The Measure Of Preference, At UCLA And Elsewhere
Note: An ADDENDUM was added to this post, 27 May at 10:45 AM
As we have just seen in this recent post discussing a Pew Research Center For The People & The Press survey, by substantial margins Americans support “affirmative action” when it is defined as simply helping minorities but by equally large margins oppose preferential treatment based on race. (We also saw there that Pew’s report of its own findings glorified the support but failed to mention the opposition.) Thus it is not surprising that supporters of preferential treatment attempt to disguise what they really support by describing it as “affirmative action.”
There is no better place to confirm that “affirmative action” in practice is really racial preference than the data concerning admissions to the University of California, where preferential treatment was ostensibly banned in 1996 by Proposition 209. Let’s look at some of it, now that new data has become available.
First, from a recent UCLA news release: “For fall 1995, when UCLA was still allowed to use affirmative action, 1,450 African American students applied,” and 693 were admitted.
The number of applications from African American prospective freshmen for fall 2007 was 2,453, up from 2,173 in 2006.Note, first, that the number of black applicants to UCLA did not shrivel up and blow away as a result of the Prop. 209’s requirement (it was passed by the voters in 1996) that they be treated like all other applicants, as 209 critics predicted and many of them still claim.The number of African American admits increased to 392 in 2007; in 2006 there were 249 admits .
Next, note that in 1995, the last year when racial preferences were both legal and in full force, 48% of black applicants to UCLA were offered admission. In 2006, with such “affirmative action” no longer legal, 11.5% of black applicants were accepted. This year, 2007, after UCLA moved with great fanfare to “holistic review,” 16% of blacks applicants were admitted. This represented a 39% increase over the pre-“holistic” 2006 numbers, but it is still a far cry 1995’s 48% admission rate.
Another recent UCLA news release reports that “UCLA admitted 11,837 prospective freshmen for fall 2007 out of an applicant pool of 50,729.” That’s an overall admission rate of 23%.
That “affirmative action” in practice led to drastically higher admission rates for blacks was not, of course, limited to UCLA or to undergraduate admissions. Martin Trow, the highly regarded Berkeley sociologist/political scientist, reported the following regarding admission to Boalt Hall, the law school of the University of California at Berkeley, in 1988. Boalt divided all applicants into A, B, C, and D groups based on a combination of their grades and LSAT scores.
Almost all applicants from all ethnic groups in the A range were admitted, but among those who fell in the B range, 69 percent of Asians, 62 percent of whites, and 94 percent of blacks and Hispanics were admitted. Looking at range C, only 19 percent of Asians and 17 percent of whites were admitted, while 77 percent of the blacks and Hispanics got in. In the lowest range, the disparities were even greater.Nor were numbers like these limited to California. As Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom point out in their magisterial demolition of Bowen and Bok’s hymn to affirmative action, The Shape of the River:
Consider the five private schools Bowen and Bok studied intensively. Among applicants for admission in 1989 with SAT scores from 1200 to 1249, 19% of whites and 60% of blacks were admitted; in the next bracket up (1250-1299), 24% of whites and 75% of blacks were accepted. Among applicants with near-perfect scores (1500 or better), over a third of whites were turned down, but every single black got in. Indeed, black students with scores of 1200-1249 were nearly as likely to be accepted at Bowen and Bok's five institutions as whites with scores of 1500 or better! Under race-neutral admissions, clearly the picture would be quite different.Data such as the above is well-known among students of affirmative action, and is not controversial. What is controversial, of course, is whether such preferential treatment is (or should be) legal and, even if it is legal, whether it is fair. Reasonable people can disagree over the answers to those questions, but I don’t believe it is reasonable to deny — as many defenders of “affirmative action” still insist on denying — that in practice most “affirmative action” programs and policies are permeated with racial preference.
ADDENDUM: Do Preferences Continue?
The above is written as though the passage of Prop. 209 ended racial preference in admissions to California institutions, but did it? There is disturbing evidence that it did not, even aside from the “holistic review” end run.
At Boalt Hall, for example, Heather Mac Donald writes, reporting one of UCLA law professor Richard Sander’s studies, applicants are now given a numerical score based on a combination of grades and LSAT scores.
