Bias and Bigotry in Academia: by Patrick J Buchanan

[andymays]

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=181357

Excerpt:

A decade ago, activist Ron Unz conducted a study of the ethnic and religious composition of the student body at Harvard.

Blacks and Hispanics, Unz found, were then being admitted to his alma mater in numbers approaching their share of the population.

And who were the most underrepresented Americans at Harvard?

White Christians and ethnic Catholics. Though two-thirds of the U.S. population then, they had dropped to one-fourth of the student body.

Comes now a more scientific study from Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford to confirm that a deep bias against the white conservative and Christian young of America is pervasive at America's elite colleges and Ivy League schools.

Excerpt:

Was this what the civil-rights revolution was all about – requiring kids whose parents came from Korea, Japan or Vietnam to get a perfect SAT score of 1600 to be given equal consideration with a Jamaican or Kenyan kid who got an 1150? Is this what it means to be an Ivy League progressive?

Excerpt:

"Lower-class whites prove to be all-around losers" at the elite schools. They are rarely accepted. Lower-class Hispanics and blacks are eight to 10 times more likely to get in with the same scores.

[Robert Goren]

A perfect SAT score is now 2400. :bang:

[andymays]

A perfect SAT score is now 2400. :bang:
What about the substance of the article and the supporting studies?

[BluegrassProf]

While I'm certainly no overwhelming supporter of Affirmative Action - it largely fails to address the disparities it intends to mitigate - this conclusion:

a deep bias against the white conservative and Christian young of America is pervasive at America's elite colleges and Ivy League schools.
is probably the most bizarre I could've fabricated by looking at the study. :D But of course, that's your source talking...that's ok; it happens.

The findings in the article re: testing and college admittance are one part of a much larger book titled No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal...the piece you posted is both removed from context, and an enormous oversimplification of the findings (and no, making something simple when it's not simple in the real world is not a super-duper good thing). It's removing the myriad factors like social class (read: mechanisms intended to mitigate the impact of SES) and admittance preferences between types of institution (ex: public vs. private), etc.

If you don't have scholarly database access (which I'm sure most don't), sections of No Longer Separate are actually visible via GoogleBooks:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=47rORpFmuBwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR17&dq=Thomas+Espenshade+and+Alexandria+Radford&ots=1T9O9pkRZQ&sig=Aeemy-CtfrNhJL3TB_d4KeV9zaE#v=onepage&q&f=false
See pp12-13 for an overview of the analysis of racial preferences, as well as the authors' concern about the elimination of preference practices.

Re: the analysis cited above, focus on pp75 -111, with general conclusions from this study and related research beginning at 111. In very short, academic merit is, as expected, the strongest predictor of college admittance, and that which programs like Affirmative Action attempt to address (disparities that exist before the application process, not during; the more appropriate concern is addressing this well-documented issue, as admittance preferences are a relatively inefficient means), though it remains the strongest factor in and of itself. To that end, in the aggregate (read: all colleges lumped together), racial preferences aren't particularly salient; that said, as the selectivity of schools increases, the percentage of admitted minorities grows considerably - however, one needs to also take into account number of applicants to these institutions and disparities along racial lines, as well as the finding that racial preference and SES are linked (pp72, 91), and controlling for legislation, preferences are decreasingly salient over time (as opposed to the apocalyptic "schools squeezing out whites!" concern). Notably, despite the above article's claim that lower SES students are getting shunned is incorrect - controlling for other factors at the aggregate, SES has little effect, even with respect to race...lower class minorities - those from the lowest SES bracket - have a higher admittance rate at selective private schools, but again, consider the issue of applicant percentages: when smaller numbers apply for admission, the acceptance rate (%) will naturally be higher - whether you admit 1 of 10 or 1 of 100, you're still admitting one student...only the % changes - rates are "above average," a conclusion that should be viewed through a recognition of lower-than-average application rates. That said, the same doesn't occur at public schools: SES has little impact on admittance, poor black and poor whites alike.

The issue of race/political affiliation/religious ideology in your article has been arbitrarily tied to the issue of Affirmative Action - the two have no intrinsic connection. The lower percentage of representation in those two groups has far more to do with other factors (ex: Ivy league colleges and large public universities are by their nature liberal environments, though make no mistake, this is just one factor of many, even down to local expectations and connections between high schools and colleges), and little to do with race - though this, in fact, isn't a focus of the Espenshade & Radford study.

To oversimplify (hopefully effectively) the conclusion of this piece and many others: racial preferences clearly exist, though seemingly decreasingly-so. Are they as dramatic as "squeezing out poor pious whitey?" Of course not.

With the above in mind, the question becomes: do racial preference programs mitigate multidimensional disparities that fall along racial lines prior to college application/admittance? There's clear evidence that preferences play an increasing role for minorities as selectivity increases, and as SES of applicants decreases...is this a justified response to those well-documented disparities? And does addressing racial disparities do justice to disparities that do not fall along racial lines (recognizing that we are, in fact, the most unequal country on the planet, as the authors surely note)? The authors of this piece do not call for an end to preferences, citing concern for the alternative - while I can't say I'm in agreement, based solely on this research, a strong conclusion otherwise might be imprudent.

[BluegrassProf]

* Please also note that above are not my conclusions - they're culled from the book in question, and try as I might, really fail to capture to nuance in things like demographic relationships (race, SES, merit, etc.). My intention is only to provide a [somewhat] more holistic picture of the findings than those presented in the original article, and to perhaps provide some contextual perspective as noted in that text, nada mas...other than perhaps asking a couple of relevant questions in the general direction of the authors of the piece.

Sure, I may not personally be entirely in agreement with the recommendations based on that outcome - that's a personal preference I'm afforded as someone that didn't collect the data. I just hate to see an article so woefully fail to do justice to such a sweeping piece of research... ;)

[Robert Goren]

What about the substance of the article and the supporting studies?There has never been a shortage of critics of the SATs and the way they are used or not used. I don't think I will wade into that pool of quicksand. The only I will say about them is if I was half as smart as they said I was, I would not have smoked for 18 years.

[boxcar]

And I hate when article attempts to justify a gross injustice, which is what Affirmative Action is in the final analysis. When something is made out or presented to be hopelessly complicated and nuanced in every other paragraph, it's usually because the intent is to obfuscate or even conceal the plain, simple truth that underlies a matter. And the truth about Affirmative Action is that it's an immoral law that was really passed for social engineering purposes. A righteous or even moral law would not attempt to address discrimination against one group at the expense of another. A morally sound law wouldn't fight discrimination with discriminatory practices. A good law would not presume that one group is always inherently biased against another.

The inescapable fact of the matter is that the demographic breakdowns at these Ivy League colleges are what they are because administrators at these institutions practiced all the above -- all in the name, of course, of "social justice".

Boxcar

[TJDave]

Pat Buchanan opines on bigotry.

He's certainly well qualified. :rolleyes: