What Affirmative Action Really Does to Campuses

by Steve Sailer

Published in the Christian Science Monitor, 3/26/91, 800 words

Race relations on our nation's campuses are getting worse. A vast number of "racial incidents," ranging in seriousness from the sadistic to the psychosomatic, are reported annually. A less dramatic but pervasive symptom is that in many college lunchrooms the only integrated tables are the ones occupied by varsity athletes.

The much vaunted solution of "multiculturalism" (in practice, a euphemism for "more affirmative action,") on closer inspection looks less like the cure than the cause.

For example, at the University of California at Berkeley, affirmative action has created what one professor there, anthropologist Vincent Sarich, calls "two student bodies," distinguishable by skin color. Only 40% of the freshman openings are awarded to the best-qualified white and Asian students, while most of the rest are reserved for Hispanic and African-American applicants who must merely meet the legal minimums. Since there is only room for the elite of the white and Asian applicants, those selected have qualifications worthy of the Ivy League. While the Hispanic and African- American students typically possess skills more than adequate for most colleges, they are frequently overwhelmed trying to compete with Berkeley's handpicked whites and Asians: the dropout rate of the "protected" minorities is much higher, despite their tending to get shunted into less demanding majors.

Even more serious, possibly, is how affirmative action poisons campus racial attitudes. Because skin color determines who gets in, students can (and do) use skin color, with an unfortunately high degree of accuracy, to estimate how tough a class' grading curve will be. Stories abound of students poking their heads into classes they are considering taking, exclaiming things like, "Too many Chinese," and scurrying off to find a classroom with less competitive demographics.

These are gross stereotypes; sadly, owing to affirmative action, students find them useful. In contrast, color-blind admissions would mean the different ethnic groups would be, on the whole, comparably qualified. Stereotypes would be of less use; students would have to view each other as individuals. (Color-blind admissions does not mean that colleges couldn't recruit minorities more intensely, just that admissions decisions would not take race into account.)

While affirmative action inculcates smugness and condescension among whites and Asians, it instills self-doubt, paranoia, and frustration among its supposed beneficiaries. Sociologist Troy Duster spent a year interviewing Berkeley students to discover the roots of the growing racial hostility on campus. Professor Duster (who is African-American) was recently interviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle:

And the subject of affirmative action admissions "is where all the juices come out," Duster says. Blacks and Latinos generally support affirmative action, but are ambivalent because, "they say, they are characterized as affirmative action admits, no matter what their grade point average is." Duster says these students are convinced that in the minds of whites and Asians "they don't really belong here. Affirmative action becomes a stigma for them." In such a charged atmosphere, says Duster, students of color "feel belittled," and "just about anything can be interpreted as racism." . . . "What I experienced when I talked to these kids is their increasing rage at their own inability to justify the charge of racism."

In contrast, one type of campus organization does show that the races can work together enthusiastically: the varsity sport team. Why do jocks get along better than regular students? First, intercollegiate competition is so fierce that coaches must decide who plays solely on individual merit, not on race. Second, athletes of different races hang around together more than other students because they work together for a common goal.

If professors cut down on individual homework in favor of more projects assigned to randomly chosen teams, they would force students of different races to work together and thus have more in common. Academic teammates might even lunch together. However, this reform requires color-blind admissions: without it, white and Asian students would find themselves carrying the load for their consistently underqualified Hispanic and African-American teammates, and race relations would get worse, not better.

The multiculturalists, in contrast, have used their political clout to make students even more hypersensitive about race: e.g., all Berkeley students now must take ethnic studies to graduate. (Ominously, a white backlash forced Berkeley to offer "white studies.")

A bill authored by the Chairman of the California Assembly Committee on Higher Education, Tom Hayden (yes, the former Mr. Jane Fonda), extended the logic of affirmative action to "solving" the problem of unequal graduation rates (a problem largely created by affirmative action): the University would be required to graduate the same percent of each ethnic group. (The bill passed but was vetoed). Of course, this would have debased the market value of any Hispanic's or African-American's Berkeley degree, but, presumably, more affirmative action in the job market could then fix that problem. Unfortunately, what affirmative action can not patch over is the self-doubt that comes from never being allowed to know if you've earned what you've got.

* * *

Written by Steve Sailer (steveslr@aol.com), a businessman.