Bell Curve

476 Living Togetherthis is not closely matched enough. But at least let us move toward thatstandard and see how it works. The present situation, with black studentsaveraging well over a full standard deviation below the whitemean, sometimes approaching two standard deviations, is so far out ofline with any plausible rationale that universities today cannot publishthe data on their admitted students and hope to persuade the public (orspecialists in education) that their policies are reasonable.Would an end to aggressive affirmative action mean that minoritieswho can profit from a genuine college education will find the door ofopportunity closed to them? There is no reason to think so. On the contrary,we urge that people examine more closely an ignored, brief era inAmerican university life-from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Simultaneously,the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, whiteupper-middle-class America was having its consciousness raised on thesubject of racial discrimination, and color-blindness was actively takenas the ideal. At many colleges during that era, applicants were forbiddento enclose a photograph and instructed to avoid any information inthe essay that might help identify their race or religion. Whether admissionscommittees were truly innocent of this information is anotherquestion, but the intent was clear, and so was the result: Racial differencesin qualifications during that time were minor, or so it appeared toboth of us at the time.What were campus race relations like then? What were the attitudesof the black students toward achievement? What was the performanceof black students relative to the predictions that might have been madebased on their high school performance? What were the dropout ratesof blacks relative to whites in the same institution? What were the subsequentcareers of black students from that era? How do black studentsfrom that era, looking back, assess the pluses and minuses of the currentstate of affairs versus their experience?We must put such topics as questions because that era has been ignored.We suggest this possibility: American universities once approachedthe ideal in their handling of race on the campus, and thereis no reason why they could not do so again.Fewer blacks would be at Berkeley or Yale if there were no affirmativeaction. But admitting half as many black students to Yale does notmean that the rejected ones will not go to college; it just means thatthey will not go to Yale. For some individuals who are not chosen, thiswill be a loss, for others a blessing, but it is a far different choice fromAffimtiue Action in Higher Education 477"college" versus "no college." It is not even clear how much the goals ofdiversity would be adversely affected for the system as a whole. If affirmativeaction in its present form were ended, the schools at the verytop would have smaller numbers of blacks and some other minorities ontheir campuses, but many other schools in the next echelons would addthose students, even as they lost some of their former students to schoolsfurther down the line. And at every level of school, the gap in cognitiveability between minorities and whites would shrink.Ending affirmative action as it is currently practiced will surely haveother effects. Affirmative action does in fact bring a significant numberof minority students onto campuses who would not otherwise be there.Perhaps the overall percentage of some minorities who attend collegewould drop. But their white counterparts at the same level of ability andsimilar socioeconomic background are not in college now. To what extentis a society fair when people of similar ability and background aretreated as differently as they are now? In 1964, the answer would havebeen unambiguous: Such a society is manifestly unfair. The logic wasright then, and right now.