[NOTE: This post has been UPDATED TWICE]
Barack Obama won praise from David Yepsen, the dean of Iowa political writers, for his stellar performance at the recent high-profile Jefferson-Jackson Dinner of the Iowa Democratic Party.
Among other things,
He said “Not answering questions because we’re afraid our answers just won’t be popular just won’t do it….”
He said “telling Americans what they think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won’t do it.” Translation: Obama is often inclined to say things party interest groups don’t want to hear – like the need for school reform, merit pay, more efficient cars or money to rebuild the military. She [Clinton] panders or is mushy.
By the standard Obama laid down in his JJ Day address, however, Obama failed miserably in a recent interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education in which his responses were a textbook model of waffling obfuscation:
Q. You have called yourself a firm believer in affirmative action. How big a role should race play in college-admissions decisions, and why? How much should socioeconomic status factor in to those decisions, and why?
A. Diversity enriches education. As America grows more diverse, it is essential that students be exposed to diversity in all its forms and learn how to effectively communicate, collaborate, and compete with people of all backgrounds.
Some measures traditionally used to determine college admissions—such as college entrance exam scores—might not necessarily be the best predictors of college success, placing some very talented students at a disadvantage.
One of this year’s MacArthur awardees—the “genius” awards—is an innovator named Deborah Bial. She proposed a model to identify promising students from disadvantaged urban backgrounds, using an alternative set of qualities as predictors of success in college.
Candidates for this program are selected using a process based on qualities such as leadership, motivation, teamwork, and ability to effectively communicate. The students that are selected form a “posse,” and are provided with extra supports, and end up graduating form selective colleges with a very high success rate.
This shows the validity of using less-recognized skills as indicators of likely educational success. And this would probably be considered affirmative action, by specifically choosing students from less-advantaged backgrounds. But maybe it just shows that the playing ground, using traditional metrics for college admission, is unacceptably uneven.
When properly structured, affirmative action programs can open up opportunities to qualified minorities—and can do so without diminishing opportunities for white students. Given the dearth of black and Latino Ph.D. candidates in mathematics and the sciences, for example, a scholarship program for minorities interested in getting advanced degrees in these fields won’t keep white students out of such programs but can broaden the pool of talent that we need to prosper in the new economy.
We shouldn’t ignore that race continues to matter: To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in the socioeconomic disparities that we often observe turns a blind eye to both our history and our experience—and relieves us of the responsibility to make things right.
The very question suggests this is an either/or thing—either you want to increase opportunities for racial minorities or you want to increase opportunities for poor students of all races. I reject this. We can—and should—do both.
We should work to build an America where the qualified white student from rural South Carolina who worked hard to beat the odds and the qualified black student from the South Side of Chicago who did the same can attend classes together, learn from each other, teach their classmates a thing or two and vice versa, and together go off into the world prepared for a diverse workforce.
Q. On the same subject, you said in an ABC interview that your daughters should probably be treated by any admissions officer as people who are “pretty advantaged.” What did you mean by that? Should an applicant’s race play a role in whether he or she is admitted to a college if that person is from a middle- or upper-income background? Please explain.
A. My daughters are the children of a very talented and accomplished woman, and of a U.S. Senator. They are growing up in a neighborhood which provides the benefits of one of our nation’s great universities. They attend an excellent school. That seems pretty advantaged to me.
I think that my daughters should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged, and I think that there’s nothing wrong with us taking that into account as we consider admissions policies at universities.
I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed. So I don’t think those concepts are mutually exclusive.
I think what we can say is that in our society race and class still intersect, that there are a lot of African-American kids who are still struggling, that even those who are in the middle class may be first-generation as opposed to fifth- or sixth-generation college attendees, and that we all have an interest in bringing as many people together [as we can] to help build this country.
O.K., go back and re-read the above, and then take the following quiz:
- Does Obama believe it is wrong to burden some and benefit others because of their race? Always? Usually? Sometimes? Never?
- Are “qualities such as leadership, motivation, teamwork, and ability to effectively communicate” found primarily among disadvantaged blacks? If race were not a factor, would placing more weight on those qualities increase the proportion of blacks who are admitted to selective colleges?
