Zarko Research editorial note, 7/19/2007: The subtitlte "Why should poor white students pay ... " was chosen by editorial staff at the Ann Arbor News and not ZR, and ZR's believes that all poor students, including blacks, paid (now hopefully past tense in the wake of Proposal 2) the price for previous over-focus on racial categories that allowed wealthier and even foreign minorities to be the natural recipients of the market-distortion created by racial categorization.

Columns & Editorials
Sunday, April 13, 2003
BY CHETLY ZARKO

History is sometimes lost or rewritten when the emotion of any debate over right and wrong takes over.

Emotion is running high in the final days before the U.S. Supreme Court decides the lawsuit over the University of Michigan's use of racial preferences in admissions.

Much has been said about these policies. Few can or will talk about the internal debate that took place at U-M in the late 1980s, during the crucial formative period of these policies. Those implementing preferences believed in them ferociously, despite private admissions of shortcomings.

This analysis relies on archival records found in U-M's Bentley Historical Library. These documents hint at an alternative to racial preferences. University leaders recognized that today's educational problems are more related to socio-economic disadvantage and a general failure of the K-12 system than they are racial discrimination. This should have implied an economic rather than racial solution.

In an example of university information sharing, former U-M President James Duderstadt obtained and heavily notated a report written in 1989 by a staff group at the University of California-Berkeley.

Criticizing the scope of Berkeley's racial preferences, it cited a lack of socio-economic diversity (statistically fewer poor-white admissions) and a five-year graduation rate for race-preferred admissions at 31 percent compared to 61 percent for regular admissions. The conclusion was to reduce race-targets from 40 percent to 5 percent and increase targets for socio-economically disadvantaged groups. Little action was taken on these quietly circulated alternatives until Proposition 209 forced more radical changes throughout the entire U-C system.

Also in 1989, a U-M law school professor e-mailed Duderstadt following an internal meeting. On the national committee overseeing the Law School Admission Test and having access to their statistics, she (an African-American serving in both the Nixon and Clinton administrations) chastised U-M's minority programs. Simplifying her multi-page critique, "The U-M is producing [minority] graduates most of whom can qualify for law school only on affirmative action standards. ...Why? ... There seems to be a further falling behind during the college years. ...minorities are probably being tracked into the less-demanding majors, the soft sciences, the courses concerning their own ethnic groups. This tracking has something to do with the undergraduate institutions' interest in retaining (minorities), and their fear that the hard courses are too hard." Failure after admission is implicated. If "diversity" (rather than mere "quota-filling) is the goal, then "tracking" (segregation) negates it. Some of the subtle discrimination affirmative action causes is revealed.

Duderstadt himself admitted the nonracial nature of modern educational malaise. In a speech he noted, "Our first tendency is to think that K-12 education is merely failing minorities. ... This is not the case and the weakness of our educational system extends throughout society. ... We are presently only educating 15 percent to 20 percent of our students to an intellectual level capable of functioning well in the everyday world."

The very real racial gap is part of a larger socio-economic gap. Quite simply, and logically, wealthy and not-so-wealthy students perform differently. This implies the solution to racial-educational inequity should be based on a broader socio-economic plan rather than on racial admissions. At best, affirmative action distracts from the real issue - improving K-12 education and alleviating the impact of poverty on educational preparation. At worst, it puts under-prepared students into an environment dooming many to failure.

A potential, constitutional alternative would be to give preference to students, regardless of race, from disadvantaged socio-economic circumstances. Why should a white or any student with equally troubled "life circumstances" receive less help than blacks in similar positions? However much minorities are "disadvantaged," it is measurable through income-disparity. Such a policy would be self-correcting. If racial-inequity disappeared, the statistical benefit of being in a particular racial group would also disappear.

The question of "when does it end" is answered.

To be consistent, we must also end "legacy" and "VIP" admissions, where children of alumni, donors and the powerful receive an edge. The archives are littered with stories such as that of a student denied admission but later admitted under "VIP status" because her father was the president of a major New York bank. This benefits "historically advantaged" groups (and therefore clearly harms blacks), and is equally (or more) offensive. Indeed, proponents argue that racial preferences "counter-balance" these policies, which society arguably will never end. The federal government could lead by enforcing current civil-rights law against universities engaged in this practice. The combination of university race and legacy preferences most dramatically discriminates against one group - poor, non-minorities.

In reply to U-M's policy, President Bush reiterated a commitment to assisting the economically disadvantaged and educational improvement before college. His commitment to financial aid can be measured in every year's federal budget. Whether his policies regarding K-12 education are sufficient is where the debate should be focused. The administration should go all the way in linking his rejection of affirmative action to a more complete picture of their alternatives to solving the problems underlying the desire for affirmative action.