Lies, Damn Lies And Racial Statistics

By Charles Krauthammer

ACCEPTANCE OF BLACKS, LATINOS TO UC PLUNGES --Los Angeles Times, April

ADMISSIONS PLUNGE AT U OF CALIFORNIA FOR THREE MINORITIES --New York Times, April 1

BLACK, HISPANIC ADMISSIONS PLUNGE AT TWO CALIF. CAMPUSES --Washington Post, April 1

The headlines were sensational, and the editorial writers were not far behind in drawing the politically correct conclusion: PROPOSITION 209 SHUTS THE DOOR (New York Times). In the relentless campaign against Proposition 209, which in 1996 abolished racial preferences in California, the "plunge" in minority students accepted for next fall at the University of California is political dynamite, alleged proof that the new color-blind admissions policy shuts the schoolhouse door in the face of minorities.

Of course, any plunge directly contradicts what proponents of affirmative action have been saying for 25 years: that under affirmative action there was no real academic discrepancy between minorities and whites admitted and that the students were all "qualified," with just marginal differences between them.

So fervently did affirmative-action proponents cling to these fictions that they went to great lengths to suppress the facts. In one famous case, in 1991, a Georgetown University law student who found and published the discrepancy between average white and black LSAT scores found himself reprimanded by the university for publishing the unmentionable.

Well, no matter. The facts are out. And affirmative-action proponents are eagerly waving them like a bloody shirt. At two elite University of California campuses, Berkeley and UCLA, black and Hispanic admissions are down significantly. On the basis of admissions, the number of black freshmen at Berkeley will decline 57% from 1997; the number of Hispanics, 40%. The drop at UCLA is 43% for blacks, 33% for Hispanics.

But the University of California has eight campuses, not two. How are blacks and Hispanics doing overall? University officials did not see fit to release the numbers until two days later, with the predictable result that the full story--the mitigating story--was buried. It turned out that at the University of California, the drop was far less dramatic: for blacks, not 57% but 17.6%; for Hispanics, not 40% but 6.9%.

Even these numbers do not tell the full story. This year there was a huge increase--to 6,846, or fully 15% of admissions--of those who did not identify themselves by race. (This is not surprising, given the fact that after Proposition 209 there was no advantage or disadvantage associated with race.) Not counting these students and looking just at those whose race we know for sure, black and Hispanic admissions at the UC system declined only slightly, from 17.7% to 17.2% of freshmen. (African Americans going from 3.7% to 3.3%; Hispanics remaining steady at about 14%.) This is shutting the schoolhouse door?

True, there was a significant drop in non-Asian minority admissions to the two most competitive UC schools. But there was a countervailing increase in such admissions at the less competitive schools. At UC Riverside, for example, there was a 34% increase in black admissions and a 43% increase in Hispanic admissions.

What happened? Contrary to the avalanche of media stories, non-Asian minority students are not being shut out of the University of California. They are, instead and finally, being assigned to campuses that better fit their level of academic preparation.

Affirmative-action proponents decry as a national tragedy the fact that black admissions to Berkeley make up not 5.6% but 2.4% of the freshman class. But what happens after admission? Affirmative-action proponents don't tell you that the dropout rate for blacks at Berkeley is 42%, vs. 16% for whites.

Given the huge academic handicap burdening black students admitted under affirmative action--their average SAT scores were 288 points below the Berkeley average--this dropout rate is understandable. These students were arbitrarily thrown into an environment with students far more advanced academically. The result was predictable: failure. Even more tragic is the fact that these bright black students, as social theorist Thomas Sowell puts it, "were perfectly qualified to be successes somewhere else" but were instead "artificially turned into failures by being admitted to high-pressure campuses, where only students with exceptional academic backgrounds can survive."

But the welfare of these individual students is far less important to affirmative-action propagandists than puffing out their chests and boasting about admissions numbers. Consider: under affirmative action, nearly half the black freshmen at Berkeley don't make it. Under the new color-blind system, yes, the black freshman class is cut roughly in half (hence the headlines). What will happen to the less advanced half--those who didn't qualify academically and would probably have ended up among the 42% that drop out? They will likely end up at other UC campuses where they should do very well.

This is a national tragedy? On the contrary. This is showing respect for minority students, treating them as individuals, not statistics. This is caring about their future--academic success, graduation, career--not risking it by artificially assigning them to a school one notch too advanced just to satisfy the moral vanity of quota-driven bureaucrats and politicians.