- How can affirmative action programs that treat race in a preferential manner be “properly structured” so that they give additional opportunities to blacks without “without diminishing opportunities for white [or Asian] students”?
- What is the nature of the “diversity” provided by blacks and Latinos in math and science, and why is it important?
- How would “a scholarship program for minorities interested in getting advanced degrees in these fields … broaden the pool of talent that we need to prosper in the new economy” more than a scholarship program that was not racially restrictive? If such a program were racially restrictive, why would it not “keep white [and Asian] students out of such programs” who could not attend without a scholarship?
- Does Obama believe [as I’ve already asked, here and here] that all minority applicants who, like his daughters, “are pretty advantaged” should receive no preferential treatment?
- Would Obama award preferences to those “who are still struggling, … who are in the middle class [but] may be first-generation as opposed to fifth- or sixth-generation college attendees” only if they are “African-American kids,” or would he “take into account” those facts equally for all applicants, regardless of their race?
- In short, does Obama support or oppose preferences based on race? If he opposes them, why did he make ads opposing their abolition in Michigan?
Done? Good. Now you’ll have to grade your own quizzes, since I don’t know the correct answers.
UPDATE [13 Nov.]
A long and glowing profile of Obama in the Chronicle of Higher Education states that he has been “a consistent supporter of affirmative action.”
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama has reiterated his support for colleges’ use of racial preferences in admissions. But, he says, colleges should also expand educational opportunities among financially needy students of all ethnicities.
“To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in the socioeconomic disparities that we often observe turns a blind eye to both our history and our experience, and relieves us of the responsibility to make things right,” Mr. Obama wrote via e-mail.
At the same time, he added, “we should work to build an America where the qualified white student from rural South Carolina who worked hard to beat the odds, and the qualified black student from the South Side of Chicago who did the same, can attend classes together, learn from each other, teach their classmates a thing or two and vice versa, and together go off into the world prepared for a diverse work force.”
Thus what Obama is saying, or seems to be saying, is that preference should be given to all college applicants who are “financially needy” and to all applicants who are black, except perhaps his own daughters. The only difference I can see between him and all other preferentialists is that they would extend preferences to his daughters as well (as evidenced by the comments of the Director of Admissions at the University of Chicago that I quoted here).
UPDATE [13 Nov.]
Roger Clegg also has a few choice comments about Obama’s interview, here.
Senator Obama’s answers offered the interviewer an opportunity to further explore affirmative action as a universal concept. For example in his initial response the Senator says, “Diversity enriches education. As America grows more diverse, it is essential that students be exposed to diversity in all its forms and learn how to effectively communicate, collaborate, and compete with people of all backgrounds.” My follow-up questions would have been; If that is the case, are students at Historically Black Universities being shortchanged? Are the students at these universities receiving the requisite exposure to diversity, in all of its forms, which will allow them to reach their potential? If diversity is as important as you seem to think, what is the justification for having a university that isn’t “diverse”? If diversity is good for those attending the University of Illinois, should not the same good be offered to the students at Alabama A&M? By the way, in my humble opinion, “diversity” if you want to measure it should be based on the intellectual breadth offered by the institution and not on the tone of ones skin which presumes a certain mind set based on that tone. The latter is on its face is racist and stereotypes any individual to whom it is applied.
Next, the Senator points to a program developed by Deborah Bial. It is described as, “a model to identify promising students from disadvantaged urban backgrounds, using an alternative set of qualities as predictors of success in college. Candidates for this program are selected using a process based on qualities such as leadership, motivation, teamwork, and ability to effectively communicate.” My question, were I the interviewer, would be, how do you empirically and in a neutral fashion measure the attributes of leadership, motivation, teamwork and effective communication? When it comes down admitting student A or B, who is to say which one is better qualified? Who is that arbiter that can expertly make that call?
