The problem with your argument is not whether average score comparisons differ across black white distinctions. It's that you reify the average, give it a personality, give it a psychology, and let it run around interacting with other students.
There are, I would guess, a vast array of ways black students in largely white schools have of dealing with that fact. I've seen more than I care to count. Some do as you suggest, many do not. Ditto for white students who deal with black students. Generally, they don't seem to care much one way or the other. Too busy with other things.
The major criterion for affirmative action in my view are: are the black kids better off (the Bowen and Bok stuff says they are remarkably so even though the judgment is a fairly complicated one); are the schools better off for doing so (Bowen and Bok say yes--the diversity argument); are the white students at the schools better off (yes, the diversity argument).
Now you can focus on students who did not get in. If you wish to do that, to be consistent you need to focus on students who failed to get in because of legacy decisions (who didn't get in to Yale because GWB did?); because of anticipation of future large donations (check above and much else); who didn't get in because of geographical concerns; etc. And as the list lengthens, one has to wonder why all this attention to those who don't get in because of affirmative action concerns and no attention to the other non grade point average admittees.
I hope this topic continues to interest you. I don't see that you and I have much to offer one another new at the moment. Perhaps a new decision will come down; we could decide to read Bowen and Bok as a project (no, not that much time right now); or something else.
I think affirmative action, not simply diversity arguments, in fact I have a problem with some forms of the diversity arguments, is a social good and should be supported. Unless and until we do something about the hugely unequal character of public education in this country by funding it at reasonable levels. |
