The most publicized frontline in the fight over the ethnic spoils system (a.k.a., affirmative action, diversity, or multiculturalism) has long been freshman admissions to the University of California. Sunday's New York Times Magazine article -- The New Affirmative Action by David Leonhardt -- praising the (illegal) push to get more minorities into UCLA is only the latest example.
Heck, I've written about this issue more times than I care to remember. ...
Why has fighting over who gets a cheap but prestigious college education been so intense in California? It's worth considering in detail because the Golden State is where America's future gets test-driven. The rest of the country can look forward to similar developments soon.
By 1965, the state of California had built for its best high school graduates eight lovely campuses (most in famously desirable locations such as Santa Barbara and La Jolla), or one for every 2.2 million residents. Since then, however, 20 million more people have crowded into California—but the state has added only one additional UC school, in not-so-lovely Merced in the Central Valley.
California's population growth and its worsening inability to add the infrastructure that the new residents need—whether campuses, freeways, or power plants—are intimately related.
First, more people mean higher land prices. So paying for needed property is more expensive than back in the early 1960s.
Second, the Not-In-My-Back-Yard movement inevitably gathers political strength as the number of backyards increases. California has passed famously stringent environmental laws as homeowners try to prevent new developments from overcrowding them. The construction of UC Merced turned into a 17-year-long ordeal stretching from 1988 to the first day of classes in 2005, with the whole campus having to be moved to protect a half-inch long crustacean.
Third, California's population became much more diverse. And ethnic diversity means more divisive squabbling over handouts and Tammany Hall-style corruption. Considering that minorities already make up two-thirds of freshmen at UCLA, you might think the topic of today's NYT essay is moot by this point. That UCLA is enormously diverse, yet still wracked by complaints that it lacks diversity, shows that "diversity" isn't really the issue. Instead, ethnic activists just want to pack more members of their races into each college to display their raw political muscle. Whether this is in the interests of the general public or even of the minority students themselves is irrelevant.
Affirmative action is much like its campus counterpart: football recruiting. They're both close to a zero sum game. UCLA's football team, for example, has scored a coup in getting a letter of commitment from Birmingham High School's star running back Milton Knox. This allows UCLA fans to thump their chests and gesticulate with contempt at Berkeley's fans. But, ultimately, so what? Similarly, Berkeley annually flies up from Los Angeles 500 black and Hispanic high school students, primarily to keep them from going to UCLA, Berkeley's UC sister school.
The vast amount of time and money expended on recruiting high school football players doesn't create much new talent; it just redistributes it among colleges. And the same is true for affirmative action. [More]
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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13 comments:
"We permanently authorize racial quotas for African-Americans in return for permanently banning preferences for any other ethnic group."
Looking at it from the outside, this grand bargain makes a lot of sense, but it needs to be restricted to the descendants of the USA's antebellum black slaves - no preferences for descendants of upper-class Kenyans like Barack Obama.
Just so the students that AA supposedly helps don't keep getting screwed over, how about stats are kept not just of admissions, but also of attrition? I mean, I know they have those stats, but they should be forced to publish all those stats, from admissions to graduation.
Another issue is "major decay" -- kids who want to major in something tough like engineering get into a college one tier over their heads and wind up majoring in sociology because they can't hack it in engineering there, while they could make it in engineering at a school more appropriate to their talents.
No doubt your grand bargain is a little tongue-in-cheek as it clearly, in my opinion, isn't ever going to happen. I think the time has come for white Americans to begin migrating to a part of the country and prepare to secede. To avoid being beat up by the rest of the world as South Africa was or to simply be left alone, we will need to adopt a non-militaristic, hands-off approach to interacting with the remainder of the world, much like Switzerland or today's Japan. To avoid being called racist, we will simply have to not allow low-IQ people in to this newly-formed country.
Does anyone ever stop to contemplate exactly how much effort is expended by whites arguing among ourselves over what to do with minorities? What a blessed relief it would be to have that out of the picture so we could return to honorable, intellectual debate, conducted within a healthy social framework that citizen's intuitively recognized and respected.
An absolutely excellent idea!
But it really doesn't go quite far enough in solving our overriding social problem of too many Young Black Men in prison and not enough in college...
We should similarly exempt the members of our long-suffering African-American community from all of the regular laws against murder, rape, and robbery.
This would certainly help prevent such horrible miscarriages of justice as the Jena Six...
"The vast amount of time and money expended on recruiting high school football players doesn't create much new talent; it just redistributes it among colleges. And the same is true for affirmative action."
