be both. Leave it at that and get onto the most persuasive issue – race preferences don’t help minorities out of socio-economic despair and inequity. Of course, this is an academic and political insider blog, like mine, and we do spend time analyzing issues that don’t matter, so there’s nothing wrong with it either. I’m just choosing to simplify here for perspective.