George Leef discusses here a paper written by Princeton University’s Russell Nieli that documents the damage done by affirmative action programs in higher education.
Nieli?s paper focuses on seven truths about preferential policies to which the authors [of books supporting AA] are mostly if not completely blind.
- Racial preferences stigmatize students in the beneficiary groups.
- Racial preferences cause ?upward ratcheting? that replaces good diversity with bad.
- Beneficiary groups are harmed by the disincentive effects of preferences.
- Preferences foster complacency about poor K-12 schooling.
- Preference advocates misunderstand the black ghetto problem as
segregation and poverty rather than dysfunctional families and culture.- The authors see the bad effects of preferences for athletes,
but ignore the parallel effects of preferences for blacks and Latinos.- Racial preferences provoke enmity among those who aren?t favored.
Many
academic papers have all the zing of a coke you poured three hours ago
and forgot to drink. Not so with ?Selling Merit Down the River.? Nieli
doesn?t beat around the bush; he thinks that the advocates of diversity
are deliberately avoiding the main criticisms of their policy and says
so forthrightly.
