Acting White: AA, Diversity I & II

My daughter is a high school senior looking at colleges, so I have the pleasure of attending numerous ‘college nights’, as she executes her move into this phase in her young life. This gives me a trench-level view of how advanced education currently views young blacks. Now I’m too old to have experienced the diversity argument of the nineties. Before then it was just straight-up affirmative action (AA), with the goal of righting past wrongs, by tossing blacks into elusive college programs to sink or swim. Unfortunately, too many sank. It turns out that plus addmission points for skin-hue did not translate into grade points for graduation. Surprise!

Following AA, the first diversity push, which I’ll call D1, quietly converted the strategy of atoning for past wrongs, to focusing on balance. If blacks are 13% percent of the population, then they should be 13% of the college students. Fair is fair, right? But this did not work, either. Sure, there is growing black excellence, but not enough of it to fill all of America’s colleges with their 13%. Also, it seems like a quota, and that is one dirty word in the lexicon. So, back they went to the drawing board.

Now we have D2, the second diversity push. Only this time the story is not about the benefit to blacks, but rather the value to all who need to sit in a classroom with blacks, in order to get their educational money’s worth – a diverse learning environment. The plus-points doled out to under-represented minorities are justified, under D2, for the value it brings to the education promise of ‘everybody’ (esp. liberal white kids). And just so long as race is not the too obvious driving criteria for admission, these race-based bonus points are allowed, so says the Supreme Court.

In all cases, whether I witnessed it 20 years ago or just saw it just last night, the underlying problem remains. The bonus points that accompany the diversity recruitment promos still do not translate into the GPA that will make my girl, and me, smile and establish her argument into graduate school. So it is up to me to appropriately counter the bonus points that entice her, and black kids like her, into programs which, by their mismatch skills and requirements, will result in less educational enrichment, lower grades, and fewer graduate school opportunities/experiences.

While we continue with outdated and ineffective solutions, more and more poor kids, of all colors, are being locked out of higher education. It is they who need points and programs to overcome the impact of economically disadvantaged schools from the start. I hate it that Ward Connerly-types have hijacked the pursuit of fair solutions to unfair disparities. Nevertheless, bankrupt educators should neither get away with trickery to prop up an approach that they know does not work, and which should have been replaced long ago.

James C. Collier

READ MOST RECENT POSTS AT ACTING WHITE...

Technorati Tags: Acting White: AA, Diversity I & II, Affirmative Action, Quotas, Racism, Ward Connerly, Acting White