What’s Wrong with the World

Very interesting indeed, Steve. One wonders: are college Admissions departments precise enough to have calculated for these effects?

And the chief beneficiary of underrepresentation of WGM? White women! It would be interesting to run the numbers against specific disciplines (e.g. science/engineering versus psychology)...but I'm afraid you'd wind up in Larry Summers territory were you to go down that path!

I think we're already well past Larry Summers territory. But you're doubtless right.

Paul: I very much doubt it.

Jeff Singer: Could be, but it's not immediately obvious. That would take some serious number-crunching.

Maybe we could get Steve Sailer interested.

Would you have expected that result?

It would have been interesting, particularly in the case of Berkeley, to have the figures on the percentages of the non-WGM undergraduates who are Asian.

Rodak - Here are the numbers for Asians/Pacific Islanders:

Brown: 13.7%
Cal Tech: 37.4%
Chicago: 13.4%
Columbia: 16.2%
Cornell: 16.1%
Dartmouth: 13.3%
Duke: 16.7%
Emory: 17.3%
Harvard: 13.2%
Johns Hopkins: 18.3%
M.I.T.: 26.4%
Northwestern: 15.2%
Notre Dame: 17.1%
Penn: 16.4%
Princeton: 13.6%
Rice: 18.0%
Stanford: 24.3%
Vanderbilt: 6.2%
Washington University of St. Louis: 11.1%
Yale: 13.4%

Steve--
Is that the raw percentage of the representation of Asians in the undergraduate population? If so, how does it compare to their representation in the general population, and to WGMs at the various campuses?

I seem to recall reading somewhere that some colleges and universities have begun using recruiting techniques formerly used to recruit minorities, in an attempt to attract more male students to their campuses. The implication of this is not that male students are being crowded out of the student population by unfair admissions policies, or even by competition from better qualified candidates of whatever race or gender, but rather that males are simply not applying for admittance in sufficient numbers to be proportionately represented.

Rodak - yes, those are the raw percentages.

Asians/Pacific Islanders make up about 4.5% of the U.S. population.

Gender imbalance isn't really that big of a factor at the most prestigious schools. About half of the twenty I looked at had slight male majorities. Only two (Emory and Notre Dame) had big female majorities. It's at lower ranked schools that things are getting really skewed.

Great post! This is pretty interesting, but I'm not all that surprised. I think we've had a lot of knee jerk reactions in the racism area, and that hasn't always been for the best. One thing I noticed when applying to schools was that most of the scholarships were geared towards minorities. I've heard that's still true. It can be very difficult for a WGM to find funding. I wonder if that contributes to the lower representation.

You touch on an important and difficult truth to swallow for many who are committed to racial diversity and particularly to empower under-represented minorities.

The fact is that WGMs (outside of Academia perhaps) enjoy a fair amount privilege over other communities. They are better represented in media, among boards of Fortune 500 companies, etc... So the playing field is not necessarily level.

However, you are right that on the college campus, WGM's are becoming more of a rare breed and there are perhaps many reasons for this, which are not the same for the reasons why Black males are under-represented in academia.

In my own ministry, we have had to learn to reconnect and engage White students (particularly White men), as we found that we are doing a better job reaching other ethnic communities.

The key is not to just implement quotas and engage culturally appropriate outreach, but to develop values of racial reconciliation and integration.

Let's face it: The same affirmative action issues that cause scholarships to be less available to WGMs cause them to be less available to WJMs as well. Jewish students are regarded as simply "white" by the affirmative action folks with names like "office of institutional equity."

In answering the title question, wouldn't it be more telling to ask: Who are the Trustees? The Presidents? The Provosts? The Faculty? Universities are run on a business model in this day and age. The students are less the raw materials and the products of system than they are the consumers. As such, they don't define the power structure of the academy.

I'm not surprised. About five tears ago I read these articles, the first written by a White Nationalist, the second by a libertarian:

Diversity's Losers - Part II - The Universities, which suggests the displacement you find was already evident 10 years ago.

and

White Male Privilege - A Social Construct for Political Oppression, which identifies the characters behind AA and their anti-gentile double-standard.

I've just skimmed the libertarian's article (I'm not planning on skimming the white nationalist's article). It seems to me from a brief skim that the author of that article is simply trying to hoist the AA people with their own petard, not to accuse them of an "anti-gentile" bias. My perception of the article (which could be wrong) is that he is arguing for dismantling AA and the whole "trying to correct underrepresentation" approach altogether.

The issue of education and gender is of considerable interest to me. So if I may discuss a slightly different angle: most of the interaction between students (at least in the Arts programs, business and science are probably different) is female. Many of the profs are female along with the support staff. Furthermore, nearly every single professor has embraced feminism and liberal individualism as virtues.

From my experience, it is difficult to argue outside of these narrow boundaries, because of a failure of imagination. This is our culture. It is how we have been taught to think. Unsurprisingly, these attitudes fail to adequately account for how men actually think, therefore, they leave men out of the process and effectively shuns them. Fundamentally, I don't think that the education system addresses maleness, even if there are studies in gender relations.

Skim on by Lydia.

I had already noticed your earlier comment when I posted the links, I knew they couldn't speak to you.

Liberal individualism and feminism are actually in a certain amount of tension, if you think about it.

Perhaps, but I am more inclined to view them as having a similar intellectual history.

Unfortunately, there's a complication: 9% of Berkeley's undergraduates are listed by the NCES as "Race-ethnicity unknown." So this 10% has to be divided by .91 to get WGM's as a percentage of all students of known race/ethnicity. Result: 11%.

"Race-ethnicity unknown." is further complicated by bi-racial and multi-racial folks as well as those who could characterize themselves in multiple categories. My friend whose mother is 100% Irish and his father is the son of a 100% caucasian Spaniard + Mexican of mixed caucasion/indiginous blood... He was born here, grew up there till he was 6, and than raised in Ohio by his Irish mother and grandmother. A 75%+ Caucasion born and raised in Ohio who learned Spanish in high school (like the rest of us in Ohio) I would pretty much call "white..." Would Berkley?

In California, there seemed to be about a half-dozen ways to "classify" exactly "what" he was. Given how artificial I believe race contructs to be, and misunderstood concepts of ethnicity to be, this always amused me.

Also, with the downward spiral in marriage in the western world, this may soon become a non-factor...

But in my unimpressive academic career (no scholar here, just bachelors man myself!), I have found that large unis gravitate towards hiring a lot of part time staff... And (admittedly anecdotal) many husbands I have known have worked as the primary wage earner while thier wives pursue academic careers often augmenting thier income with part time work. (That older gal at the Olive Garden with a wedding ring may in fact be working for her doctrate!)

Then again, I knew a Harvard grad (masters) whose wife packed up and moved to Boston supporting him for two years.

One wonders if race is as singular a factor as presented sometimes. Marital status and other family factors seem to present nuances. Would the son of two black college grads be as/more likely to go to college as the son of a white parents who didn't attend college?

As marriage breaks down and we all become "free agents" trends could change... but a good deal of the female instructors I had were part timers or pursuing PhDs... Cheaper to pay, and otherwise supported or partially subsidized by husbands.

Random thoughts.

more random thoughts:

The explosion of community colleges (2 year programs) in some areas that are widely marketed to both traditional and non-traditional students may present a different demographic altogether. Is it rougly similar to the studies you show? (most of us don't go to Harvard... or NDU!)

A newspaper editorial I read 8+ years ago (when I was reading 5+ newspapers - job related!) suggested many males are opting for technical training programs, Associate's programs and technical certifications...

Looking at those numbers and comparing would be interesting...

Also a factor I would be interested in considering is $$$. The majority of college attendees in my own extended (white) family began their studies in community colleges due to financial considerations. Truly financial aid (which can be race related) does not equate to acumen in securing and pursuing those opportunities necessarily being related to race. Sons of working class families may not even begin to consider the possibility of college being affordable.

12+ years ago when I was in (public) university, I could pay for it as I went working summers in a factory and part time during the school year. I don't know if I could still do that.

I had some gender relations the other day. I had a good stick in the game but it wasn't everything it was cracked up to be.

Keep that in mind when you go to college.

Dare we consider what the results are if we exclude those WGM that were recruited for sports or theater or ???

Excluding these, it would seem virtually impossible for a WGM to enter at all.

My only observation is that you failed to account for non-US students.

If this was addressed in other comments my regret for being lazy.

Guys! Maybe whitey is just picking up his ball and finding a more friendly game. Maybe whitey is just not impressed and interested in your little club so much anymore. Affluence brings choices.

These numbers may be approximately correct, but probably not. If 9% of students are of "race-ethnicity unknown", what's the margin of error in the two-figure accuracy results? Are all Hispanics not Jewish? Was Sammy Davis Jr. white?

This has been obvious for some time. Thanks for putting the numbers to it for those too blinded by leftardness to see.
The trouble, though, is not the color or sex of college kids. The trouble is the huge percentage of them that have zero tolerance for limited government, private property, free enterprise or individual responsibility as principles upon which to build a society.

Blacks refuse to learn the lesson that the Jews have LONG internalized: you must be able to do everything for yourself without relying on any government because governments can enslave and kill you! Consequently, the graduation rate for blacks, particularly males, is extremely depressing. In this current global climate, Jews have even greater incentive to dominate the academies. It's all about life and death.

I have red hair, blue eyes, and with a few stars and strips could be a flag.

My daughter got a full ride scholarship. My son could get scholarship at all. Both are brilliant students in the same field.

Miss Marple: your white nationalist link draws attention to some interesting figures, but, as I would expect with a site of that sort, the interpretation of those numbers is often strained and the rhetoric...ummm, dicey, to say the least. "Yggdrasil" seems to be a reasonably smart guy, but he's obviously got a really bad case of what John Derbyshire calls "The Jew Thing."

I think it's perfectly legitimate to point out that the group interests of American Jews and American gentiles sometimes differ, and that the statistical agglomeration of these two groups sometimes creates a misleading impression in the public mind - undergraduate enrollments at our most prestigious schools being the present case in point. But when the discussion starts veering off into antisemitic conspiracy theories and holocaust-denial...well, count me out. That kind of talk is disgusting.

M. Simon: I think I'm missing the point of your joke.

Lou: yes - the figures for WGM's as a percentage of *U.S.* students of known race/ethnicity would be slightly higher. However, I suspect that the percentage of WGM's among non-U.S. students at these schools is even lower than among U.S. students. I wonder if anybody has stats on this.

cottus: No, I really don't think that's it. Not all of it, anyway. I think there are a lot of WGM's who really *are* deeply interested in the academic game, but who are being systematically discriminated against, based on widely believed falsehoods about their non-existent dominance.