In 2002, it admitted 92 percent of white applicants with an index of 250 or higher but only 5 percent with an index between 235 and 239. By contrast, it admitted 75 percent of black applicants in the 235–239 range in 2002 and 65 percent in 2003. No black applicants had an index of 250 or higher. Even a 2004 university study acknowledged that there were admissions disparities by race that nonacademic, nonracial factors could not account for.Meanwhile, back at UCLA, the Daily Bruin reports that
[d]ata from 1995 to the present recently released by UCLA shows that students who identify as black and Latino or Chicano are admitted with lower average high school GPAs and SAT scores than white and Asian students.More specifically, the Daily Bruin reports:
In fall 2006, before UCLA switched to holistic admissions, black and Latino applicants’ average SAT scores were 255 and 246 points lower than the average for their white and Asian counterparts.UCLA officials, like university officials everywhere, attempt to explain these disparities by noting, properly enough, that admission decisions are based on more than grades and test scores, that other, presumably non-racial factors are also taken into account. I’m sure that’s true, but it remains difficult to refute Ward Connerly’s observation, quoted in the article just linked:That gap seemed largely unaffected by holistic review – in fall 2007, black applicants’ SAT scores were on average 293 points lower than those of white and Asian students, and Latino applicants’ scores came up 249 points short.
UCLA said it would revise (its admissions standards) to take non-academic factors into account, ... but the data that I looked at suggested that they were looking at non-academic factors primarily for black students.As if to confirm Connerly’s point, that same Daily Bruin article pointed out that in 2007 the percentage of black applicants admitted from poorly performing schools [schools with an Academic Performance Index score of 1 or 2] more than doubled over the 2006 rate, from 12% to 27%, while the percentage of both Asian and white admits from those schools actually declined. Moreover, as the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Peter Schmidt pointed out (here, in an article I discussed here):
Although the new admissions policy [“holistic review”] is supposed to take into account disadvantages each student has faced, there was actually a decline in the number and share of admitted students who are the first in their families to attend college and coming from households that make less than $30,000 annually. Last year, the university admitted 1,426 such students, or 24 percent of those who applied. This year, it admitted 1,027, or about 17 percent of those who applied.Some of the dodges that were developed to avoid Prop. 209’s strictures were dazzlingly brazen. Thus, Mac Donald reports,
UCLA’s law school established a specialization in critical race studies, a marginal branch of legal theory contending that racism pervades nearly every category of the law and that writing about one’s personal experiences grappling with that racism is real legal scholarship. College seniors who say that they want to specialize in critical race studies on their UCLA law school applications get a boost in the admissions process: as the school discreetly puts it, a student’s interest in the program “may be a factor relevant to the overall admissions calculus.” In 2002, UCLA rejected all white applicants to the program, even though their average LSAT score was higher than the average score of the blacks who were admitted.Racial preferences may be legally dead in California, but their actual death, as Mark Twain once said about a report of his own demise, is greatly exaggerated.
Say What?
yep, it's all about spin. for example, john notes that "in 1995, the last year when racial preferences were both legal and in full force, 48% of black applicants to UCLA were offered admission."
wow, 48%! that's huge.
john continues: "In 2006, with such 'affirmative action' no longer legal, 11.5% of black applicants were accepted."
hmmm, from 48% to 11.5%? that's 36.5 percentage points, which is a 76% decrease from the pre-209 rate. oddly enough, the words "76% decrease from the pre-209 rate" appear nowhere in john's screed. i do remember, however, something about how affirmative action's death has been "greatly exaggerated." maybe this means we'll know that affirmative action has actually "died" when the 11.5% black admit rate has declined another 76%, or 8.75 points, to 2.75%. yes, no, maybe?
more: "This year, 2007, after UCLA moved with great fanfare to 'holistic review,' 16% of blacks applicants were admitted. This represented a 39% increase over the pre-'holistic' 2006 numbers, but it is still a far cry 1995’s 48% admission rate."
of course, that "39% increase over the pre-holistic numbers" implies an increase of 4.5 percentage points (or basis points) over the pre-holistic rate (11.5%), but an overall 67% decline from the 1995 rate of 48% (or a net decrease of 32 basis points). "far cry" indeed.
whoa, that's a lot of numbers! i think i'm getting dizzy . . . maybe it's because of all the "spinning" i've been doing.
Posted by: Chauncey![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.discriminations.us/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 28, 2007 12:51 AM
Chauncey - Don't you just hate how cumbersome and convoluted and expensive "affirmative action" has become? I know I do.
Life would be so much simpler -- and easier and clearer -- if we could just return to the good old days of race norming where, say, admissions officers could determine the racial and ethnic mix of the class they wanted (this determination would involve "goals" and "targets," of course, not the identical albeit dreaded "quotas") and take the best applicants from each category.
