The Truth about preferences
HERIOT, GAIL
The Truth About Preferences by Gail Heriot Afew years ago, no secret was more closely guarded than university affirmative-action statistics. "Preferences? What preferences?" was the official line,...
...now we're awash with information...
...Hence those who call for a greater emphasis on academic qualifications and less emphasis on skin color are anguishing over nothing—or so the argument runs...
...Putting data together from different states is another statistical trick she pulls...
...So what is the new report Russert referred to, and how could it reach such an unexpected conclusion...
...And as long as racial preferences continue to prevail in higher education, the gap won't go away...
...In New York, the disparity was greater...
...In California, when it came to passing the bar, the gap between whites and African Americans was so wide that the bar examiners modified the test format to include a "performance test" of practical skills, hoping that it would close the gap...
...To the contrary, it reports that African-American preference beneficiaries failed the bar at a rate almost three times that of non-beneficiaries of the same race (27.1 percent vs...
...But the media have reported the claim uncritically...
...9.8 percent)—a highly significant statistical difference...
...was the official line, and the occasional leak was handled with astonishing ruthlessness...
...Gail Heriot is professor of law at the University of San Diego...
...Including those states in her study dilutes the difference in bar passage rates in states with serious bar exams...
...Similar comparisons are made for other racial and ethnic groups...
...Those of us who wielded the crowbar in years past are gratified by this newfound candor...
...It compares exclusively within race...
...Things have changed...
...Wightman apparently relied on the media not to look too closely at the details of the study...
...Wightman declares it "little...
...But candor is actually just a tactical retreat for the defenders of preferences...
...They now claim that the beneficiaries of racial preferences perform just as well as the better-qualified students...
...And with each retelling, the real facts become more and more distorted...
...It seems that every week there are more press conferences, more news releases, more National Public Radio interviews...
...Consider the case of the law student who exposed the credentials gap between "affirmative action" and "regular" admittees at Georgetown University Law Center...
...In many states, the level of competence one must demonstrate to pass the bar is set so low that almost everyone passes...
...Most people would consider a threefold difference a huge gap...
...at every turn, she selects the strategy that will minimize such distinctions...
...The phrase "little to no difference" is the real magic here...
...Instead, university administrators satisfied the calls for blood on campus by reporting his conduct to the bar...
...Polemically titled "The Threat to Diversity in Legal Education," the report was written by Linda Wight-man and published in the April issue of New York University Law Review...
...If she had made cross-racial comparisons, she would have found, for example, that African-American beneficiaries of preferences fail the bar almost eight times more often than white non-beneficiaries...
...It didn't...
...This sorry picture is almost solely the result of preferences...
...In composing an abstract of her article (which authors ordinarily see prior to publication), they wrote that Wightman found "no significant differences in . . . bar passage rates...
...But a system of preferences necessarily pits many minority students against students with substantially better academic credentials...
...The result is predictable...
...Contrary to Russert's representation, the study does not even purport to compare white student performance with African-American performance...
...Wrong...
...The problem is not unique to law schools...
...A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that white medical students passed the National Board of Medical Examiners Part I exam at a rate of 87.7 percent, African Americans at 48.9 percent...
...She therefore obscures it with boldly misleading conclusions...
...The study does not find that, among African Americans, beneficiaries of preferences performed "just as well" as non-beneficiaries...
...Only a public outcry caused Georgetown to back down from its threat to expel him...
...After her best efforts, her data still show nearly a threefold gap...
...African-Americans who would not have been admitted without a preference are compared with African-Americans who did not need one...
...even Wightman's editors were confused...
...Thus, she chooses to compare within race...
...As for her "no" difference, it refers to her computations for Mexican Americans and American Indians...
...This statement is just plain false...
...A lot...
...Again, matching academic credentials (in this case, the MCAT score and undergraduate GPA) made the discrepancy all but disappear...
...In truth, the data prove just the opposite...
...The good news is that universities are finally admitting what most people knew all along, even though it was difficult to pry loose specific information: In campus admissions offices, race matters...
...Even Wightman, however, can't completely erase the difference...
...In 1994, well after the addition of the skills test, the bar passage rate for first-time takers in California was 81.3 percent for whites, 53 percent for African Americans...
...The Mill-man Report, commissioned by the New York Court of Appeals to examine this and other problems, found that whites pass at a rate of 81.6 percent, as opposed to 37.4 percent of African-American test-takers...
...All the while, Dean Judith Areen blandly maintained that Georgetown did not discriminate on the basis of race...
...This is hardly performing "just as well...
...Hence the overall passage rates look high, even while the gaps in major states like California and New York are vast...
...When African-American exam-takers compete against white exam-takers who have the same score on the law-school admissions test, they fare about the same, according to Stephen P Klein, a research scientist for the Rand Corporation...
...Tim Russert put it this way on Meet the Press: "A study done . . . of law school admissions in 1991 . . . concluded that blacks who were admitted under affirmative action performed just as well as whites in law school and on passing the bar exam...
...Although in these groups, too, beneficiaries of preferences tended to fare worse on the bar than others, their numbers in her sample were too small to permit meaningful generalizations...
...Wightman is obviously not pleased to be reporting such a gap...
...It is unsurprising that readers would be misled...
...She writes that "the data suggest little to no difference in the likelihood of passing the bar examination between" those who have benefited from racial preferences and those who haven't...
...She got her wish...
Vol. 2 • July 1997 • No. 44
