Over at Heterodox Academy, you should have a look at this post by Jonathan Haidt (click on screenshot):

Haidt’s thesis stems from his observation that many high profile American universities, like Yale, Brown, and Amherst, despite enacting strong policies “devoted to social justice and racial equality”, have been wracked with racial protests in the last few years. Haidt blames this on those affirmative action policies that incorporate quotas for admitting minorities students (he’s not opposed to some affirmative action): Here’s a quote that contains one of his earlier observations (the Wall Street Journal piece is behind a paywall):

A simple resolution of the puzzle is the hypothesis that the anti-racist policies these schools pursue give rise, indirectly, to experiences of marginalization for black students. Lee Jussim and I suggested this hypothesis in an essay last Saturday in the Wall Street Journal. We noted that we support affirmative action in general – taking vigorous steps to increase the recruitment, training, retention, and ultimate success of black students. But we raised concerns about the most controversial element of affirmative action: the use of racial preferences in admissions. Here is the key passage:

But as practiced in most of the top American universities, affirmative action also involves using different admissions standards for applicants of different races, which automatically creates differences in academic readiness and achievement. Although these gaps vary from college to college, studies have found that Asian students enter with combined math/verbal SAT scores on the order of 80 points higher than white students and 200 points higher than black students. A similar pattern occurs for high-school grades. These differences are large, and they matter: High-school grades and SAT scores predict later success as measured by college grades and graduation rates.

As a result of these disparate admissions standards, many students spend four years in a social environment where race conveys useful information about the academic capacity of their peers. People notice useful social cues, and one of the strongest causes of stereotypes is exposure to real group differences. If a school commits to doubling the number of black students, it will have to reach deeper into its pool of black applicants, admitting those with weaker qualifications, particularly if most other schools are doing the same thing. This is likely to make racial gaps larger, which would strengthen the negative stereotypes that students of color find when they arrive on campus.

In support of this thesis, Haidt cites a letter written in 1969 by Macklin Flemin, a justice of the California Court of appeal, to Louis Pollack, the dean of Yale Law school. Responding to the school’s policy that there would henceforth be a quota of 10% black students admitted to Yale as a whole, Fleming essentially presages what Haidt predicted 47 years later, and what has indeed come to pass. Here’s a bit of Fleming’s letter:

No one can be expected to accept an inferior status willingly. The black students, unable to compete on even terms in the study of law, inevitably will seek other means to achieve recognition and self-expression. This is likely to take two forms. First, agitation to change the environment from one in which they are unable to compete to one in which they can. Demands will be made for elimination of competition, reduction in standards of performance, adoption of courses of study which do not require intensive legal analysis, and recognition for academic credit of sociological activities which have only an indirect relationship to legal training. Second, it seems probable that this group will seek personal satisfaction and public recognition by aggressive conduct, which, although ostensibly directed at external injustices and problems, will in fact be primarily motivated by the psychological needs of the members of the group to overcome feelings of inferiority caused by lack of success in their studies. Since the common denominator of the group of students with lower qualifications is one of race this aggressive expression will undoubtedly take the form of racial demands–the employment of faculty on the basis of race, a marking system based on race, the establishment of a black curriculum and a black law journal, an increase in black financial aid, and a rule against expulsion of black students who fail to satisfy minimum academic standards.

And indeed, all of this has happened. (Haidt gives examples.) One more quote from Flemin’s letter:

The American creed, one that Yale has proudly espoused, holds that an American should be judged as an individual and not as a member of a group. To me it seems axiomatic that a system which ignores this creed and introduces the factor of race in the selection of students for a professional school is inherently malignant, no matter how high-minded the purpose nor how benign the motives of those making the selection….

The present policy of admitting students on two bases and thereafter purporting to judge their performance on one basis is a highly explosive sociological experiment almost certain to achieve undesirable results.

As I said, Haidt is not against affirmative action, but against those forms that create preferential admissions for groups of students who, on average, have credentials not as impressive as those of other groups (yes, you’ll be thinking about Asians here, who, compared to whites, have to be more qualified to get into many schools).  Haidt doesn’t discuss the advantages of diversity, which those schools cite as reasons to use differential standards for group admissions.  And there’s some justification for this, for who wants a completely homogenous student body?

Haidt’s solution? First, the courts should step in (presumably to get rid of quotas, which they’ve already in fact done). But his main solution is this:

What’s the alternative? In our WSJ article, Jussim and I praised the US Army for the principled way that it addressed its severe racism problem in the 1970s by implementing affirmative action without racial preferences. (See this brief summary of Moskos & Butler, 1996, All That We Can Be: Racial Integration the Army Way.)

Let us hope that a few bold university presidents break from the pack, break the cycle, and try a different approach.

And here’s part of that brief summary, which in fact is a Kirkus review of the Moskos and Butler book:

 Moskos and Butler characterize the Army as a race-savvy, not race-blind, service that pragmatically subordinates trendy peripheral concerns (ethnic diversity, multiculturalism) to its primary goal of combat readiness. The authors go on to argue that “the Army does not patronize or infantilize blacks by implying that they need special standards in order to succeed.” Instead of lowering its standards, they point out, the Army elevates veterans as well as recruits with a wealth of instructional courses and programs. Among the lessons to be learned from the accomplishments of the Army and its black soldiers, they cite the need to focus on opportunity and to link affirmative-action efforts to supply- rather than demand-side exigencies or aspirations. In a concluding chapter, the authors call for a national service corps to offset the loss of opportunities caused by downsizing of the US military. An important, eye-opening study that delivers fresh, matter- of-fact perspectives on a divisive issue in need of more reason and less rhetoric.

Now I’m not sure how this system would work to maintain diversity, as the inequities that Haidt mentions start at a very young age: when children begin going to schools that have different standards; in other words, a lack of equal opportunity from the outset. And how are “remedial courses” for some students going to reduce their sense of inferiority?

Finally, why don’t white students feel that they have inferior status with respect to Asians, then, and ask for redress? Probably because they’ve historically dominated the student population. Why don’t Asians feel bad because they’re expected to meet higher standards than anybody else? Perhaps they do; I don’t know.

Haidt’s argument makes sense to me, especially because he does favor programs, however ineffectual they seem, to redress historical inequities. The only thing that doesn’t comport is the fact that women students, who have at least as high achievement as men, are also demanding redress in the same way as blacks, yet Haidt’s argument doesn’t explain why there is, to my mind, as much demand for equity based on sex as on race.

I don’t know the answer, but what I feel is that inequities have are best redressed not by meeting the “demands” of groups of students already in college, but by affording everyone, regardless of sex, race, or ethnicity, equal opportunity from the outset: from when children first start school. And that is a much harder thing to do, especially in the era of Trump.