I have garnered a certain opinion on affirmative action for African Americans to get into colleges and universities. This opinion came from years of things coming into my mind here and there. I acknowledge I have a limited perspective and my opinion could be changed.
When the US Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, I read about 10 well-written Medium articles on this matter. My opinion did not change.
The SAT Test
Part of my opinion comes from about five years of administering SAT tests at a Canadian college. SAT is the testing process for determining who gets into American universities and colleges.
My town (Brooks, Alberta) has a competitive junior hockey team, and some players apply for hockey scholarships in the US. They must write an SAT. Since we have set up the testing event, it gets promoted in the SAT world. The hockey players were about half of our test takers; the other half were residents of southern Alberta looking for American academic admissions. They all had to write an SAT test before a post-secondary American institution would look at their application.
BTW, admission to Canadian universities and colleges depends mostly on marks earned in high school. We Canadians really don’t have an SAT equivalent.
The SAT test has a different style of questions than high school courses. So, SAT offers courses to prepare students for the SAT test. The students learn how SAT works — before they open the SAT test booklet. But these SAT courses cannot turn a grade of “C” in high school math into an admission into an American engineering school. Such an aspirant should have the math skills in place before writing SAT.
Affirmative Action
About four decades ago, the affirmative action people decreed that African Americans needed a lower SAT score to enter a university or college than a Caucasian person. And a Caucasian person needed a lower score than an Asian person.
At the time this affirmative action was implemented, there was a somewhat common belief that statistically speaking, Asians were intellectually superior to whites, who were intellectually superior to Blacks. How much of this errant thinking became part of this affirmative action is a mystery.
Given that races are evaluated unequally, given that rich people can get their kids into college with a poor SAT score, and given that many athletes seem to get a pass on their SAT score, I would like to know the correlation between SAT scores and whether the student makes it to the second year of their program. To put this question in simpler terms: what’s the dropout rate for different SAT scores?
I suspect studies have been done on this matter. I suspect the results are not easily found because certain vested interests do not want them to be found. Admittedly, I have not invested much time into digging up these studies.
Here is my unpopular opinion:
The affirmative action for college admissions was mostly a political tool to get more Black votes.
This affirmative action alleviates white liberal guilt.
This affirmative action has become a sacred cow. So sacred that even a Republican president and Republican Congress would dare not repeal it.
The Essay from Charles Bastille
I mentioned 10 or so essays that I had read. The first nine essays took the sacred cow approach. These essays stated that other than racism, there was no logical reason for repealing affirmative action. While racism may have indeed been an important motivation, I realized that before I read these essays. So, I didn’t garner any new insights from these articles.
There was no mention whatsoever of the extra administrative burdens placed on colleges and universities to categorize prospective students by race and apply the race rules to SAT scores.
The last essay was written by Charles Bastille. Charles had a unique angle: he said this affirmative action is a partial payment of reparations from the days of slavery.
I spent a couple of weeks digesting Charles’ “partial payment” reasoning. I have concluded that this reasoning is of little effect to the reparation cause. The African American demographic would have been better served with a $200/month stipend rather than this “cheat” to get into college. This stipend would have made a big difference to many African American families on the poverty line. Some of their children, freed from some of the burdens of poverty, would have been able to write SAT tests and better SAT tests. But white liberals are not thinking in this way.
Of all the essays I read on this topic, Charles was the only writer to put a few numbers into his work. One number solidified my perspective. Here is that number:
African Americans constitute about 5% of university/college admissions!
This is a very interesting figure!
Why is that interesting? Because African Americans constitute about 13% of the American population!
In other words, African Americans are not equal in this part of the American social structure — after at least four decades of affirmative action. This social engineering program has not produced the results we were looking for. And yet it became a sacred cow. And white liberal guilt was eased. I say, “Grow up! Affirmative action wasn’t working. The sacred cow has been holding the USA back from trying out better solutions.”
White Discrimination
Here’s another point the 5% figure is making. Let’s say 3% probably had a high enough SAT score to get a meritocratic admission. The remainder, let’s say 2%, displaced white and Asian people who had a better score.
If my 3% to 2% split is correct, then only 2% of the whites could claim that affirmative action kept them out of college. Affirmative action was hardly a discriminatory practice. For that 2%, I will say this: “You were marginal to be admitted into college in the first place. Don’t blame Black people. Retake your high school courses to get a better SAT score later. You will also be more prepared for the rigours of study. Grow up!”
The Math is Conclusive
The math says affirmative action was ineffective.
The math also says affirmative action was not a source of serious discrimination against whites.
There! I have annoyed both sides of the political divide. Grow up, USA! You are fighting over inconsequential social policy.
No wonder I’m a bottom writer on Medium.
Published on Medium 2023
2024 Addendum
This article generated more than usual controversial comments.
In particular, a couple of people challenged Charles' figures of African Americans constituting 5% of college admissions. Admittedly, Charles' figures sounded low to me, but I could not accept the African American admissions were proportional to their population . . . . unless the SAT scores had given this demographic a greater advantage than I thought was happening.
The same critics refused to deal with any correlation between SAT scores and graduation. They claimed SAT was only about admission and it was inappropriate for me to suggest a link between the score and graduation. Might this be another "sacred cow"?
Other critics suggested that SAT are not really that important anymore, which is strange for a testing system that costs a lot of money to administer and many, many students participate in.
But the comments were enough for me to realize that I don't have enough background information to comment wisely. To minimize unnecessary future controversy, I should have not included this Medium article in the TDG blog. But with this addendum, I believe I am teaching about the importance to know when to "get more facts." In other words, I am admitting I might not be right. I think this is an important skill to have for TDG governance.
The opinions stated in this article may still hold if I do more research. Or maybe not. I haven't done the research.
