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Affirmative action has been popularly believed to undermine the grand meritocracy that is the United States (that is, a magnificent meritocracy of America is not succeeding today because of affirmative action).
Moreover, it is popularly believed that white males are deprived of jobs due to affirmative action.
This chapter examines these no- tions of affirmative action and presents data that do not support the above opinions.
Affirmative action is not the cause of a failing meritocracy in America because the United States has never been a true meritocracy. 2 Bernstein,3 Steinberg4 and Cocco5 indicate that throughout the history of the U.
More studies demonstrate that a generation after affirmative action began white males still receive society's greatest rewards and not as an outcome of،Likewise, in a later era, little attention was paid by "progressive" intellectuals to how affirmative action for minorities or women might adversely affect others.
For example, a statistically based study by former college presidents William Bowen and Derek Bok was widely hailed for its conclusions supporting affirmative action in college admissions.17 But when Harvard Professor Stephan Thernstrom, whose views on affirmative action did not coincide with theirs, sought to get the raw data on which the study's conclusions were based, he was refused.18 Similarly, when UCLA professor of law Richard Sander sought to test competing theories about the effect of affirmative action in law schools by getting data on bar examination pass rates by race in California, supporters of affirmative action threatened to sue if the state bar released such data- and the state bar then refused to release the data.19
Jesse Jackson was quoted in the New York Times as calling these arsons part of a "cultural conspiracy" against blacks, which "reflected the heightened racial tensions in the south that have been exacerbated by the assault on affirmative action and the populist oratory of Republican politicians like Pat Buchanan."
Sunstein complained again in 2003 that "the Rehnquist Court has struck down at least 26 acts of Congress since 1995," and is thereby "guilty of illegitimate activism" for- among other things- having "struck down a number of affirmative action programs" as well as striking down "federal legislation as beyond congressional power under the Commerce Clause."
A widely-praised book on the effects of affirmative action- The Shape of the River by former college presidents William Bowen and Derek Bok- claimed to have refuted this mismatching hypothesis with data showing that black students "graduated at higher rates, the more selective the school that they attended" (emphasis in the original).33 But what would be relevant to testing the mismatching hypothesis is the difference in test scores between black and white students at the same institutions- and this difference has been less at Harvard (95 points on the combined SAT test scores) than at Duke (184 points) or Rice (271 points).34 Other data likewise indicate that black students graduate at a higher rate in colleges where their test scores are more similar to those of white students at the same institutions.35 As Bowen and Bok themselves say: "There has been a much more pronounced narrowing of the black-white gap in SAT scores among applicants to the most selective colleges."36
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