Enowning: do you have any evidence that the students of "race-ethnicity unknown" differ greatly in racial/ethnic composition from those whose "race-ethnicity" is known? If so, please do tell. Oh, and there probably are not enough Hispanic Jews to change the overall picture much, if at all. I think there are well-known historical reasons for that.

James Mabry: I don't disagree.

Lots of men are in prison, of course. Lots of men, many, many more than women, go into the trades. It's great so many people are going to college these days, but someone has to actually keep the world running and working.

Indga: can't follow your reasoning.

Don Meaker: can't figure out your point.

Interesting possibility you raise. Any thoughts on how WGM student enrollments got to be so far out of balance when the Academy along with its enablers, the corps of university administrators, is so thoroughly dominated by WGMs?

I assume that Don means "My son could not get a scholarship at all."

Tout -- I think you're making a big assumption with that question. I've met a great many university administrators that are female and/or non-white. For some of them, as well as what WGMs there are, the mantra of DIVERSITY will be mindlessly repeated until the day there are no more WGM undergraduates at all.

While this eventual realization will come as a shock to some of them, it will sadly not be considered a problem by many others.

As for the apparent fact that many university presidents are still WGMs, look no further than Larry Summers to see what happens when they have the temerity to honestly speak their mind.

It would be interesting to see the numbers for undergrad majors, graduation rates by major, and admissions to grad schools as well. My grandson is applying to places like Virginia Tech and U, of Colorado because, I am told, they have excellent internet design programs. I wonder if WGM's are actually moving into the high tech fields at lesser-known U's that will likely be of greater value to the society in the future while other groups continue to follow traditional academic trajectories in the humanities.... most of which have been severely, perhaps fatally, compromised by their devotion to utopian leftism.

James Mabry, you cannot blame students - still essentially children - for their ignorance of those principles. The whole govt.-media-education matrix in which they are saturated programs them to be ignorant or distrusing of those principles. Students, for example Don Meaker’s son, are among those most victimized by the socialism and state-racism his parents’ generation have seen institutionalized.

Indga, the financial, organisational, and intellectual drive behind the Civil Rights movement came from Jews. Alternative and earlier Black movements such as Garvey’s and Malcolm X’s did preach self-reliance, education, and entrepreneurship. That the Jewish directed Civil Rights movement favored creating a culture of demands and dependency, despite as you say, the Jews’ very different approach to their own social and economic advancement should make you wonder about their motives.

http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/naacp.htm

Don Meaker, if you are managing the ethnic transformation of a nation you don’t allow its majority males access to power, but you do bring its majority women into the new management structure. This strategy is as old as human inter-tribal conflict.

Steve Burton, you’re not free and neither is John Derbyshire. If you were you’d treat White Nationalists like you treat Zionists, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, or any other ‘acceptable’ ethnic-nationalist, and you'd drop the conspiracy/denial talk. The Derb’s reference to writers getting ‘the Jew thing’ shows just how corrupted by ‘fear of the Jew’ journalists are. Why isn’t every Jewish advocate for Israel being a necessary potential refuge against anti-semitism said to have ‘the goy thing’? It didn’t even occur to Derbyshire or the journos he was chatting with (even years later in the retelling) that by any objective standard almost all American Jews ‘have the goy thing’ far worse than say, Joe Sobran, (perhaps it was he?) ever had ‘the Jew thing’. And it didn’t occur to you Steve. Unshackle yourself.

Miss Marple: "Unshackle" myself indeed.

I think that we've heard all we need to, from you.

Where's William Luse when you need him?

I'm here. What do you want me to do? Convince a Jew-hater that he ought not to be? Have you ever tried that? Wait. Here you go: Miss Marple, Jesus was a Jew. Therefore, I feel somewhat connected. That's my "Jew thing". I'm also grateful to some of his followers - Peter, Paul, James, John and the boys - for founding post-pagan Western civilization, which made the freeing of slaves and the civil rights movement possible.

There, that should do it.

If you were feigning surprise that I had not redacted him, well, it's Steve's thread. He'll have to do the dirty deed.

Good morning, William! Well said! Now, if only you can persuade Mr. Burton to come up to your high standards...

If you cannot defend your own double-standards, which I do not for a moment think are your reasoned positions, perhaps you should examine how you came to hold them - the taboos and social forces which have you so clearly penned in.

I concur with Miss Marple's assertion one's intellectual integrity (or one's ego) should be defended. That is the, shall we say, "virile" response to allegations of ideological inconsistency, bigotry, or obtuse processing of opposing arguments.
That said, either all things less-than-pleasing to the powers that be should be wiped off the slate, or none should (unless patently obscene). My sarcasm above notwithstanding, I'm on record, on another thread, as against redaction on principle.

I woke up this morning to a couple new comments by "Miss Marple," after making it clear that he had already overstayed his welcome. I've deleted them.

Rodak - in general, I don't like "redaction" either, but in this case I had already disinvited the guy.

Good, Steve. The right decision.

Scott: I actually *don't* think it's great that so many people are going to college these days. But the thorough devaluation of high school education means that a lot of employers who once might have been satisfied with a high school diploma as proof of employability no longer are. At least, that's my going theory.

euphrosyne: like you, I doubt whether the academy is as dominated by WGM's as Tout D. Suite suggests. Anyway, in my experience, the older WGM's who *are* in the academic hierarchy tend to be among the biggest supporters of "affirmative action." I guess it's their way of salving their guilt feelings about their allegedly privileged positions in a way that doesn't actually cost them anything.

Oh, and thanks for explaining Don Meaker's comment.

Romat Rast: that's an interesting speculation. And yes - it *would* be interesting to see those numbers.

Question: Elite schools also recruite heavily from overseas. Assume that overseas students are recruited for only two reasons: money and prestige. The schools want the rich from around the world to send their kids and pay full tuition in nice cash. Likewise they also like the idea of an international network of alumni inflating the school's rep. around the world.

Since the schools are not recruiting international students in an attempt to 'represent the world' shouldn't the calculations be done by first excluding international students and comparing the remaining population to the US population? While I'm sure WGM are a portion of international students, I'm sure many more would be considered non-white.

That being the case, the WGM ratio would probably increase. I doubt it would increase enough to call the academy a 'bastion' and even if it does it certainly isn't a bastion the way it was in, say, 1920 when it was common and accepted for elite schools to totally exclude non-whites and slap Jews with quotas to limit their population. I do think it would counter any claim that affirmative action or 'reverse discrimination' has turned higher education into some type of "no white male" zone.

Boonton: Lou raised this question, above. I'm afraid that I don't have any better of an answer for you then I did for him.

Non-resident aliens average about 6% of the student body at the schools I've listed. So it's not a huge factor, but it's a significant one.

While I was teaching at the University of Chicago, I got the impression that a very high proportion of international students were East Asians majoring in the physical sciences. But that's only an impression, and U. of C. may well not be representative.

Steve,

Thanks for the answer. I agree I doubt anyone can dispute there's been a dramatic shift in higher education from being nearly exclusive to an elite of WGM to almost a middle class entitlement now. It's interesting to trace how this change has happened. It would seem the G was the first to get dropped from the elite and then the M and finally the W.

Think of it as a product like the automobile. At first these were toys of the rich upper class (as yachts and airplanes mostly are still today). Then mass production and income growth pushed the availability of these products to almost everyone today. An elite still exists, though. High priced luxery autos still exist for those willing to drop $100K and more. This type of elitness, though, doesn't exist in higher ed. Yes it is an accomplishment to get into an ivy league school today. But it hardly is impossible for someone whose last name isn't Kennedy or isn't swimming in connections and money. In contrast, the only guy who owns a half-million sports car is one who is filthy rich or maybe someone who spent his lifetime saving for little else (or someone who won it).

One could still argue that there's some of the bastion still there, it's just that they let more people into the club. Now Bill Cosby's kids can be members of the elite as much as the Rockerfellers....but the dirt poor kids are still left out. But there's many, many more colleges today than there 50, 60, 70+ years ago. Being Bill Cosby's kid certainly helps getting into Harvard but it is hardly impossible for the son of a welfare mom to get a college education and certainly easier today than it was in 1940.

What does seem to have happened, though, is that the opportunities have changed. If you're not education minded as a kid you loose out on a lot of options. This is a shame because there are lots of successful people who, for whatever reason, were pretty irresponsible kids. At least then they had 2nd chances as adults. I wonder if class has ceased to become the problem it used to be and the new problem is between those who 'got it' as kids versus those who didn't get it.

Greetings, Steve. Nice to find you again, hope you're well. I have a few thoughts on this thread. You write:

So, believe it or not, it would seem that, at America's top schools today, white gentile males are about as underrepresented as African Americans.

That statistic is very interesting indeed. But neither of us takes underrepresentation, as such, to be an evil. Right? Discrimination is what's intrinsically bad, whereas underrepresentation can have many causes. For instance, the underrepresentation of African Americans in philosophy is surely not the product of institutional discrimination against them; it's rather despite institutional discrimination in their favor. I assume we're in agreement about all this.

What I wonder about, then, is the point of the post. Is it just to make the very interesting demographic point about representation, or is it to suggest something else -- something about discrimination or privilege? (I think 'supremacy' might have been the wrong word here, as MM's bizarre remarks perhaps suggest.) You also write:

Still, today, the perception remains that WGM's continue to enjoy an unfair advantage in the academic world and that affirmative action remains as necessary as ever to counterbalance that advantage.

But is that quite right? Isn't the perception these days simply that white males continue to enjoy unfair an unfair advantage? And that affirmative action remains necessary in order to combat white privilege, or perhaps white male privilege (depending on the context). I haven't heard any Jews complain that gentiles have any residual privilege in academia -- a claim that would be absurd on its face.

Actually, the closest I've heard to that argument came from, well, me. I've occasionally observed, archly, that although my friend Justin and I have always been grouped together by admissions and hiring committees as privileged WMs, he was a legacy at his Ivy, and hence benefited from that advantage; whereas my father would have been discriminated against at my Ivy, had he even thought to apply. (Financial considerations made that moot, and he went to CCNY.) So both my father and I were discriminated against in undergraduate admissions, him for being Jewish and me for being a WM and -- in an admittedly wholly academic way -- for having a less than fair chance to get the legacy privilege due to past discrimination.

However, in fairness to myself, that was always something of an ironic argument, despite its kernel of truth. Its only real point is that the putative justice meted out by AA programs is rough justice indeed -- a point that hardly needs making here, I surmise.

