Read Online Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes by David Horowitz - Free Book Online
Authors: David Horowitz
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put in place (roughly 1970) when the figures reached 32 percent and 59 percent.
The cause of black poverty, as the Thernstroms show (and the dramatic expansion of the black middle class should make self-evident), has little to do with race. Consequently, its solution will not be affected by affirmative action set-asides. Currently, 85 percent of all poor black children live in fatherless families. In other words, the poverty rate for black children without fathers is nearly six times that for black children with two parents. A far more effective antipoverty program would be to promote black marriages.
Even in higher education, affirmative action has not been the indispensable agent its advocates imply. The rate of gain for blacks in college enrollments was greater between 1960 and 1970, before affirmative action policies were instituted (enrollments for blacks increased from 4 percent to 7 percent of the total college population), than it was in the decades after, between 1970 and 1980, when black enrollment went from 7 percent to 9.9 percent and between 1980 and 1994, when it went from 9.9 percent to 10.7 percent.
Of course, before affirmative action, many of these students were attending all black colleges in the South. The really significant gain from affirmative action was greater "diversity." The proportion of black students enrolled in predominantly white schools quadrupled between 1960 and 1980. This made white liberals and — to be fair — whites generally, feel good. But was it as good for the blacks who were enrolled, particularly those who were accepted to schools because of affirmative action double standards?
In 1965 — before these policies were put in place — blacks were only about half as likely to actually graduate from college as whites. In 1995 — after affirmative action took effect — the figure was exactly the same. As of 1995, almost half of African-Americans in the twenty to twenty-five age bracket had been enrolled in college, but barely one in seven of them held a bachelor's degree.
In the economic sphere, affirmative action policies had the net effect not of employing greater numbers of blacks or raising their living standards, but of shifting black employment from small businesses to large corporations and to government. In higher education, the net effect of affirmative action has been more perverse. In a system organized as a hierarchy of merit, a good student who can get As at Boston University might flunk out at Harvard. In 1995, there were only 1,764 black students nationwide who scored as high as 600 on the verbal SATs (the math scores were even worse). But, under affirmative action guidelines, all those students were recruited to Berkeley, Harvard , and similar elite schools where the average white student (not to mention the average Asian) normally had scores at least 100 points (and more likely 200) higher.
In short, at every level of the university system, the net effect of affirmative action has been to place Arican-Americans in college programs that exceed their qualifications. As a result, affirmative action students have lower grade point averages and higher dropout rates (by fifty percent and more) than students who are admitted without benefit of racial preferences. At Berkeley, for example, the gap in SAT scores between blacks and whites is nearly three hundred points. As this disparity would predict, blacks drop out of Berkeley at nearly three times the rate of whites. This is the unspoken nightmare of affirmative action's impact on the very minorities it was designed to help.
It is a poignant irony that the college that comes closest to racial equality in actually graduating its students in the era of affirmative action is Ole Miss, once the last bastion of segregation in the South. Now integrated, Ole Miss has resisted the new racial duplicity in admissions standards. The result is that 49 percent of all whites who enter Ole Miss as freshman graduate, and so do 48
The cause of black poverty, as the Thernstroms show (and the dramatic expansion of the black middle class should make self-evident), has little to do with race. Consequently, its solution will not be affected by affirmative action set-asides. Currently, 85 percent of all poor black children live in fatherless families. In other words, the poverty rate for black children without fathers is nearly six times that for black children with two parents. A far more effective antipoverty program would be to promote black marriages.
Even in higher education, affirmative action has not been the indispensable agent its advocates imply. The rate of gain for blacks in college enrollments was greater between 1960 and 1970, before affirmative action policies were instituted (enrollments for blacks increased from 4 percent to 7 percent of the total college population), than it was in the decades after, between 1970 and 1980, when black enrollment went from 7 percent to 9.9 percent and between 1980 and 1994, when it went from 9.9 percent to 10.7 percent.
Of course, before affirmative action, many of these students were attending all black colleges in the South. The really significant gain from affirmative action was greater "diversity." The proportion of black students enrolled in predominantly white schools quadrupled between 1960 and 1980. This made white liberals and — to be fair — whites generally, feel good. But was it as good for the blacks who were enrolled, particularly those who were accepted to schools because of affirmative action double standards?
In 1965 — before these policies were put in place — blacks were only about half as likely to actually graduate from college as whites. In 1995 — after affirmative action took effect — the figure was exactly the same. As of 1995, almost half of African-Americans in the twenty to twenty-five age bracket had been enrolled in college, but barely one in seven of them held a bachelor's degree.
In the economic sphere, affirmative action policies had the net effect not of employing greater numbers of blacks or raising their living standards, but of shifting black employment from small businesses to large corporations and to government. In higher education, the net effect of affirmative action has been more perverse. In a system organized as a hierarchy of merit, a good student who can get As at Boston University might flunk out at Harvard. In 1995, there were only 1,764 black students nationwide who scored as high as 600 on the verbal SATs (the math scores were even worse). But, under affirmative action guidelines, all those students were recruited to Berkeley, Harvard , and similar elite schools where the average white student (not to mention the average Asian) normally had scores at least 100 points (and more likely 200) higher.
In short, at every level of the university system, the net effect of affirmative action has been to place Arican-Americans in college programs that exceed their qualifications. As a result, affirmative action students have lower grade point averages and higher dropout rates (by fifty percent and more) than students who are admitted without benefit of racial preferences. At Berkeley, for example, the gap in SAT scores between blacks and whites is nearly three hundred points. As this disparity would predict, blacks drop out of Berkeley at nearly three times the rate of whites. This is the unspoken nightmare of affirmative action's impact on the very minorities it was designed to help.
It is a poignant irony that the college that comes closest to racial equality in actually graduating its students in the era of affirmative action is Ole Miss, once the last bastion of segregation in the South. Now integrated, Ole Miss has resisted the new racial duplicity in admissions standards. The result is that 49 percent of all whites who enter Ole Miss as freshman graduate, and so do 48
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