Bell Curve

464 Living Together Affirmative Action in Higher Education 465two candidates. Assume that all the nonacademic qualifications besidesrace are fully specified by high and low status for this pair of candidatesand that the IQ is the only measure of academic ability being considered.(In other words, let us disregard grades, extracurricular activities,athletics, alumni parents, and other factors.) You are trying to decidewhether to admit the minority applicant or the white applicant. Howbig a difference in 1Q are you willing to accept in each cell and still pickthe minority candidate over the white candidate? Let us consider eachcell in turn, starting with the situation in which the minority might heexpected to get the largest premium to the one in which the premiumarguably should go to the white.CELL 1: THE SOUTH BRONX MINORITY VERSUS THE SCARSDALE WHITE.The largest weight obviously belongs in the cell in which the minoritystudent is disadvantaged and the white student is advantaged. Considerationsof just deserts argue that it is not fair to equate the test scoresof the youngster who has gotten the finest education money and statuscan buy with the test scores of the youngster who has struggled throughpoor schools and a terrible neighborhood. Considerations of social utilityargue that it is desirable to have more minority students getting goodcollege educations, so that society may alter the effects of past discriminationand provide a basis for an eventually color-blind society in thefuture. We assign ++ to this cell to indicate a large preference for theminority candidate. A relatively large deficit in the minority applicant'stest score may properly be overlooked.CELL 4: THE SCARSDALE MINORITY VERSUS THE SCARSDALE WHITE. If acollege is choosing between two students in the high-high cell, bothfrom Scarsdale with college-educated parents and family incomes in sixfigures, the social utility criteria say that there is a rationale for pickingthe minority youth even if his test scores are somewhat lower. Rut doingso would violate just deserts when the white student has higher testscores and is in every other way equal to the minority student. Whichcriterion should win out? There is no way to say for sure. Our own viewis that, as personally hurtful as this injustice may be to the individualwhite person involved, it is relatively minor in the grand scheme ofthings. The privileged white youth, with strong credentials and parentswho can pay for college, will get into a good college someplace. Wetherefore assign a + to this cell to signify some ethnic premium to theminority candidate but less than in the first instance.CELL 2: THE SOUTH BRONX MINORITY VERSUS THE APPALACHIANWHITE. Now imagine a minority student from the South Bronx and awhite student from an impoverished Appalachian community. The fam.ilies of both students are at the wrong end of the scale of advantage.Which one should get the nod in a close call? The white has just asmuch or nearly as much "social utility" going for him as the black does.American society will benefit from educating youngsters from disadvantagedwhite backgrounds, too. Both have a claim based on justdeserts. America likes to think that people can work their way up fromthe bottom, and Appalachia is the bottom no less than the South Bronx.Perhaps there is some residual premium associated with being black,based on the supposition that just being black puts one at a greater disadvantagethan a white in the "all else equal" case-a more persuasivepoint when applied to blacks from the South Bronx than when appliedto blacks from Scarsdale. We assign =O to this cell, indicating that theappropriate ethnic pemiurn for the minority student is not much greaterthan zero (other things being equal) and is certainly smaller than in theScarsdale-Scarsdale case.CELL 3: THE SCARSDALE MINORITY VERSUS THE APPALACHIAN WHITE.Now we are comparing the privileged minority student with the disadvantagedwhite student. Where one comes out on the scale of socialutility depends on how one values the competing goals to be served. Itseems hard to justify a social utility value that nets out in favor of theminority youth, however. (Yes, there is social utility in adding a rninorityto the ranks of successful attorneys, even if he comes from an affluentbackground, but there is also social utility in vindicating theAmerican dream for poor whites and in adding a representative of disadvantagedwhite America to the ranks of successful attorneys.) Somethingclose to zero seems to be the appropriate expected value on thesocial utility measure, and the white youth should get a plus on the justdeserts argument. If the choice is between a poor white youngster froman awful environment and an affluent minority youngster who has goneto fine schools, and if the poor white has somewhat lower test scoresthan the affluent minority, it is appropriate to give the poor white atleast a modest premium. We thus enter - into this cell, to reflect thefact the white youth gets the nod in a close call.The filled-in table is shown below. We may argue about how large anethnic premium, expressed in IQ, should be tolerated in each cell, but