But I digress. What I'm wondering is whether your striking demographic point, which specifically concerns WGMs, isn't obscured somewhat by its framing in terms of perceived white gentile male privilege in the academy? Despite the history of discrimination, WJMs are currently discriminated against by affirmative action practices on just the same grounds as WGMs. (Lydia has noted this in the comments but her point seems to be ignored -- save by the erstwhile and unlamented MM -- perhaps because you were simply making the observation about equal underrepresentation; this part of my comment might be taken as further elaboration on hers.)

Perhaps my ironic point cuts more deeply than I had thought. WJMs had only a brief window of non-discriminatory treatment by academia -- in which, admittedly, they conspicuously flourished -- in between being subject to quota (qua Jews) and then discriminated against by affirmative action (qua white males). While they, or rather we, continue to flourish, discrimination is nonetheless intrinsically evil, regardless of "overrepresentation" or underrepresentation. Right?

On another point entirely, I could not agree more that too many people go to college these days. I'd add that trade school is an honorable thing that now seems greatly undervalued.

It would seem to me to be somewhat misleading to say that White Males are being discriminated against qua White Males. It is, after all, for the most part, only those White Males who are on the bottom margin of the applicant pool who might be displaced by AA programs. Well qualified White Males (and well qualified minority applicants) all get in on merit. What is being "discriminated against" is White under-achievement. If a White student is displaced in this way at University X, it is mostly likely the case that University X is a bad match for that student in the first place; he should set his sights a rung lower.

Rodak,

They're not underachievers if they are qualified. Those who get displaced by AA are qualified students, some of them highly so. AA normally takes the slot of a qualified white male and gives it to a minority student who normally is less qualified, at least on the basis of actual demonstrated and measurable achievement. The fact that a university discriminates in this way does not mean that the white student was a bad fit for that school. It means that that school has a twisted view of education because it cannot distinguish between the concept of diversity and the concept of excellence. They are not the same.

That school also has forgotten that the purpose of a college is education, not leftist social engineering.

Michael Bauman

Rodak: In academic hiring, where the competition is fierce, white males are certainly discriminated against qua white males. The same is true in undergraduate and graduate school when it comes to prestigious and competitive fellowships, etc.

It's also absurdly difficult to get into the top schools these days. The simple fact is that many valedictorians don't get into top Ivies, for instance. So "under-achieving" seems grossly unfair.

Steve, you should have my back on this one.

Sorry for the consecutive posts, but I forgot to add....

Rodak: Isn't it also true that one is discriminated against even if one succeeds in getting the prize, if others were given a unmerited comparative advantage to you? I grant that it's of less consequence in this case, but surely the principle holds nonetheless.

Perhaps Rodak hasn't heard of U of M's law school point system, in which extra points were awarded to students simply for being black. Or perhaps he thinks nothing comparable happens in undergraduate admissions.

Lydia--
What's your point? All that does is put those at the bottom of the list off the list, as I said. If you insert a candidate into the top, or middle, rank, you displace a candidate in the bottom rank, not one in the top, or middle. I will admit that this is more problematic at the graduate school or professional school level, since all the candidates being seriously considered are qualified. I therefore strongly support AA only as a "foot in the door" opportunity at the undergraduate level.

Isn't it also true that one is discriminated against even if one succeeds in getting the prize, if others were given a unmerited comparative advantage to you? [emphasis added by Rodak]

Daniel--
In that case, I guess I'd say "No harm, no foul." A plausible argument can be made against that position, but that argument is devoid of caritas.

That school also has forgotten that the purpose of a college is education, not leftist social engineering.

Oh, please. That line might have been true prior to WWII. But since the G.I. Bill, followed by the various liberation movements, followed by the advent of the corporate model in the administration of higher education, it's idealistic bunk. Once one descends from the top tier (the Ivy League, etc.), one finds institutions that are competing for both students and grants, and are doing whatever is politically necessary to attract both. In the case of publicly-funded institutions, the pressure for those institutions to reflect an ethnic mix that is commensurate with the ethnic mix of the state's general population is hardly motivated by the Maoist tendencies of the largely WGM faculty and administration; it is motivated by taxpayers who want their kids to get a "college education"--which today, more than ever before, means a "meal ticket". Most minority people dowork and pay taxes, you know.
AA is not fair to a small number of applicants. Institutionalized racism has not been fair to more than one large populations of people. As Christians, we sacrifice to help those who need help. The opportunity to go to college is help that is badly needed by those who are starting from behind. White applicants, if qualified, willbe accepted somewhere.
As for the Ivies--do I hear any calls for the elimination of equally discrimatory "legacy" slots going to mediocrities such as George W. Bush, for instance?

Do you want absolute fairness in higher education? Try this: eliminate the tenure system. Let the core curricula be taught strictly by junior faculty and graduate assistants. Require all senior faculty to teach a full-time load of junior and senior undergraduate elective courses in their departments, and base their salaries and/or their continued employment on the numbers of students they are able to attract to the courses they design. Why should academics avoid forced conformity to the competitive model of life in the 21st century?
As for minority faculty, the reason they may be given "unfair" priority in hiring is that they are still so very rare. The obvious solution there is a larger pool of qualified minority graduates and PhDs. AA is designed, in part, to make that goal a little more possible.

Finally (and then I'll shut up), in our normal interactions with family and friends, and with other people in general, when we are guilty of having harmed somebody, it is not sufficient to merely say "I'm sorry." Where it is possible to do so we must also make amends. The making of amends almost always involves some kind of sacrifice. Affirmative action is of precisely that nature. The "unfairness" of it is the sacrifice that we, as the historically privileged part of this society, voluntarily make because we are a moral people.

Unless...we're not that.

It would seem to me to be somewhat misleading to say that White Males are being discriminated against qua White Males. It is, after all, for the most part, only those White Males who are on the bottom margin of the applicant pool who might be displaced by AA programs.

Just as a reference point, there's a limit to how much discrimination an AA program can generate. If, say, blacks are 10% of the population then even if every single black was given some type of AA benefit at best only 1/8th of non-blacks can claim to be victimized in any way. But of course AA is not so common as to benefit every black. There are plenty of blacks in college because they are smart. So if, say 40% of blacks benefit from AA that's 4% of the overall population which means at most only another 4% can claim any misfortune they have is due to AA. To put it bluntly, if one black is given a slot because of AA, 50 whites who were rejected may all entertain the fantasy that something was taken from them but the reality is only 1 white was really a victim.

Michael
That school also has forgotten that the purpose of a college is education, not leftist social engineering.

The purpose, unfortunately, was never entirely education. If it was why were there ever quotas on the max. number of Jews? The student population itself has an impact on education. There always was and probably always will be alot more to the mix than a simple, one-dimensional 'merit' metric that is reducable to a simple test score.

If you really thought about it, such an idea is not very conservative at all. In fact, it is actually quite radical and reduces a unversity to little more than a burger joint.

To see what I mean, consider an all girls school or all male school. Clearly there will be 'better qualified' candidates who will not be considered because they are the wrong gender (assuming qualified can be easily quantified into grades and test scores). Yet a single gender environment creates a different atmosphere than a mixed gender environment. I would say a diverse environment likewise creates a synergy of its own that would be missing from a school with less diversity but higher overall SAT scores.

My objection to AA is that race and gender are poor proxies to diversity in today's world. The 'upper class' long ago accepted that they would have to let dark skinned people and Jews into their clubs. With race as the basis of AA not only is racism kept alive (500 whites can pretend they were cheated out of the 5 jobs given to blacks) but more importantly it will be upper class blacks and women who take the most advantage of the AA system rather than leaving it be to expand opportunities downward. To use a cliche, Bill Cosby's kids add less diversity to an upper crust school than, say, the kids that come from a radical Mormon fundamentalist compound in Utah.

Boonton--
You would be correct in your thesis about Bill Cosby's kids, were it not for the fact that most federal AA programs recognize economic disadvantage among the eligibility criteria. Therefore, federally-funded prematriculation and other remedial programs, admit, for instance, White students from Appalachian areas where poverty is chronic. At schools utilizing these kinds of grant-funded programs, the entering classes are thereby gaining Caucasian students are an element of their "diversity" recruitment, along with underrepresented minorities.

Rodak,

I agree that 'economic disadvantage' is good and proper to include in an AA program but I disagree that race is. Including race has turned out to be somewhat toxic producing resentments & has unjustly tarred successful blacks whose critics assert they are 'AA babies'. Second including race can limit diversity. Even if Appalachian kids are also 'given points' that still doesn't justify giving points to Bill Cosby's kids. Why not use those points for some kids in Watts?

Booton--
Speaking only of programs of which I have personal direct experience on the job, Bill Cosby's kids would not be eligible for the programs in which economic disadvantage is a qualifier. (Applicants must meet all requirements to be accepted. I will admit, however, that this is sometimes honored in the breach, where an effort is made to choose underrepresented minority students who have demonstrated potential for success, rather than letting funded slots go unfilled. This would only be done if there were not any applicants--of whatever race--meeting all of the eligibility requirements, however.

As for the resentments of which you speak--so what? To me, that does not off-set the benefits to be gained by helping as many minority and disadvantaged individuals as possible become productive citizens as a result of receiving a university education. It is important to establish a tradition of educational success in a population that has previously lacked that crucial incentive.

Daniel Jacobson!

My profuse apologies. I've been out of the building, and I commanded myself to write a new post, however lame, before checking any more comments on this one, so I only just discovered that you *were* in the building!

And, what's worse, I have to deliver my mother to the airport at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning! So I can't possibly respond intelligently just now - to you, or to anybody else.

Later.

Or sooner, I hope.

Steve, you are naturally free to disinvite whom you like from your Web site. Indeed, you bear a responsibility to do so, for productive debate must take place within implicit bounds of some kind---not bounds set by some outside agency, but bounds agreed by the debaters themselves.

I have no idea who this Miss Marple is or what she, or he, might have written under other names in other contexts, if anything. However, Miss Marple's words in this particular thread were more rational than your reply to them in my view. I happen to be a philo-Semite not by conviction but by experience, but the existence and persistent activities of the ADL, the ACLU, the SPLC, etc., open the Jewish question to legitimate debate. Indeed they demand some degree of debate. Strongarm participles like "disgusting"---your word, not Miss Marple's---shed no light on the matter. Jews are different, whether you and I will or nill.

I do not believe you to be a Politically Correct person. Also, I agree broadly with you not with the anti-Semites to whom you refer; but you might rethink your approach to this, and consider what your approach has in common with the usual methods of Political Correctness. You can do better than this. Today you have ceded Miss Marple the high ground.

