Affirmative action as placebo
I had been avoiding commenting on the affirmative action cases in Michigan, partially because I don't have time to fully cover it, and partially because John Rosenberg of Discriminations is doing a fine job of keeping us all posted. However, I do feel I have to comment on a NYT editorial that John appropriately singles out for criticism. The author, Adam Cohen, makes a passionate but wrong-headed plea for racial preferences at the University of Michigan, based on the squalid conditions of a Detroit technical school:
The conservative argument that race does not matter in America falls particularly flat at Cass Tech. The school is in a rough patch of downtown Detroit, a city that, after decades of white flight, is more than 80 percent black. Its own student body is not far from 100 percent black. Race is also reflected in its paltry resources. The higher the percentage of black students, on average, the worse facilities a school has. And although Cass Tech is an elite school, with an exam to get in, it is a wreck: dingy classrooms, ancient lab equipment, broken hallway clocks. Out front is "Cass Corridor," known for its derelicts.
Although Mr. Cohen lists this as an "elite" school, he obviously feels the students who attend it deserve an extra boost due not to their accomplishments, but to their race alone. Thus, students who attend this elite school should receive preferential treatment over students of other races who may have received a poor K-12 education as well. I don't buy it.
He also fails to explain how giving points in admissions due to race will in any way improve the conditions of Cass Tech. I've said it before, I'll say it again - affirmative action, in the form of explicit quotas or racial point-assignment, is a policy that allows decrepit schools to remain decrepit schools. It is part of what has allowed Cass Tech to remain a "wreck." It is a band-aid over the reality that minority students often get cheated during their K-12 education. Let's concentrate on fixing that, and then affirmative action won't be necessary.
Update: OpinionJournal has a good article on campus "diversity" that addresses the Michigan case.