Except that in football, you're actually recruiting the best talent. That's why teams that recruit well do well on the field. Pete Carroll has turned USC from an also-ran into a dominant powerhouse with superb recruiting. It's just that much of this superior talent is black. By contrast, affirmative action recruiting isn't about talent or success, it's about keeping the media and politicans off your back.
Steve: Others may comment on your typically fine analysis of the situation. I just want to thank you for calling the school by its right name.
Except for the service acadamies, there is only one college in America that is known by one name when referring to its sports teams, and another name in every other context: "Cal" (Berkeley).
It makes no sense at all to have an affirmative action policy of admitting a black kid with an SAT score in the bottom decile just to boost the "diversity" of the freshman class, and then burning her out and flunking her, replacing her with a community college grad with an even lower SAT score who winds up getting the UCLA degree instead of the smarter black.
I wonder if these transfers are largely the same students the AA candidate originally trumped?
I don't know. It could be the trumped students end up going to private schools for considerably more money, or they go to the Cal State schools, and don't transfer once they settle in to a place. And certainly this whole scheme is an inefficient waste of human capital, as any political spoils system is. But, (if it's not too prole of me to admit) I do wonder about all those drop-outs and transfer students.
Anyone have any data?
Another issue is "major decay" -- kids who want to major in something tough like engineering get into a college one tier over their heads and wind up majoring in sociology because they can't hack it in engineering there, while they could make it in engineering at a school more appropriate to their talents.
In fairness, it's by no means limited to minorities. It happens to plenty of white students too.
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Except for the service acadamies, there is only one college in America that is known by one name when referring to its sports teams, and another name in every other context: "Cal" (Berkeley).
What about the University of Mississippi aka Ole Miss?
The late, great management theorist Peter Drucker said that a business owner is better off paying an incompetent relative not to work, than hiring him: the incompetent relative will screw things up and stoke resentment among the employees who were hired on merit. America's lower-IQ college aspirants are like our incompetent relatives. We are better off paying them not to work, or at least to work in some harmless capacity.
The danger of Sailer's proposal to give quotas for blacks is that it can lead to incompetents ending up in positions where they can do real harm (e.g., as jet pilots, civil engineers, physicians, money managers, etc.). "Major decay" is preferable.
Another issue is "major decay" -- kids who want to major in something tough like engineering get into a college one tier over their heads and wind up majoring in sociology because they can't hack it in engineering there
Sadly, I don't think sociology is benefiting much from major decay. It seems most sociology students and professors I've encountered were torn between majoring in sociology and things like English Lit, cultural anthropology, psychology, or philosophy. Not many physical science students or engineers seem even secondarily interested in sociology. We could actually use some hard-headed engineering students becoming sociologists - it would do the science some good.
How about this for an idea? High school should end at the age of 16, and then all students should go to a 2-year community college, where they either learn a trade or prepare for a university education.
I tried to do this (go to a community college at age 15), but my parents vetoed the idea, and I ended up without any classes left to take by my senior year in high school, which I wasted spectacularly.
The US college system is broken. There are some seriously dumb people teaching there, and the smart ones have been reduced to self-delusion to keep their jobs. American universities have become mental prisons.
Except for jobs that require accreditation, such as doctor, lawyer, accountant etc., college is a waste of money. I took two years of Chinese in college, and then learned more in two months in China. This is no exaggeration.
Nowadays, universities are good places to go to find healthy young women who are spinning their wheels in feminist mud.
Young men: go ye out there and rescue the girls from the politically correct dragon! It is your duty, but one you will enjoy mightily.
Authorizing racial quotas for blacks would be a brilliant way to get all other minorities in America to resent blacks all the more. For one thing, it's doubtful that the growing hispanic population would stand for it and the issue would undeniably increase tensions between the two groups. Those on the Left, of course, are smart enough to perceive this eventuality, hence why they would never favor it (though I do indeed belief that a moral case can be made for Affirmative Action to be exclusive to the descendents of those undeniably wronged by America's founders. For instance, no one ever seems to care about Native Americans receiving Affirmative Action at colleges. Maybe it's because they constitute .2% of the population. But maybe it's because we all know those people reeeallllyyyy got a raw deal and consequently don't give a rats ass about any sort of compensation handed to them.)
So, Steve, maybe your idea could work if there were only 6 million black americans as opposed to 36 million.
Affirmative action should be scrapped because it is impractical and tends to hurt its intended beneficiaries. The objection of Fairness To Whites is overplayed and could easily be disgarded IF the system did indeed work. But it doesn't.
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