You might be interested in reading Mary Pattillo’s book Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class. It has been awhile since I read it, but I am pretty sure it is this book that takes a deep dive into the experiences of middle-class black families, particularly looking at issues of policing, schooling, segregation and the historical impact of the wealth gap in the black community. Your post reminds me of her book because she talks about the disproportionate (racialized) treatment by teachers and the police towards typical adolescent behaviors of middle-class and wealthy teenagers. As a teacher, I see these differences often among my colleagues in how they perceive and react to the exact same set of actions/provocations. The assumptions that they make about the students and to whom they are willing to give the benefit of the doubt varies with the race (and to a lesser extent gender) of the students even when they are of similar socioeconomic backgrounds. At least in the case of my colleagues, occasionally this differential treatment is actually helpful to students of color but far more often it is harmful particularly when transgressions are involved. Either way, their view and treatment of similar students and similar behaviors varies with race.
Some of this research would undercut the case for some types of affirmative action. This is one of the more interesting studies on school discipline because the researchers had access to anonymized records for 1 million students. Rather than a sample, it examined data for all public school students in 7th grade in Texas in 2000, 2001, and 2002 and followed them longitudinally for 6 years. Using an multi-variable regression, with 83 controls, it found similarly situated African Americans had a 31% higher chance of a discretionary violation and 23% lower chance of a mandatory violation. Then, to counter claims African Americans committed discretionary violations at higher rates compared to demographically similar whites, they assume the relative probability of committing a mandatory violation is the same as the relative probability of committing a discretionary violation. Controlling for 83 variables, the situation for Hispanics compared to non-Hispanic whites is a 16.4% higher rate of mandatory violations, but the same rate of discretionary violations. The same data, methodology, and assumptions which show African Americans are disciplined at higher rates than whites, shows non-Hispanic whites are disciplined at higher rates than Hispanics.
https://csgjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Breaking_Schools_Rules_Report_Final.pdf
I am not convinced that SES is as strong an indicator of academic success as we would like to believe. The Chinese and South Asians in Singapore are mainly descendants of migrant workers shipped there by the British. Lee Kwan Yew pretty much said so to Deng Xiaoping. Look at how well they perform:
http://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?primaryCountry=SGP&treshold=10&topic=PI
Without looking far, Mrs. Canuck’s grandfather was a “coolie” working on the Trans Canada railroad, yet my FIL was accepted into a National university on the basis of his entrance exam. I know of many others who have made that leap.
Please don’t burden a people with low expectations. Although if I am an Oligarch, and wants to pass my privileges onto future generations, this is exactly what I would do.
http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf
Discusses the advantages of white generally high SES students via athletic recruitment, legacy, development and kid-of-prof/admin. Based on the Harvard data.
What have many of us been saying for years now?
^Yes, but see footnote 90 on p32 along with Table 11.
"90 The last row in Table 11 shows what would happen if in addition to removing legacy and athlete preferences, we also removed racial preferences. In this case, the coefficients on legacy, athlete, and race/ethnicity are set to zero as well as their interactions. The counterfactual shows that the number of admitted African
Americans would be a third of what it was when all these preferences were in place. The number of admitted Hispanics would decline by almost half. Clearly the preferences African Americans and Hispanics receive do not simply offset the losses they incur from legacy and athlete preferences.
Table 11: Total Admits by Race under Different Admissions Policies, Expanded Sample
White African American Hispanic Asian American
Model 4,802 1,367 1,365 2,358
No legacy preferences 4,598 1,423 1,428 2,458
No athlete preferences 4,499 1,366 1,462 2,569
No race/legacy/athlete 4,947 428 792 3,564
Source: Data presented in Panel 2 of Table 8.2R of Document 415-9."
So, under Arcidiacono’s estimated model, the removal of race, athlete and legacy preferences would reduce the share of African Americans in the Harvard class by 75%, and Hispanics by 50%.
This is basically the same as Harvard itself found, using a somewhat different and earlier data set back in 2013. Harvard estimated that the removal of race, athletic and legacy preferences would reduce the share of African Americans by 79% and Hispanics by 59% (page 11 here http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-421-145-Admissions-Part-II-Report.pdf).
Also, not inconsistent with what Bok and Bowen, who were the Presidents of Harvard and Princeton, found a generation ago: removal of race preferences would reduce African American representation on elite campuses by 80%+ (I don’t recall if they reported a number for Hispanics).
African Americans do share in the athletic preference today at Harvard to a much greater extent than Hispanics, at 11% of recruited athletes versus 5% (but compare whites at 70% and Asians 9%).