Would you have reacted similarly if one had observed, to take an incendiary example, that blacks as a race seem nearly incapable of democratic self-government under modern conditions? Derb wouldn't. Of course I wouldn't like such observations if I were black, whether true or false, but the point is that Jews are no more entitled to a special dispensation of immunity from ethnic criticism than is anyone else. Some of us sense that leading Jews demand such immunity. We resent this. It is for this reason that we side with Miss Marple when exchanges like the present one occur.

Howard

Boonton,
The proper purpose of a college IS higher education, whether or not any college or every college succeeded in meeting that purpose.

Whether or not that purpose is an allegedly conservative or liberal purpose is of little interest to me. Colleges and universities are for teaching and learning at the highest level. If they give up on that challenge and opt instead for, say, social engineering by means of AA, then higher education suffers or dies because there's nowhere else we can go for higher education.

Diversity is no measure of academic excellence for students or for pedagogical excellence for teachers. For all I know, or care, it might turn out that the best qualified available persons for teaching 17th century English literature all turn out to be unmarried women in their 30s from Seoul, South Korea. If I have three hires to make and those South Korean women are the best available candidates for the jobs, then I hire all three. Gender, ethnic background, marital status, etc. are not indicators of intellectual mastery or pedagogical brilliance for teachers. The job goes to the best teacher and the enrollment offer goes to the best student, even if they all turn out to be the same. Excellence, not diversity, is the hallmark of proper higher education.

Not to put the finest and most highly qualified teachers and scholars available in the classroom is to steal value from your students' tuition dollar. As a Christian, I do not intend to perpetrate such fraud or theft. Demonstrated excellence, not diversity, is the measure of academic value. You cannot detect excellence by checking someone's ethnic background, age, race, or gender. Much less can you detect it by checking to see what backgrounds you already have represented on campus and then getting something different. Again, excellence is not about representation; it's about demonstrated mastery.

Rodak,
We all agree, so far as I can tell. that blacks and women have been discriminated against in America. But those who perpetrated the crime are not the ones you wish to punish for the crime by means of AA. Today's 17 year old male high school graduate is not the perpetrator of the discriminatory crimes we all detest. To punish him is unjust. Justice requires we punish the guilty, not those who belong to the same race or gender as the guilty. Justice requires greater precision than AA can possibly provide. If you can show me that those who are paying the freight are precisely those who are guilty, then and only then will I say that AA is moral. Short of that, as a Christian, I must not support it.

Michael Bauman

Michael--
As I said above, amends are called for here, not justice. Amends involve sacrifice. Sacrifice is not alien to the practice of Christianity. Nor is the charitable act. Charity is not justice; charity transcends justice in the direction of love.

If you can show me that those who are paying the freight are precisely those who are guilty, then and only then will I say that AA is moral.

That makes the concept of original sin meaningless. Why should the entire race inherit the punishment if only two people were guilty?

Step2:
You don't justify the moral evil of AA by making reference to original sin. By your reasoning, I could punish YOU for the holocaust because by original sin we all are fallen in Adam.

Your invocation of original sin in this regard shows that you do not understand the morality of imputation, either in the fall or in the redemption, and that you do not understand justice. God puts all persons in Adam so that He might have mercy upon all in Christ. That is most assuredly not how Affirmative Action works.

Michael Bauman

Michael--
I assume, then, that you would be against, for instance, the reparations that Germany was forced to pay in the aftermath of WWI, unless each German citizen that was to be taxed in order to pay those reparations had been given a fair a hearing at which his personal guilt for the war was proven on an evidentiary basis?

Rodak,
The principle is plain: Justice requires that we punish the guilty, not someone else.
Michael Bauman

Michael

The proper purpose of a college IS higher education, whether or not any college or every college succeeded in meeting that purpose.

Let me qualify my feelings here:

1. Computers give an illusion that quantification is the same as reality. In other words, if you have 100 openings it is really easy to put the 500 applicatants' LSAT scores into an Excel spreadsheet, sort and take the top 100. 75 years ago such a one dimensional method would not have been done because it would have taken a lot of work to do what computers do in a second. It's easy, though, to get caught up in the illusion that those top 100 people in Excel are the 'most qualified' and if those aren't the people you admit then someone, somewhere is getting shafted. That's not reality, though.

2. The above is true but too simplistic. Higher education is part of a college's purpose but that must be read in the context of the institutions mission. If, for example, it is a for-profit enterprise then its purpose is slightly different than simply 'higher education'. If its purpose is to enhance the legal profession then it must not only think about the scholarship it produces but its lawyers. Producing ten lawyers who work in poor communities might be more in line with its mission than ten lawyers whose writings are cited often by the Supreme Court.

3. Even limiting yourself to 'just higher ed', you cannot ignore synergy. A class of just women is not the same as a class of men and women and is not the same as a class of a diverse array of people.

4. I'm thinking here about the students, not hiring. I would agree with you that 'diversity in hiring' should not be about race or even class.

The principle is plain: Justice requires that we punish the guilty, not someone else.

That is a total evasion of my implicit question: Was every German qua German guilty for WWI and therefore liable for his share of the reparations, or was he not?

Boonton--
Your 12:14 pm comment is exactly correct and to the point. Kudos!

By your reasoning, I could punish YOU for the holocaust because by original sin we all are fallen in Adam.

I was going after the principle you were espousing that penalties can only fall upon the guilty. You seem to think inheritance can only be a positive value, not a debt or obligation. I don't know where you would get such an idea.

Boonton wrote "Higher education is part of a college's purpose but that must be read in the context of the institutions mission. If, for example, it is a for-profit enterprise then its purpose is slightly different than simply 'higher education'."

For state-supported schools, I might also add "assist the state/community."

I went to James Madison Univ., a public school in Virginia. If its admissions were solely based on the GPA/SAT scores, then the school would have been 90% females from Northern Virginia. Not that I would have minded that (being male, assuming I could have gotten in), but I think the school (and the state) are better for not going strictly by GPA/SAT.

Let's assume that university graduates geographically dispersed throughout the state is better for the state than all the university graduates geographically clumped. Is that a fair assumption? Please let me know if that's a bad one.

So, if Virginia wanted to distribute its university graduates from all its schools among the state, then it should factor in regional origin into university admissions (i.e., a geographic AA). This assumes that a certain portion of graduates will return to their county/town of origin.

As for gender AA, there is something to be said that guys intellectually develop later than girls, so if the SAT/GPA is locked in at 16/17, that does not necessarily mean that girls would intellectually outperform guys at 20/21 (i.e., be better suited for college).

I assume that having guys at university is better for society than not, even if it means that females with relatively better SAT/GPA scores have a harder time being admitted. If that assumption is bad, please let me know.

A previous poster touched on this, but two factors complicating the data here are 1) the illogical, often fluid way that multiracial individuals are categorized and 2) the incentives that existing benefits provide to categorize oneself as nonwhite.

Assuming we give credence to the idea that race exists and can be quantified (and for the purpose of discussion, we pretty much have to), it's common for someone whose racial makeup is white and also something else to categorize themselves as "something else." A boy whose mother is white and whose father is black probably considers himself to be black. I've seen people who were 1/4 Indian or Asian consider themselves to be members of those minorities.

Because institutions of higher education provide benefits on the basis of race (and because, even when they don't, there is a widespread perception that they do), there is a strong incentive for someone who is 25% black to call themselves black when racial data is compiled.

These are some areas where accounting discrepancies may affect the numbers here:

The vast majority of the college population consists of young adults. I don't have the numbers, but I think it's reasonable to assume that college students under the age of 17 and over the age of 30 are in a pretty clear minority on most campuses. It's likely that Americans in this age group don't fall along the same demographic lines as the general population, both because some minorities reproduce at rates faster than white gentiles, and because the children of multiracial couples are not considered "white."

Since Jewishness is not a race, ought it be assumed that Jews are white?

A boy whose mother is white and whose father is black probably considers himself to be black.

You speak as though that boy had a choice in that.

That said, most of your overall point is valid. According to the federal guidelines governing the grants that funded the post-graduate minority programs I formerly worked for, btw, not only are Jews considered White, but so are Arabs. And Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and a couple of other Asian groups are not considered "minorities" as they are not underrepresented in the profession. This money is not just blindly thrown at any person who isn't "White".

Royale

As for gender AA, there is something to be said that guys intellectually develop later than girls, so if the SAT/GPA is locked in at 16/17, that does not necessarily mean that girls would intellectually outperform guys at 20/21 (i.e., be better suited for college).

I'm not sure if it is still true but I've heard that the SAT is biased against females. This is an objective statement because the SAT is an aptitude test. The idea is that on average those with better SAT scores will perform better in college. For the sake of argument, let's say that women do 10% better than men in college but for some unknown reason their SAT scores are about equal to men.

If that is the case then an admissions office focused on 'merit' alone should give women a 10% bump for the same reason you give the estimate a home contractor gives you a 10% bump...because you know on average it will be higher than the metric tells you.

Phil
A previous poster touched on this, but two factors complicating the data here are 1) the illogical, often fluid way that multiracial individuals are categorized and 2) the incentives that existing benefits provide to categorize oneself as nonwhite.

I agree but all metrics are imperfect to one degree or another. Take the 'geographic AA' Royale spoke about. Just because the school admits someone from a rural area of virginia doesn't mean he will go back there and work after he graduates. More than likely he will take his degree and work in one of the hotter areas of the state's job market or even leave the state. That being said I agree the problems with using race as a metric are getting worse as we move more and more to a post-racial society.

Before anyone jumps on that, about a year ago my father-in-law took a dumpster out of a house in NJ. In the dumpster were some very old newspapers. That's not unique but what was interesting was that they were the Daily Record, a local county newspaper. It was interesting to read issues dating back to the end of WWII. The 1968 issue, though, was positively fascinating. Almost every page had something about race on it. Even though Morris County NJ had little in the way of Civil Rights news happening inside it. Despite that, race seemed to be on everyone's mind. It was in the letters to the editor, editorials, regular articles....even the lifestyle section had a big thing about a treatment to whiten skin that had been developed in South Africa and whether blacks there might want it in order to pass as white.

Today we seem to care so much less about race that we have a lot of people who couldn't be bothered to figure out whether or not they are actually white!

You speak as though that boy had a choice in that.

Socially, perhaps he might not have a choice. But is there any modern institution which requires someone to "prove" that one is white? While one might have to prove if one is a minority (particularly Native American status), I can't imagine any reputable school or employer which would contradict in any meaningful way a person who said, "Actually, I consider myself to be white."

