Affirmative action is a side issue

Affirmative action is a side issue
June 10, 2003

By Abigail Thernstrom

Perhaps you're tired of the topic of affirmative action. If so, you have lots of company, me included. It's the hot constitutional issue of the moment. Before the Supreme Court goes into recess for the summer, it will decide two cases involving racially preferential admissions to the University of Michigan. And yet, as I sat in the audience on April 1, listening to the attorneys argue the cases before the nine justices, I felt battle weary. Too many decades hearing (and making) the same arguments with neither side budging an inch.

Don't get me wrong. I still have strong views. I don't believe universities should be judging prospective students by the color of their skin. I don't think it's smart to adopt policies that heighten race consciousness in our already too race-obsessed society. I abhor the trafficking in racial stereotypes that occurs when institutions seem to believe all blacks think alike, and that a black student thus brings a "black" voice to a classroom. And I think it's demeaning and patronizing to assume that a Hispanic can't keep up with her Asian classmate and shouldn't be held to the same academic standards.

I have held those beliefs for 30 years. They aren't the convictions, however, of a single president of a major college or university. In their view, the need for racial and ethnic diversity on campus outweighs any and all opposing arguments to the 20 extra points, for instance, that U-M has been giving all black applicants to the college - just for being black. And the college and the law school (the two defendants in the cases) both know how few African-American and Latino students can meet the criteria for admissions set for whites and Asians. Thus they see the use of racial double standards as inescapable. The alternative: more whites and Asians admitted, significantly fewer blacks and Hispanics.

They are right about the problem, but wrong about the solution. It's true that the number of academically highly qualified non-Asian minority students - students eligible for U-M admissions - is appalling and unacceptably small. Racial preferences in admission to colleges and professional schools are being driven by that simple fact. But they're a feel-good distraction. They make university administrators feel OK about a dismal situation. They can say to themselves, we've fixed the problem of inadequate skills and knowledge acquired in the K-12 years and beyond. Yes by ignoring it and pretending it will go away.

In fact, the problem does not disappear. The typical black or Latino student is graduating from high school too far behind to catch up. On average, by 12th grade black students are four years behind the typical white or Asian. On average, that means - of course - half the group is even more than four years behind. Hispanics don't do much better, although how they do in school depends in part on how long their families have been in this country.

An employer hiring the typical black high school graduate, or the college that admits the average black student, is choosing a youngster who has only an eighth-grade education. In most subjects, the majority of black students by 12th grade do not have even a "partial mastery" of the skills and knowledge that the authoritative National Assessment of Educational Progress (called NAEP) says are "fundamental for proficient work" at their grade. They fall into the category called Below Basic.

In reporting the scores of American students, NAEP (often called the nation's educational report card) uses four different "achievement levels," the top two of which are proficient and advanced. In math, only 0.2 percent of blacks score at the advanced level; the figure for whites is 11 times higher, and for Asians 37 times higher. Again, Hispanic scores are not significantly different. Blacks have made tremendous gains since the days when most sat in classrooms in legally segregated schools. But they have made no further progress in the past 15 years and have fallen back in some subjects.

Now, there's a picture worth spending sleepless nights contemplating. Who goes to the University of Michigan and other elite colleges and universities, anyway? A handful of mostly privileged youngsters. There are 8 million black schoolchildren in America, three-quarters of whom go on to college - a figure no different than that for whites. The doors to college are open, in other words, even to those with extremely weak academic records. But while three out of four African-Americans enter college, a high percentage end up taking remedial classes, and only one in six actually finishes - compared to about one in three whites. No surprise, when so many black students leave high school with eighth- or ninth-grade skills.

In a society committed to equal opportunity, we still have a racially identifiable group of educational have-nots - young African-Americans and Latinos whose opportunities in life will almost inevitably be limited by their inadequate education.

Racial preferences - affirmative action policies - are really a side issue. With respect to college admissions, they affect perhaps 5 percent of all black applicants. Conservatives and liberals, both, are too obsessed with them.

The typically low academic performance of black and Hispanic youngsters is the most important source of ongoing racial inequality in this country. The racial attitudes of Americans have dramatically changed in recent decades. The commitment of most Americans to racial equality is deep and irrevocable. But there is only one way to realize that equality: Close the racial gap in skills and knowledge starting in the early grades.

When students leave high school barely knowing how to read, their future - and that of the nation - is in jeopardy. Our sense of danger and moral outrage should be particularly great when those students are non-Asian minorities. A decent society does not turn a blind eye to such racial and ethnic inequality.

Abigail Thernstrom is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, New York, and the co-author of "America in Black and White: One Nation Indivisible."