It’s pretty obvious that based on population share, unhooked whites are by far the least represented in Harvard’s class (Panel C on page 42 of the new Arcidiacono paper):
Share of non-ALDC students
Whites – 36.15%
African American – 15.25%
Hispanics – 14.22%
Asians – 26.62%
So, it looks to me that unhooked whites face by far the longest admissions odds, but again that should always have been obvious. I am not so sure anymore that the Asians have a legitimate gripe here, although based on academics alone Asians are underrepresented. Maybe.
I personally saw no surprises with the the data presented by Arcidiacono’s models. It showed removing legacy and athletic preferences slightly lowered the percentage of white students while the other groups stayed steady or slightly increased. It also showed that with all preferences removed that the amount of white students actually increased slightly while the Asian American increase (1200+ more students) was significant. Legacy and Athletic preferences do not truly protect the number of white students who attend Harvard (at least not in a large percentage), but it protects a certain type of white student (higher SES students with family connections) which make life harder for unhooked White students to get admitted. Arcidiacono’s data also shows a devastating lowing in the number of African American and Hispanics if all preferences were removed (while basically confirming that racial preferences have a much larger affect on the racial background of accepted students than any other preference type).
One day, racial preferences will be removed and if underrepresented minorities have not improved our academic standing (by fixing primary and secondary educational woes along with a cultural shift within our families (at least among a percentage of my own racial group) that values education, Arcidiacono’s data could become reality. I see no end in sight for Legacy and Athletic preferences although I do not care for them.
This sentence can be more generalized (see edits above), although the higher representation of white people among the past generation of Harvard alumni and high SES parents who can afford to support K-12 athletes to a high level (e.g. expensive travel teams) does mean that the benefits of these preferences goes more to white students than others. But then that may be a desired (by Harvard) effect to slow the drop in white enrollment, although it is likely that the primary intentions are other factors (keeping Harvard a predominantly high SES environment that is desirable to traditional employers that recruit there, keeping financial aid expense down, marketing to alumni to donate).
Whatever its stated missions are, Harvard’s unstated primary goal has always been clear. It wants to educate the next generation of influential people in various fields. Besides preferential treatments for legacies and donors, it also offers special treatments for children of the powerful and famous around the world. The strategy has works so well for Harvard, and other similar schools like Yale and Princeton, and to a lessor degree, Stanford, that they have no incentive to change their practice. Affirmative action and other similar types of programs are just cosmetics, making these schools look “more diversified” superficially. Offering the less privileged a few seats is a great price to pay for preserving their primary goal.
Which, actually undermines the case for AA in the Harvard lawsuit. For AA to be legal, there must be no race-neutral alternatives.
Offered without further comment for people who believe that SES and parental education are important causal factors in academic performance:
From footnotes 67 and 68 here: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf.
My own calculations from the trial exhibits show that approximately 300 African American legacy, donor/special interest, and faculty child candidates applied over the six years examined. 86% of these applicants were from the bottom half of the academic index distribution (deciles 1 through 5). 20% of these lower half candidates were admitted. That rate is significantly higher than the admissions rates for unhooked white candidates (15%) and unhooked Asian candidates (13%) from the top decile.
a specific stat is focused upon in this article from 2 days ago
I wonder if Edward Blum is feeling he might rather not have let this genie out of the bottle.
I suppose it depends on what you think his motivations were.
I don’t think Edward Blum is worried about that genie at all @OHMomof2. There is a time limit on the amount of time that racial preferences in admissions will last (Even the SCOTUS said so in 2003), but I am not sure what the time limit is on having Money, Power, connections, and athletic prowess.
Not at all.
For someone looking for a Supreme Court review, the district court decision is perfect.
While Blum helped bring suit against Harvard, his ultimate goal is removing race from all college admissions, which would require a Supreme Court review.
District judge gives decision:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/10/2/admissions-suit-decision/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/01/affirmative-action-federal-judge-oks-harvard-universitys-use-race/1992078001/
Everyone assumes this case is going to the Supreme Court. I predict after the appeal (which will affirm), the Supreme Court will decline, case over.
In an important sense the plaintiffs already won. Asian Americans were just 17% of the Harvard class of 2015; this year they are over 25% of the incoming class. Not a coincidence.
Most of this was predictable. Blum’s goal was always to get Fisher II overruled at the Supreme Court. I was surprised the judge didn’t give more credence to arguments about the personal rating. In other contexts, racial differences in aggregate ratings with such vague criteria as “integrity, helpfulness, courage, kindness, fortitude, empathy, self-confidence, leadership ability, maturity, or grit” would be presumptive evidence of racial bias.