If there were an issue with someone who was black, Hispanic, or, say, Inuit wanting to consider themselves white, it appears that all they'd have to do is convert and become a Jew, because per federal guidelines, Jews are considered white.

Phil--
If your half-White boy wanted to claim himself as White when applying to colleges, or when matriculating after being accepted, I'm sure that he could do so. Or, at many places, he could now select "other." But, by doing so, he would be accepting all of the social disadvantages of being considered "Black" and denying himself some of the scholarship and other opportunities that would be available to him as "Black." That would be masochistic, and not too bright, imo.

Phil,

You're right but that is the consquence of a cultural fiction like race (or is the $5 term 'social construct'?). It's only relevant to the degree that people believe its relevant, if people stop believing it becomes a lot less real.

DJ:

"...neither of us takes underrepresentation, as such, to be an evil. Right?"

Right.

"What I wonder about, then, is the point of the post."

Well, the post has more than one point. The first is to make, as you say, "a very interesting demographic point." But, sure - there are deeper currents, here.

Let's put it this way: white gentiles - who still make up the majority of the U.S. population - have more or less acquiesced in a system where they compete (very much to their disadvantage) on academic merit, when it comes to Jews and Asians, but where they also compete (again, very much to their disadvantage) on proportionality, when it comes to African-Americans and Hispanics.

I.e., they get screwed coming, and they get screwed going. Therefore they get screwed. As my stats illustrate.

I hope you might agree that this is a fascinating - and possibly even historically unprecedented - phenomenon.

Howard J. Harrison: I am, indeed, not "a Politically Correct person." But I also have little or no patience for the MM's of this world.

I hope that we can disagree cordially on that point.

Steve:

I hope that we can disagree cordially on that point.

Indeed. How else should we disagree? Yes, cordially.

they compete (very much to their disadvantage) on academic merit, when it comes to Jews and Asians

It seems like you're saying that this competition is to their disadvantage because...white gentile males are not as smart or industrious, academically, as Jews and Asians?

If so, are you saying that this is intrinsic, that white gentile males are simply less capable than Jews and Asians?

But, by doing so, he would be accepting all of the social disadvantages of being considered "Black" and denying himself some of the scholarship and other opportunities that would be available to him as "Black." That would be masochistic, and not too bright, imo.

I agree, and I think it illustrates one area where the data presented in Steve Burton's original essay may be flawed. If we're adding up the "white men" and "black men" on a campus, a disproportionate number of men who are half black and half white will be considered "black." This will have the effect of throwing off the total of white men and artificially inflating the number of black men (because we "round up" to black, in effect.)

Rodak said:
"That is a total evasion of my implicit question: Was every German qua German guilty for WWI and therefore liable for his share of the reparations, or was he not?"

In response to your introduction of an irrelevant question into the discussion of the immorality of AA, I restated the principle at issue: we must not commit injustice. To restate the principle at issue is not an evasion, especially in response to an irrelevant question. We are talking about the immorality of AA, not the fairness or unfairness of German reparations after the first world war. But if you wish to talk about the injustice of the reparations, we shall: No doubt some Germans were unfairly treated after the war, and to that extent the reparations were unjust. To the extent they were unjust, Christians must oppose them. To say that is to put the issue mildly. To put it plainly and forthrightly: It seems to me that the reparations were radically unfair and, as a result, played a major role in the widespread simmering unrest that led the rise of National Socialism and to the outbreak of the second world war. That is, the reparations were unjust and unwise. Plain enough? Now, back to the issue at hand, namely the immorality of AA.

You say that injustice -- that punishing those who are not guilty and have committed no crime -- is a "sacrifice" that Christians ought to endorse. Not so. Injustice is not to be endorsed, even if you wish falsely to pietize it by the perverse application of Christian terminology to unchristian actions. Injustice is not an acceptable way either of saying "I'm sorry" or of righting a past wrong.

1. AA punishes those who were not guilty of the crimes in view. That makes it immoral. That makes it unchristian.

2. Christian sacrifice is self-sacrifice, not the sacrifice of others for your pet political causes. If you wish to give your own position to someone else, Rodak, then God bless you. But you are not morally justified to rob someone else of his or her own rightful position for the sake of your social re-engineering schemes and then to call it "Christian."

3. As for your introduction of tenure into the mix, I can say only that you either do not understand tenure, or injustice, or both. The principles of tenure are not unjust, nor are the reasons for its existence. The practice of tenure has sometimes been badly executed. On that point nearly everyone agrees. But you fix what's wrong with tenure by executing tenure decisions more wisely in the future, not by imposing injustice upon current or future white male applicants whose careers are not yours to sacrifice.

Michael Bauman

Michael,

Your formulation on injustice only works to the degree that anyone is getting punished. If you hold, for example, that admissions should entirely be decided by LSAT scores in a law school then person A can claim he has been punished if he is denied admission but discovers someone with a lower LSAT score than himself was given it.

Real life is not this simple because no law school would base its admissions on such a simple and easy to use metric. The person who did get in may have a lower LSAT score than you but he might have had better grades, maybe had parents that went to the same school, maybe had his local congressman give him a letter of recommendation etc. etc. etc. Before you can mount a case that you are a victim of an injustice you would have to show that you were owed that spot based on your LSAT score and all those other points of consideration.

The college would no doubt reply that the LSAT is an imperfect test therefore it shouldn't be given all the weight in admissions decisions. They would also reply that they have other responsibilities than simply selecting 'the best' academics. For example, building and maintaining an alumni network is very important for the school so because of that they will give consideration to family legacies.

Since there isn't a property right to being admitted to any particular school (anymore than there is a property right to be the next American Idol winner), I would be very careful about making that people are being harmed unjustly. The standard of actual proof for that type of claim is very strong but the emotional appeal of the argument makes it too easy to believe (i.e. 50 whites will each believe the 1 black got their slot when the reality is at best only 1 white could have been so victimized)

The question then moves towards whether it is ever just to consider race. Here I would apply what the SC has defined as 'strict scrutiny'. I would make any policy that takes race into account subject to a high level of scrutiny in order to justify itself. For reasons I gave earlier, I think it would be very difficult to justify such policies today.

Steve:

Let's put it this way: white gentiles - who still make up the majority of the U.S. population - have more or less acquiesced in a system where they compete (very much to their disadvantage) on academic merit, when it comes to Jews and Asians, but where they also compete (again, very much to their disadvantage) on proportionality, when it comes to African-Americans and Hispanics.

I.e., they get screwed coming, and they get screwed going. Therefore they get screwed. As my stats illustrate.

I hope you might agree that this is a fascinating - and possibly even historically unprecedented - phenomenon.

Ah! That's helpful.

Of course this isn't the only social phenomenon in which white gentile males have more or less(!) acquiesced to something that's to their disadvantage.

And, as a matter of principle, shouldn't those of us who oppose identity politics -- and I'm not sure if I'm in the local majority or minority here, as I haven't quite figured out the political demography of this site -- favor some amount of acquiescing to policies not in our group interest? When they're good policies on the merits, I mean.

For instance, I would in principle support certain forms of class-based affirmative action -- though I have way too much experience with hiring and admissions to trust the academy to run it honestly -- despite its being to "my" disadvantage (in some extremely attenuated sense).

Since I find identity politics mostly poisonous, I'm all in favor of this sort of thing. But admittedly not when it's being done unilaterally. And perhaps this is your sense of where things currently stand?

I wouldn't support class-based affirmative action, but I do reject identity politics and I do think certain groups should be willing to accept policies on the merits that are to their disadvantage in some sense. I have to admit to finding this way of talking about it a little odd, though, because in these cases the merit ideas are sufficiently firmly ingrained that I find it hard even to think of the practices I have in mind as being "to my disadvantage" in any bad sense. For example: Suppose that Asians are better on average than whites in some area of endeavor. Suppose I want to go into that area. In "accepting" a merit-based approach, am I accepting something that is "to my disadvantage"? Only in the rather attenuated sense that if an Asian applies for a job and is a better candidate than I am, I want him to get the job. But the same would be true of another white person as well. And would I really want the job if someone else objectively deserved it more? Would I feel differently about a better-qualified white getting the job over me than a better qualified Asian? No and no.

I generally agree with Lydia on this narrow point. However, I will say that there is nothing to be gained for Americans as a people by the acceleration of the importation of a new Asian cognitive overclass, in the sciences and otherwise. Or, seen from the other side of things, a little leavening goes a long way; a little diversity is good; a lot, whether in the aggregate or in discrete spheres of endeavour, not so much.

Boonton,

I'm not arguing that standardized tests are the sole, or the best, measure of excellence. I am saying that race and gender are not measures of excellence and are not academic qualifications. I also say that if a demonstrably better white male student is rejected because of his gender or his race in favor of someone else with lesser demonstrable achievement but whose gender or race is the institutionally preferred one, then that white male student is being unjustly punished (or "sacrificed," in Rodakspeak) for a wrong they never committed, namely the oppression of blacks and women in the past.

Injustice, whether you call it punishment, sacrifice, or anything else, is still injustice. Displacing someone because of race or gender is an evil, even if it's done for what you think is a good political cause. You can't abhor racism and sexism against one group while employing it against another.

Michael Bauman

Lydia

I have in mind as being "to my disadvantage" in any bad sense. For example: Suppose that Asians are better on average than whites in some area of endeavor. Suppose I want to go into that area. In "accepting" a merit-based approach, am I accepting something that is "to my disadvantage"? Only in the rather attenuated sense that if an Asian applies for a job and is a better candidate than I am, I want him to get the job. But the same would be true of another white person as well.

Of course a lot gets hidden in the term 'on average'. In this example the question is not whether Asians are 'on average' better than Lydia (who is white I suppose) but whether specific Asians who apply for this job are better than Lydia or not. When there's one slot open then everyone applying is in competition with everyone else.

But suppose the company notes that Asians are on average better but notices that only whites like Lydia are applying. They realize that while they may get the best white, the competition is more likely to get the best talent in the market. As a result, the HR department decides to cut back on their advertising in the newspapers that Lydia reads and puts more money in advertising in Asian community newspapers. As a result, Lydia doesn't get the job because she either doesn't know it's there or by the time she does others have beat her to the punch.

I don't think anyone would describe this as racism or Lydia as a victim. After all, Lydia has no right to have first dibs on job openings. If she happens to know that Asians are being targetted for this type of opening then she has the responsibility to seek out the ad in the Asian newspapers if she really wants the job just like if I wanted to work in London I know I probably have to look at The Economist or The Financial Times rather than the Star Ledger of NJ.