If we are going to do away with testing as a major indicator of achievement and qualification to enter the university (which seems to be what Ms. Bial is advocating), why not take the same approach when it comes to doctors or commercial airline pilots, just two examples of professions that require one to successfully pass a test to obtain a license. In the name of diversity, I’m quite sure Senator Obama would allow his daughters and wife to fly on an airline that hired pilots that did not rigorously test their pilots before intrusting them with the lives of hundreds of passengers’ day in and day out. I don’t think so! I’m also sure that he would allow a physician to perform surgery on members of his family if she that had skipped the testing obtained a license with the soft criteria of leadership, motivation and effective. Again, I don’t think so. If these students opt out of the painstaking and rigorous route into the university, what will they do upon graduation when faced with challenges in the job market where there are no soft and vague entry requirements?
Lastly, the good Senator never did definitively say whether his daughters should or should not receive preferential treatment when they apply to the university.
Obama also needs to distinguish between what methods may be acceptable and legal on different campuses (i.e., public vs. private). “Models” used to identify disadvantaged students from urban settings, combined with the resources to “[provide] extra supports” may fly at Bowdoin, but not at a selective state campus such as Michigan, Berkeley or UCLA. In the Gratz case, Michigan admitted that it used race because it lacked the resources to achieve its desired admissions “diversity” by relying on non-quantitative methods. Ward Connerly would also probably answer that such desirable qualities (leadership, teamwork, motivation) are not unique to students from disadvantaged urban backgrounds anyway, so they shouldn’t be allowed to use them if others are not.
As for the number of disadvantaged minorities earning PhD’s in STEM fields, how about some data on the backgrounds of those who do earn these degrees? What if the black physics PhD’s were getting their BA’s from Michigan State, not UMich? I don’t expect politicians to deal honestly or forthrightly with these issues, but empirical data can’t hurt the discussion- unless they give the wrong answer!
JoeH writes:
>>>”If we are going to do away with testing as a major indicator of achievement and qualification to enter the university (which seems to be what Ms. Bial is advocating), why not take the same approach when it comes to doctors or commercial airline pilots, just two examples of professions that require one to successfully pass a test to obtain a license. In the name of diversity, I’m quite sure Senator Obama would allow his daughters and wife to fly on an airline that hired pilots that did not rigorously test their pilots before intrusting them with the lives of hundreds of passengers’ day in and day out. I don’t think so! I’m also sure that he would allow a physician to perform surgery on members of his family if she that had skipped the testing obtained a license with the soft criteria of leadership, motivation and effective. Again, I don’t think so. If these students opt out of the painstaking and rigorous route into the university, what will they do upon graduation when faced with challenges in the job market where there are no soft and vague entry requirements?”
Isn’t that a strawman argument? Let’s be absolutely honest, here.
Can you give me the name of the pilot and co-pilot on the last commercial airline flight you took?
I’ll bet 998 out of 1000 people can’t.
Can you tell me what med schools the doctors ALLOWED TO TREAT you under HMO’s, managed care, etc. before you have surgery–if that surgery is even covered under the overpriced private insurance plan you’re covered by?
Most people in the system have to go where they can afford to go, without choice.
Can you tell me what comparative education a tech or engineer who lives in South Asia has when American jobs are being downsized by corporations over here?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a hotline to Bangalore that will print up those transcripts, but they’ll be making 20% of what those businesses would have to pay for the same job here.
What I’m trying to politely say, Joe–is that the fix is already in for the American worker, and these attacks on Affirmative Action amounts to little more than racial scapegoating.
–Cobra
Cobra,
The reason that most people don’t know the names of their pilots or the universities attended by their doctors is because people think it does not matter. That is, they assume that the accreditation process qualifies people for these jobs based on merit.
Now, maybe you are right. Maybe we should have to do deep research on pilots in the future to weed out any who are quota hires. Having to do such extensive research to take a simple flight would also reduce airtraffic congestion. Great idea.
We already have seen affirmative discrimination deaths, thought, such as the Challenger disaster when the quota hire manager refused to obtain imagery of the underside of the Challenger space shuttle.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/11/in-new-ad-obama.html
Everybody should be given a handout for being black?
In new ad, Obama says all children should have ‘chances I had’
In this TV ad that goes on the air in New Hampshire today, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama says that though he he didn’t come from a rich family and though his father left when he was young, “the one thing I was able to get was a great education.”
“We should give every child the same chances that I had,” Obama says. The ad briefly recaps two of the points in “the Obama plan” for education: “expand early childhood education” and “recruit a new generation of teachers.”