That, of course, is still what happens now, but it takes so much effort and rhetorical smoke to disguise it.
Indeed, I've long thought, and argued here more than once, that the debate over racial preference would have been much more productive if the advocates of double (actually, now triple or quadruple or more) standards had had the courage of their convictions and simply argued for the quotas, by whatever name (it's O.K. with me if you want to call them critical masses). I've never understood why preferentialists have always tied themselves into such contortions to deny that what they're advocating is quotas, since I can't see any way that quotas are worse than what they admit to supporting.
Posted by: John Rosenberg![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.discriminations.us/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 28, 2007 7:42 AM
very interesting post, john. but witness what just happened: you say that preferentialists are actually arguing for quotas, even though they say they're arguing for "diversity" or "critical mass" or whatever happy term they're using nowadays. in other words, they must be arguing for quotas since their "diversity" policies, when applied, are more or less tantamount to quotas.
obviously the same thing could be said about the anti-minority-help folks. they may say they're advocating for "equality" and "race neutral" admissions, but their policies lead to substantial decreases in black admit rates and enrollments at good schools; therefore, their real goal must be to exclude blacks from top schools, or at least decrease their numbers substantially.
yeah, i don't think it's a good argument either.
anyway, after UC regents v bakke (decided decades ago), why would any preferentialist "admit" that he supports quotas? and how, exactly, would such an admission make the debate over race preference more "productive"? wait, by "productive," do you mean "over"? for if preferentialists were to say they're actually arguing for quotas, the debate over race preference would be over.
Posted by: Chauncey![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.discriminations.us/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 29, 2007 1:38 AM
In the Gratz case, Michigan's argument was that explicit racial preferences were necessary for undergraduate admissions because the equivalent of "holistic review" was not practical for the number of applications. The Supreme Court found the practice unconstitutional. How did UCLA implement holistic review for 50,000+ applicants within one year?
Posted by: David | May 30, 2007 4:16 AM
David,
If you think what UCLA is doing something bizarre ( and it is indeed bizarre ), then consider this.... In 2005, Troy high school in California graduated 228 Asians, 85 of them enrolled in the University of California in comparison to 59 latino graduates of whom 5 only enrolled in the UC system. There was not a single Asian graduate in 2005 from Troy high school who enrolled at the University of Southern California whereas 16 Latino graduates of Troy high school for that year enrolled at the University of southern California. That should tell you something just how hellbent these private schools are in increasing their diversity.And that is something that is absolutely bizarre. This is data coming from the California postsecondary education commission.
Posted by: leo cruz | May 31, 2007 3:12 AM
To Leo,
I don't think bizarre is the correct word. At least in this case, UCLA's diversicrats pay lip service to holistic, individualized consideration of each applicant in pursuit of diversity. The holistic approach is legally necessary, the diversity part is legally permissible, if not questionable in light of Prop. 209. As Ward Connerly tirelessly points out, the non-academic qualities so prized by holistic review seem to accrue in far greater proportion to designated racial groups. I think UCLA's approach is typical, not bizarre. USC and other private schools can admit who they wish, but they no doubt share similar attitudes. They just don't have to justify their practices to the Regents. Read "The Gatekeepers", by Jacques Steinberg, about the admissions process at Wesleyan in Connecticut. While this book was about undergrad admissions, as an alum of Wesleyan, I can attest to the level of effort that the school maintains to continue to justify diversity to its alumni. And if diversity is proper for this selective, elitist New England bastion, then certainly it is proper for Michigan, UVa, UCLA and down the line to the local elementary school and fire department. All of it overseen and engineered by the graduates of selective elitist bastions!
Posted by: David | May 31, 2007 10:45 AM
Interestingly, nobody wants to talk about the Native Americans enrolled at or recruited by UCLA, other UC's, CSU's or other colleges in California. There are only 100 Native Americans enrolled at UCLA. Discrimination and failure to recruit at its best. When will Native Americans, the people that were here before Caucasians, Mexicans, Americans and Blacks be included in the discussion by those "scholars" so concerned about racism and access to higher education. This is THE biggest remaining racism issue in Amercia that is continually ignored or covered up. Its time to grant our native people the rights that all other minorities are demanding or receiving. I see not one comment about this aspect in any of the discussions on this page, making each of us that ignore it racist at heart against this downtrodden class of people. SHAME on all of us, and the UC and CSU systems, regents, chancellors and administrators.
Posted by: Jack | June 9, 2007 12:08 AM