Michael
I'm not arguing that standardized tests are the sole, or the best, measure of excellence. I am saying that race and gender are not measures of excellence and are not academic qualifications. I also say that if a demonstrably better white male student is rejected because of his gender or his race in favor of someone else with lesser demonstrable achievement but whose gender or race is the institutionally preferred one, then that white male student is being unjustly punished (or "sacrificed," in Rodakspeak) for a wrong they never committed, namely the oppression of blacks and women in the past.

Therefore you would find all male and all female schools unjustly offensive? After all, by definition, they would reject applicants based on gender (assuming members of the 'wrong' gender bother applying)?

Where I disagree is who 'owns' this. The school generally owns itself and sets its own mission (within limits of course). This means it is within its rights to consider non-academic qualifications and traditionally most schools have done so. Are not athletics one of the leading examples of non-academic qualifications in higher ed?

To the kid who almost made it, I would say he 'owned' no right it in the first place. He cannot fairly look at the 'less qualified' sports guy who got in and say he was victimized because that guy had fewer academic qualifications.

That being the case, is it right that an institution ever use race as a metric to discriminate? I would say objectively it's no different than any other metric. If, say, a radio station ran some zanny promotion where they gave out $20 bills to random people on the street who are between 5'2" and 5'5" I wouldn't care even though it's accurate to point out people have no control over their height. What if a radio station decided to give out $20 bills to white people or black people only? Given the history race has played in the US I would say I would be highly suspect and would probably say such a thing would be wrong. But would it always be wrong under any circumstances? I'm not so sure.

Imagine starting a university in Iraq, for example. I could imagine that a policy of granting a min. number of admissions to Sunnis might be required in order to keep peace between the many factions there. Would this be morally wrong? I don't think so. That doesn't mean it would always be right. That is why I say such policies need to be under strict scrutiny before they receive our blessing....but it wouldn't be impossible to meet that need.

Phil - in my experience, white gentile males are, indeed - on average, on the whole, with all the usual caveats - "not as smart or industrious, academically, as Jews and Asians." And I have quite a bit of relevant experience.

Is this difference "intrinsic?"

Well, heck if I know. But it persists over time. Generation after generation. And nobody seems to be able to figure out anything to do about it.

For once, I have to agree with Maximos instead of Lydia:

"...there is nothing to be gained for Americans as a people by the acceleration of the importation of a new Asian cognitive overclass."

Of course, it remains an open question whether the phrase "Americans as a people" means anything, anymore.

Steve - I think Lydia crystallized what I was thinking best; basically, I'm not sure that it's "to their disadvantage" to compete on the merits

Still, if a white male is concerned about being lower on the smart-and-industrious totem pole, it seems like all he would have to do is convert and become a Jew, no?

If that's not the case, perhaps it underscores a bit of goofiness in the categories you've selected. Do Hispanic Jews and black Jews benefit from the same abilities-bump? Or are both "Jew" and "Gentile" racial categories?

Actually, I didn't mean my comment to have any implications one way or another re. immigration. I usually regard immigration issues as at least somewhat separable from the question of what one should do given a particular pool of applicants. It's one thing to ask whether we should import an immigrant Asian overclass in the first place by way of immigration. I'm not sure I'd agree with Maximos on that either, but it's just not something I was meaning to address. It's another to ask whether, given a pool of applicants for jobs or positions in schools that includes both Asians and whites (perhaps we can stipulate for the hypothetical that all applicants we're talking about are full-fledged American citizens), a white applicant should wish for something other than a meritocratic approach to admission to law-school (say) on the grounds that a meritocratic one is likely to favor the Asians in the pool rather than his own racial group--that somehow he should try to get a non-meritocratic method in place so as not to go for something "disadvantageous" to his racial group. I can't imagine saying, "Oh, please, let's _not_ use LSAT scores (or whatever), because Asians do better on that than my racial group." I mean, tough. If the LSAT is a good predictor of success in that endeavour, let the racial chips fall and all that. And as I said before, I also can't imagine being happier at being beaten out for a position by a fellow white than by an Asian applicant on the grounds that, well, at least he was a member of my racial group. That whole way of thinking is just foreign to me.

The questions of immigration policy and meritocratic selection within discrete disciplines may be distinguished theoretically or logically, but not practically, not existentially, as it were; in point of fact, present immigration policies essentially incentivize the importation of a 'new Asian cognitive overclass' in a host of ways, from educational visas to H1-Bs. And if there is indeed any value to distinct nation-states and communities, with the opportunities these afford for solidarity and self-governance, then it is equally as deleterious to import an overclass as it is to import an underclass. I note that we are in the process of doing both, to our detriment - a double dispossession.

Stated differently, I don't believe that the intra-disciplinary principle of meritocratic selection is applicable across national boundaries, or that it is a trump for other values, goods, and ends. It has its legitimate places, but if it becomes a vehicle for the de facto abolition of coherent nations, then it has become an ideological fetish.

Nothing is to be gained for Americans by choosing the best possible people? How does that make any sense at all? There are no supermen and certainly no superraces. To see how odd the assertion is examine its flip: The American people can gain by stopping people with high cognitive skills from doing jobs that require them.

"Stated differently, I don't believe that the intra-disciplinary principle of meritocratic selection is applicable across national boundaries, or that it is a trump for other values, goods, and ends."

I didn't mean to say that it is. It seems to me, actually, that one difficulty in so many discussions is defining what system, pool, or group we are talking about. When we talk about "an economic system," for example, it seems to me we shouldn't assume that the whole world is one single system. And here, too, when we talk about a pool of applicants, there's no need to assume that this pool consists of everyone in the world who might under any circumstances apply for a job or a position in a school. I just said to someone today that a basically meritocratic approach doesn't even require some sort of huge search for people to aply to every job, even across the entire country, state, etc. One could just hire someone one knew who, one had good reason to believe, would do a great job, without holding some sort of time-consuming competition. It all depends on the specifics of the situation.

Again, my earlier comments were just directed at the, to me, puzzling idea that whites have somehow gone along with an approach that is to their detriment (and maybe have been stupid in so doing?) by competing on equal terms with people of Asian descent. Putting it in strictly racial terms, without reference to the whole question of immigration (again, assume we're talking about a group of all citizen applicants), I just cannot identify with the identity politics that would give rise to a _complaint_ along these lines.

We already have decent numbers of high-IQ individuals capable of performing those functions in the economy, research, and so forth; there is no shortage of native-born whites, Jews, or Asians. The selection criteria leading to the displacement effect are more economic than anything else; foreigners admitted to the country under select visa categories are less costly to employ, whether as programmers, instructors, researchers, or what have you. Ironically, should any of the newly-arrived cognitive elites remain in the country, establishing themselves as permanent residents or even citizens, they will eventually find - at least some of them - that they too are overly costly to employ, and so will be displaced themselves. There is obviously no conscious conspiracy or scheme to install a foreign cognitive overclass; the animating logic is economic, and the entire process is wholly unnecessary, a function of the self-serving, patriotism-deficient propaganda of a few narrow interests. In other words, absent this immigration, the work for which high cognitive endowments are prerequisites will still be performed. By Americans already resident.

Putting it in strictly racial terms, without reference to the whole question of immigration...

But that's just the problem: whites have acquiesced in an immigration regime which, even at the upper reaches of the bell curve, redounds to their detriment. There is no strictly racial context; the only context in which the question acquires meaning is that of immigration. I'm under no illusions that the problems of ethnic inter-relations can ever be resolved; it just mystifies me that we're intent upon importing more such fundamentally unresolvable dilemmas. There will always exist rough, measurable stratifications; why create more of them, given that they are almost always sites of socio-political friction?

Is there really no strictly racial context? I mean, supposedly one of the points of the main post was that it is interesting that whites have acquiesced in meritocratic judgements between themselves and Asians, one the one hand, and reparational affirmative action programs between themselves and blacks and hispanics, on the other, thus harming themselves both ways. But this point could be made entirely without reference to immigration, at least anything like present-day immigration. There have been Chinese immigrants in the United States for well over a hundred years. As you point out, there are plenty of wholly American Asians. And as for Jews, very many. So I think it should be possible to discuss the questions I was discussing without reference to immigration at all--namely, do whites (or white gentiles, or whatever) have any sort of legitimate interest in trying to _avoid_ meritocratic judgements in order to avoid competition with better-qualified Asians and Jews? Should whites, for example, try instead just to get fellow whites to give them preference in hiring for racial reasons in order to avoid being out-competed by racial out-group members? I think one can answer a loud and resounding "no" to such questions, which, again, can themselves be raised, and I think _have_ been raised by the discussion heretofore, without any reference to immigration, without endorsing some large-scale importation-of-workers immigration scheme.

We are talking about the immorality of AA, not the fairness or unfairness of German reparations after the first world war.

There is a valid analogy there, in that AA is a means of making reparations for centuries of systemic injustice. I brought up the question of German reparations following WWI simply because those reparations remain controversial, and thus are widely known about. All Germans were presumably taxed to pay those reparations, whether they were to blame in any way for the war, or not.
To speak specifically of AA, I see it as a matter of proportionality. That a few Caucasian students will be inconvenienced with regard to being admitted to the college of their first choice, is dwarfed by the injustice with regard to education suffered by Blacks for centuries. If a society is to make amends, or reparations, in any area, some will necessarily have to pay their share of those reparations despite being without guilt. The long term benefits to society as a whole of developing a tradition of seeking higher education in a segment of society that has historically been deprived of such a tradition more than off-set the detrimental effect suffered by a few individuals. Society imposes many things upon individuals that some of those individuals believe to be unfair. AA does not seem to me to be even a particularly egregious instance of that.

In an hypothetical America, from which such immigration programmes were blessedly absent, it would be possible to entertain such discussions. Moreover, prior to the post-1965 tsunami of immigration, discussion of this question at such a level of generality would have been sensible and moral. Given the small relative numbers of the Asian minorities, there may have existed a probability that Asians would become disproportionately represented, relative to their share of the population, within certain professions, but never a genuine prospect of them become profession-dominant minorities. However, given the present realities of immigration, I think it necessary to draw a distinction between what would be sensible in a discrete instance and what would be prudent for the society as a whole, inasmuch as what is sensible for an individual applicant is not, when factored into aggregate trends, sensible for the nation. In other words, in the contemporary context, I don't think that acquiescing in particular meritocratic judgments, on the grounds that this is - obviously - the correct approach if one is concerned with the integrity of the disciplines, exhausts the prudential obligations of the actors. This means only that the immigration regime must be abolished, not that whites should begin practicing some form or other of racial identity politics.

But that's just the problem: whites have acquiesced in an immigration regime which, even at the upper reaches of the bell curve, redounds to their detriment.

