AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Should Colleges Consider
Race as a Factor in Admissions?

Should it be easier for some students to get into good colleges just because of the color of their skin? Should universities have one set of standards for white and Asian applicants and another set of standards for blacks and Latinos?

In fact, most competitive public colleges and universities do exactly that: They use double standards, based primarily on race and ethnicity, when considering which students to admit. When my organization, the Center for Equal Opportunity, studied admissions policies at 57 public colleges and universities, we found that all but a tiny handful of schools gave preference in admission to blacks and Latinos. At some schools, black students were admitted with SAT scores that were 200 to 350 points lower than the average scores of whites and Asians at the same school, and with high-school grade-point averages that were a half point or more lower. The University of Michigan routinely admits blacks and Latinos with lower qualifications than whites and Asians it rejects.

Last month, the Bush administration filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the court to declare such programs at the University of Michigan illegal. Michigan's programs, which operate both at the undergraduate level and at the university's law school, even assigned extra points on students' applications if they were black or Latino. The Center for Equal Opportunity's study of admissions at the university, which used actual admissions data obtained by filing a Freedom of Information Act request, showed that Michigan had one of the worst racial preference programs in the country.

Some people argue that we need such preferences in order to make up for past discrimination. Others say that if we don't apply double standards, most blacks and Latinos would not get into college-at least not at highly competitive institutions like the University of Michigan. Still others argue that racial diversity is so important that we can ignore the plain meaning of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equal protection of the laws without regard to race or color.

But all of these arguments are wrong-logically, morally and empirically.

While it's true that this country discriminated against blacks, Latinos and others in the past, such discrimination has been outlawed for decades, and where it still exists (as it does) can be dealt with by using anti-discrimination laws that inflict heavy penalties on those who discriminate. Is it right or fair to give preferential treatment to one individual today because someone else suffered discrimination in the past, especially if doing so requires that entirely innocent parties suffer the consequences? Two wrongs don't make a right, no matter how well-intended the motives of those who try to justify current discrimination against whites and Asians because of past discrimination against blacks and Latinos.

When the Center for Equal Opportunity did its studies, we also looked at what would happen if colleges and universities stopped using racial preferences. We found that in all states we studied, blacks and Latinos would still get into college at the same rates as they currently do, though some students might attend different schools than they do now.

California outlawed racial preferences in college admissions in 1996 through a state- wide voter initiative, yet today there are more black and Latino students in the University of California system than there were when preferences were used. The difference is that today black and Latino students attend campuses where they compete on an equal footing with their white and Asian peers.

Everyone Benefits

Everyone benefits under this new, colorblind policy, especially blacks and Latinos who now attend colleges and universities where they are more likely to excel and complete their studies, and where they don't live under a constant cloud of suspicion that they got into the school because they were given special treatment. There might be fewer black and Latino students attending the most competitive institutions as a result, but the ones who do get in will actually graduate-as opposed to the many who don't now. The nongraduation rate for blacks admitted to the University of Michigan using preferential double standards was almost three times the rate of nongraduation for white students.

There is no social science worthy of the name that shows education is better where there is racial diversity. To argue that such advantages do exist brings to mind the proponents of racial segregation, who cited dubious studies showing that whites learned better when they attended all-white schools and blacks when they attended all-black schools.

Even if there was scientific proof that racial diversity enhanced classroom learning, the Constitution is clear: Government can't treat people differently because of their race or color.

Martin Luther King argued that America should be a nation in which all persons were judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We will never achieve Mr. King's dream by treating people differently because of race or ethnicity.