Isn't it just as accurate to say "Americans have acquiesced in an immigration regime which [...] redounds to their detriment?" Black Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and multiracial Americans are no less impacted by the importation of a foreign-born overclass or underclass.

This is going to be unpopular, and I consider myself a guest here, so I will try to be especially civil.

I don't have any problem with the legal immigration of talented people of any race or ethnicity who want fully to become Americans, which involves assimilation and citizenship. I do not mean to be ruling out limits to legal immigration, and I fully support serious enforcement of existing law and whatever new law is necessary to secure our borders.

It's true that some people -- and some identifiable "groups" -- will be harmed by even ideal immigration in the short run, but I believe the country is stronger in the long run for immigration-with-assimilation, as the ideal has traditionally been understood in the US. I also consider this a fundamental American value, and call the Statue of Liberty as witness.

In short: I for one welcome our new Asian cognitive overlords. (Sorry, couldn't help it.) As long as they plan to become Asian-Americans.

My worries about immigration are all about security problems, the rule of law, lack of assimilation, the continued identification with another country in the second generation, misguided multiculturalism, erosion of English as the national language, an excess of unskilled labor, and so forth. All these things are grave problems with the actual immigration situation in the US (let alone Europe), but acknowledging that doesn't add up to restrictionism, does it? I'd call it enforcement-ism.

What am I missing that doesn't assume some form of identity politics whose premises I cannot accept? Or are our differences so basic that we cannot find mutually acceptable premises?

DJ - speaking only for myself, I don't think you're missing anything. And I find nothing with which to disagree, here.

Again, my earlier comments were just directed at the, to me, puzzling idea that whites have somehow gone along with an approach that is to their detriment (and maybe have been stupid in so doing?) by competing on equal terms with people of Asian descent. Putting it in strictly racial terms, without reference to the whole question of immigration (again, assume we're talking about a group of all citizen applicants), I just cannot identify with the identity politics that would give rise to a _complaint_ along these lines.

It's puzzling to think that whites have no advantage over Asian applicants. If nothing else whites, on average, have a better command of the English language and culture than Asians. Communication skills, in the business world, often trump even superior academic knowledge of a particular subject.

Maximos
There is obviously no conscious conspiracy or scheme to install a foreign cognitive overclass; the animating logic is economic, and the entire process is wholly unnecessary, a function of the self-serving, patriotism-deficient propaganda of a few narrow interests. In other words, absent this immigration, the work for which high cognitive endowments are prerequisites will still be performed. By Americans already resident.

And who benefits from the ability to employ lower cost labor? The owners of capital who are basically us. Why is it patriotic to call for protectionism to protect "high cognitive endowed" Americans? Of all these fellows are the most able to take care of themselves.

Rodak:
That a few Caucasian students will be inconvenienced with regard to being admitted to the college of their first choice, is dwarfed by the injustice with regard to education suffered by Blacks for centuries

1. How does one measure this injustice? How does one known when enough as been 'paid'?

2. How does one sort out what would have been if we didn't have so much injustice in the past? This country was built on slave labor. Today many people benefit from that injustice, including many blacks. Without that slave labor, for example, much of the country would be inpentrable forest. Without the abuses inflicted on Chinese laborers, the country would not have been connected by rail and as a result would probably not have developed as quickly. Everyone who lives west of the Mississippi benefits indirectly from that. That means there are blacks today who are benefiting in some areas more than whites from past injustices. Are the people getting the benefit of AA really the people who are suffering the most due to past injustices?

At least with class based AA the people benefitting are those whose lot is more often than not worse than the average American.

I don't have any problem with the legal immigration of talented people of any race or ethnicity who want fully to become Americans, which involves assimilation and citizenship.

It is from this opinion or sentiment that I most respectfully dissent, inasmuch as I cannot regard the principle, having tasks performed by the most qualified people available, without respect to nationality and culture - itself a transcultural normative ideal - as a substitute or trump for the existence of a cohesive culture that cannot be expressed reductively, or strongly, but not exclusively, as a function of the meritocratic principle. America, in my estimation, is about more than meritocracy and the material benefits to be reaped by employing the most highly qualified people, without respect to other values, goods, and ends. I trust that it is understood that this is a culturalist position, and not a form of identity-politics.

Why is it patriotic to call for protectionism to protect "high cognitive endowed" Americans? Of all these fellows are the most able to take care of themselves.

Tell that to the dozens of programmers and engineers, of diverse backgrounds, who have been interviewed by my family's company over the years, and have reported displacement by H1-Bs and other low-wage immigration competition. Not all of us are holders of capital in the meaningful senses of that term, not by a longshot.

At least with class based AA the people benefitting are those whose lot is more often than not worse than the average American.

Boonton--
If you really believe that Blacks, and to a lesser extent Hispanics, have nothing going against them but poverty with regard to joining the middle-class, fine, go with it.
But be prepared to build and support more prisons, if you think that's cheaper and more fair to the majority than AA.

Boonton--
1. Past injustice to Blacks is immeasurable. But I don't think it takes much imagination to understand the huge scope of it, in every walk of life, not only in education. AA, when a "critical mass" of college-educated, professional Blacks exists to play the same kind of roles in that population that college-educated professionals play in the majority education, will simply cease having any role; it will have become unnecessary. And it will have become something that is considered shameful to apply for.

That means there are blacks today who are benefiting in some areas more than whites from past injustices.

2. Yes, what you say about the majority population still benefitting today from slave labor. And it is also true that contemporary Blacks benefit from it. But, see, they deserve as a group to benefit from it. They earned it, after all. And they should reap the full benefit of everything this society has to offer. With regard to education, either they catch up, or they continue to fall further behind. We should help them catch up. High school drop-out rates in the Black popuation are a disgrace that is caused, in large part, by a lack of role models. Kids with college-educated parents tend to go to college; the reverse is also true. It's true in the Black population, and it's also true in the Appalachian White population. AA is not really so much about race as it is about class in contemporary America. It's just that Blacks and Hispanics make up a disproportionate part of the disadvantaged class. Hispanics at least have the psychological edge of not being descended from slaves and subjected to another hundred years of Jim Crow laws, once that slavery ended.

I'm quite uncomfortable with any idea that we should limit Asian immigration _because_ of higher Asian abilities. OTOH, my understanding is that many of the visas being granted for technical jobs are to people whom we have no particular intention of turning into citizens and that full assimilation isn't really in question. So at that point it really is just a matter of facilitating cross-border movement for the purpose of jobs alone without reference to citizenship at any stage in the game, which has its own set of problems w.r.t. notions like loyalty to the people already here, maintenance of sovereignty and American identity, and the like.

Anecdotally, my evidence is that Asians--and here I mean non-Muslim far-East Asians such as Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese, not "Asians" in the British sense meaning "Muslims from Pakistan and surrounding regions"--tend to assimilate very well. As Islam becomes more and more entrenched in far-East countries this may be a more problematic assumption, because Muslim culture tends to conflict with American assimilation. For example, immigrants from South Thailand, Indonesia, or (most unfortunately) those from some parts of the Philippines, could now not be assumed to be as good bets for assimilation as they could have been perhaps fifty years ago.

Probably some degree of restrictionism is a good idea _so that_ there is plenty of time for gradual assimilation. Even there, if we could be more discriminating in our immigration policies to begin with, perhaps some groups could be admitted in greater numbers than others. On the other hand again, it's always possible for bad guys to take advantage of such policies, so for security reasons probably "go slow" is a good policy in order to catch mistakes.

I'd say most of my concerns with immigration are similar to DJ's, but I don't know whether that means we would advocate all the same concrete policies. I'd certainly go very draconian w.r.t. illegals presently in the U.S. and future enforcement.

Lydia writes:

my understanding is that many of the visas being granted for technical jobs are to people whom we have no particular intention of turning into citizens and that full assimilation isn't really in question. So at that point it really is just a matter of facilitating cross-border movement for the purpose of jobs alone without reference to citizenship at any stage in the game, which has its own set of problems w.r.t. notions like loyalty to the people already here, maintenance of sovereignty and American identity, and the like.

Perhaps I was understanding 'immigration' in too narrow a sense to be fair to some of the more restrictionist posters here. I did mean immigration in a stronger sense than I guess "H1-Bs" require -- though I have no idea what that nomenclature stands for. Since I haven't thought much about issues concerning temporary "guest workers" and the like, I shouldn't opine about them.

But I do suspect that my sentiments here differ from Maximos's, as he too suspects. He writes:

I cannot regard the principle, having tasks performed by the most qualified people available, without respect to nationality and culture - itself a transcultural normative ideal - as a substitute or trump for the existence of a cohesive culture that cannot be expressed reductively, or strongly, but not exclusively, as a function of the meritocratic principle. America, in my estimation, is about more than meritocracy and the material benefits to be reaped by employing the most highly qualified people, without respect to other values, goods, and ends. I trust that it is understood that this is a culturalist position, and not a form of identity-politics.

Maximos:

I am happy to grant your last point. Since I too want to make a sharp distinction between cultural identity and racial, gender, or ethnicity based identity, I find this crucially important.

I also agree that American values are not exclusively meritocratic or material. But it does seem like our difference comes down to a different understanding of the cultural identity of America. I suppose I buy into the idea of a nation of immigrants united by the desire to live under a representative government that ensures certain basic liberties and individual rights such as those enumerated in the Constitution and other founding documents and ideas: in particular, freedom of speech and conscience, freedom of religion alongside the non-establishment of religion, the right to bear arms, freedom from arbitrary search and seizure, equality under the law, etc.

Since I assume you agree to most of that, perhaps excepting the "nation of immigrants" language, my guess is that you find my rough sketch of a cohesive American culture too "thin" and would want to give it a more substantive gloss. I'd be interested in a brief picture of how you'd gloss it -- of course you can point me to a previous post rather than repeat yourself, if that's easier.

The only part of your characterization of my position that I balk at a bit is the part about accepting immigrants "without respect to...culture." I do think that we should be aware of cultural commitments that might be inimical to assimilation, though I am pretty sanguine about the successful assimilation of previous waves of immigrants. (I do admit, or rather insist, that the rejection of the melting pot ideal on the left, along with its adoption of forms of multiculturalism that oppose assimilation, threaten the continued success of my picture of American ideals.) Also, I don't think I've endorsed a "transcultural normative ideal" but an American ideal, which happens not to be shared by most other cultures, including European ones.

Like Maximos, above, I very much doubt "that the problems of ethnic inter-relations can ever be resolved." And I, too, am mystified "that we're intent upon importing more such fundamentally unresolvable dilemmas."

I think what shoved me, very much against my will, into Maximos' camp on this issue, was Amy Chua's deeply flawed but nevertheless absolutely essential book: World On Fire - an endlessly repetitive and profoundly depressing account of the socio-political pathologies of nations with market-dominant minorities. Take-away lesson? Do not let this happen to you. Do not become a country with a market-dominant minority.

America's problems with it's underperforming minorities are as nothing, by comparison.

If you really believe that Blacks, and to a lesser extent Hispanics, have nothing going against them but poverty with regard to joining the middle-class, fine, go with it.

How do you define "joining the middle-class," if not in economic terms? I mean, sure, if we're talking about the social acceptance of your neighbors, then perhaps there are areas where "joining" the middle class is affected by factors other than income, but that's not really the commonly-used definition of the term.

Income is perhaps the most easily measurable indicator of whether an individual or family was able to overcome barriers to social advancement. If you're phenomenally wealthy, then, whether you're black or white, you seem to have done okay for yourself. If you're a high school junior and your parents are well below the poverty line, then, for whatever reason, you come from a background of people who had trouble making it into the middle class. Maybe it's because your dad is black. Maybe it's because, although he's white, he does a lot of crystal meth. Maybe your dad, regardless of race, just has zero skills. Whatever the case, it's not the fault of that high school junior.

But be prepared to build and support more prisons, if you think that's cheaper and more fair to the majority than AA.

Are you saying that Colin Powell's or Oprah Winfrey's kids are more likely than a poor white family's kids to end up in prison because they couldn't get a good education? I can't see exactly what's wrong with a system of affirmative action that helps the children of poor black families because they are poor rather than because they are black. If it also happens to help children of poor white families, what's wrong with that?

Steve, if I can put in an un-PC word here (of course!), I was under the impression that the IQ gap between whites and Asians is by no means overwhelming, especially when we define "white" in the usual way such that it includes people of Jewish descent as well. (I haven't checked this in a long time, but is the mean even a standard deviation different?) Isn't it a bit of an exaggeration to expect that increased Asian immigration will lead to this big-time "overclass" and all these huge racial tensions (between Asians and whites, I presume)? I mean, I'm pretty restrictionist on other grounds anyway--worries about assimilation, security, Muslims, etc., etc.,--so maybe none of this would make a practical difference. But it just strikes me that the worry about a market-dominant Asian minority in America is overblown. As Maximos pointed out, if the Asians stayed around and became citizens, they'd get expensive to employ and be "out-competed" (in cheapness, if not in ability) by guest workers, too, so the worry from his side doesn't seem to be a purely racial issue at all.

How do you define "joining the middle-class," if not in economic terms?

Oh, by accepting and believing the concept that it's not "White" to read books and study to get good grades. And maybe by understanding why Mozart is a greater musician than Jay-Z. Perhaps by seeing why having a baby at age 15 is not a good idea. I could go on, but you were only baiting me with that question, surely.

I can't see exactly what's wrong with a system of affirmative action that helps the children of poor black families because they are poor rather than because they are black. If it also happens to help children of poor white families, what's wrong with that?

Nothing's wrong with it--as I've said above a couple of times. For instance, here:

Kids with college-educated parents tend to go to college; the reverse is also true. It's true in the Black population, and it's also true in the Appalachian White population. AA is not really so much about race as it is about class in contemporary America. It's just that Blacks and Hispanics make up a disproportionate part of the disadvantaged class. 2/16/08 8:22 AM

perhaps there are areas where "joining" the middle class is affected by factors other than income, but that's not really the commonly-used definition of the term.

I tend to disagree with that. I think that there have been factory towns follwing the advent of labor union strength, where whole communities earned middle-class salaries--often two per household--without developing the cultural values that college-educated individuals might consider to be "middle-class." Not so long ago, the economically middle-class unskilled and semi-skilled labor force--with "working class" values--was a not inconsiderable percentage of the population. We recall, for instance, the "hard hat" contingent of the 1970s.

Steve Burton: Interesting research and post, and some very perceptive comments by others in the discussion thread, thank you all.

Will there be a follow-up post, perhaps looking at WGM representation in other important fields, or considering what this ‘unprecedented’ change might portend for WGMs and for America?

Another topic raised in the discussion that warrants a serious examination is the prospective emergence of an ‘Asian cognitive elite’, which coupled with large-scale Hispanic immigration will tend to displace both whites and blacks (at both top and bottom), and further increase inter-racial tensions and conflicts of interest.

I don’t know that these questions are discussed intelligently anywhere online, and I feel like I’m only beginning to understand that they even matter. More please!

Finally Steve, I’m with HJH. I saw nothing overtly hostile or racist in Miss Marple’s comments. Indeed, I thought she (he?) had rather turned the tables on you and others in that respect. In the comments you deleted she merely asked why a white nationalist perspective is automatically suspect when other ethnic nationalisms are widely supported; and why reasonable people like Joe Sobran are accused of ‘having the Jew thing’ despite never going so far as to suggest that non-Jewish groups need their own separate countries to protect against Jewish attack, while most Jewish Americans evidently have ‘the goy thing’ to sufficient degree to support Israel’s necessity as a refuge from potential Gentile hostility, yet escape equivalent smear.

MM simply asked for an end to objectively racist double standards – I can’t find the hole in her argument, and no-one alse exposed it. She’s not the racist.

Boonton: You write ‘there's a limit to how much discrimination an AA program can generate. If, say, blacks are 10% of the population then even if every single black was given some type of AA benefit at best only 1/8th of non-blacks can claim to be victimized in any way. But of course AA is not so common as to benefit every black’.

That rather misses the point. The recipients of all forms of AA: women of all races, and men of all races except white, OUTNUMBER the white men and boys who are its victims. And it is not a system to correct historic injustice, if ever it was. A voluntary immigrant claiming to be ‘Hispanic’ can arrive in America and immediately be entitled to unearned advantages over a white person. When you write that AA ‘keeps racism alive’ by generating unfounded suspicions of white disadvantage I can only wonder if you deliberately miss the point. AA is racist!

Oh, by accepting and believing the concept that it's not "White" to read books and study to get good grades. And maybe by understanding why Mozart is a greater musician than Jay-Z. Perhaps by seeing why having a baby at age 15 is not a good idea. I could go on, but you were only baiting me with that question, surely.

Actually, I wasn't baiting you.

So, the argument, if I understand it, is that the children of wealthy black families are more likely, culturally, to have babies at age 15 or elevate Jay-Z above great classical composers, and therefore those children deserve affirmative action to help them get into college where they might learn otherwise?

So, the argument, if I understand it

Phil--
Actually, you don't understand it. But thanks for trying.

Hi Rodak,
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that those were the only factors/behaviors you were considering; clearly there's a list ("I could go on" is what you said.)

So, based on this

AA is not really so much about race as it is about class in contemporary America. It's just that Blacks and Hispanics make up a disproportionate part of the disadvantaged class.

Are you saying that race should not be a factor in Affirmative Action? If so, I would tend to agree with you.

Daniel, I would be counted as an advocate of 'thick' conceptions of cultural and national identity, from which it does not follow that I have an elaborate, discursive treatment of this theme ready to hand. To a degree, the very attempt to define such matters renders them propositional, externalizes them, as though culture could be defined as the sum total of practices beneath the level of formal political institutions, when what we are after is the consciousness, the thought-world, or lived experience of being something specific, as opposed to some other specific thing. An atmosphere, if you will, which will be very different in a society with a meritocratic Asian overclass than in a society with something like the old WASP overclass.

Of course, it is entirely possible that a stable American cultural identity no longer exists; economic practice, as well as a great deal of high-level geostrategic thought, presuppose that it does not, in which case various World on Fire scenarios await us. I'd rather we declined to ratify this reality so expressly.

Phil--
What I am saying is that race is de facto a consideration in AA, because of the fact that a disporportionate percentage of the Black and Hispanic populations are still trapped in the lower- or under-classes. I.e., most of those eligible for AA will be minority individuals. Obviously, the children of Bill Cosby, who is a very wealthy Ph.D., would not need AA, nor would the children of middle-class professionals of any race.
This is a separate, but related issue, to that of diversity in the student body, however. Others have made eloquent defenses of the right of institutions to take demographic diversity into account in their recruiting efforts, and I will not reiterate those points here. That is an issue concerning which persons of good will can differ.

N.M.D.:

So you can't figure out --

....why reasonable people like Joe Sobran are accused of ‘having the Jew thing’ despite never going so far as to suggest that non-Jewish groups need their own separate countries to protect against Jewish attack, while most Jewish Americans evidently have ‘the goy thing’ to sufficient degree to support Israel’s necessity as a refuge from potential Gentile hostility, yet escape equivalent smear.

MM simply asked for an end to objectively racist double standards – I can’t find the hole in her argument, and no-one alse exposed it. She’s not the racist.

So this really escapes you, eh? You can't find any hole in her argument, and no one's exposed it for you.

OK, I'll bite:

Jews have been systematically and fatally persecuted throughout Europe and the Middle East -- in short, everywhere they've been in any size, with the exception of America -- for thousands of years. White gentiles, as such.....not so much. And then there was that genocide thing half a century ago, you remember. Or did you mean to be calling that into doubt?

Which of Europe’s or the ME’s peoples has escaped systematic and fatal persecution, Daniel? Our history books and this week’s news show the falsehood of your objective moral criteria claim.

The Serbs have endlessly been invaded, slaughtered, subjugated, and their country wiped off the map. When the Serb population in Krajina declared autonomy in Oct. 90 the western powers waged war upon them - Wesley Clark famously said Europe’s peoples would not be permitted ethnic-states (though he supports the Jewish people’s right to enjoy such an advantage of course). This week however, an Albanian population in Serbia unilaterally declared independence and the same western powers, far from feigning moral-horror, pledged political and military support. Standards are not consistent.

If a history of conflict justifies an ethnic-state, the Serbs must have one. So too the English who have lost millions of men to the armies, militias, and terrorists of the Scots, the French, Germans, Jews, Americans, Zulus, Indians (east and west) and others. So also African Americans, European Americans, and Native Americans whose histories are of unrelenting conflict.

There is nothing unique about the Jewish experience of inter-ethnic conflict besides its exceptional claim on our politics and purses. As has happened before in this thread, you illustrate some of the ways in which Jewish ethnic-activists achieve their successes: falsely claiming ‘Unique Jewish Suffering,’ and smearing those who would see other peoples treated equally to Jews – only equally mind – as morally suspect (thus I am possibly a holocaust denier!).

You have not answered Miss Marple's question, you have merely restated it and shown that she is justified in asking it.