The data from Washington support my twofold contention that a) lowering the bar for African Americans, or any other race, results in lower performance, and b) raising the bar for black students, or those of any race, results in higher performance. In this case, black high school students responded positively and quickly to the higher demands placed upon them.
The data from Texas support my argument that diversity, even racial diversity, doesn’t need to be established and preserved by race-based admissions. Why then do university administrators defend racial preferences?
It is important to understand that college presidents often work within larger university systems. For example, my university is just one of seventeen in the larger UNC system. Our chancellor would be rightfully concerned that eliminating race preferences for admissions to our campus immediately and unilaterally would cause UNC-Wilmington to lose black applicants to other schools in the UNC system.
Schools such as UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Asheville, for example, would like to see UNC-Wilmington make just such a unilateral change. They would clearly benefit.
Therefore, it is not realistic to expect our university administrators to take the lead by instituting changes at their individual universities. Real change can only come from making sweeping changes across entire public university systems. That has been done in states such as Texas and Washington, and you’ve just read about the results.
Zach, in a conversation during my office hours last semester you voiced your support for race-based affirmative action. You talked about how easy it had been to grow up white instead of black. You argued that affirmative action is what “we” owe to “them.”
But “we” don’t owe anyone a system that keeps “them” down. Instead, we need a system that promotes high achievement for everyone—and closes the gap between “us” and “them.”
Put simply, Zach, if you support affirmative action, you cannot continue to call yourself “progressive.” It would be more accurate to call yourself “regressive” instead.
LETTER 6
The Unholy Trinity of Diversity
Dear Zach,
I’d like to tell you the story of a revealing incident in the history of race relations, “diversity,” and free speech on the American college campus.
It occurred back in the spring of 1992 on the campus of Mississippi State University (MSU). The student newspaper published a cartoon that was meant to poke fun at the hypocrisy of white racists. The cartoon pictured a white racist sitting back in his chair complaining about the laziness of black people. The language he was using made not only his racism but also his generally low level of education crystal clear. This character was surrounded by trash and empty beer cans while denigrating African Americans for allegedly living like pigs.
To anyone—especially anyone who had ever seen the TV show Ᾱll in the Family—the intent of the author of the cartoon was obvious. He was trying to send a message of disapproval of white racism by making fun of white racists.
But many black students on the MSU campus saw it differently, claiming the cartoon offended them. So they gathered by the scores in front of the Colvard Student Union in order to protest. It should go without saying that they looked very silly protesting a cartoon that was meant to attack white racist hypocrisy.
When the subject of the protest came up in a meeting at the Social Science Research Center, a professor defended the protestors saying, “You have to understand that racial tensions are high on campus these days.” But they should not have been high. If anything, they should have been lower than ever. Let me explain with a brief historical digression.
In 1965, the year my father graduated from MSU, the school finally got around to admitting its first black student. Less than a quarter of a century later, in 1989 to be exact, the university elected its first black Student Government Association (SGA) president, Steven Cooper. Remarkably, we elected our second black SGA president, Kelvin Covington, the very next year.
So how are we to interpret the professor’s exhortation that we needed to “understand that racial tensions are high on campus these days” when “these days” referred to the aftermath of significant civil rights gains for African Americans on campus? The answer is that the “days” to which he was referring were the early 1990s. That was when campus speech codes were introduced to most institutions of higher learning in America.
Do you recall “effort justification”? After the Civil Rights Movement accomplished its major goals, it moved on to smaller and, frankly, less worthy aims. One of those new goals was ensuring that black people felt comfortable at all times. That is how we got campus speech codes.
But those speech codes were not exclusively for black students—at least not for very long. Within a few years, they became a major cause of the campus feminist movement. That fact is unsurprising given that the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas fiasco roughly corresponds to this time period.
Before the Thomas confirmation hearings, the term “sexual harassment” was generally restricted to quid pro quo harassment—a situation in which a woman was coerced into sexual relations in exchange for keeping her job or procuring a promotion. But after the Thomas confirmation hearings, campus authorities began to take a greater interest in so-called “hostile environment” sexual harassment.
Speech codes were seen as a major way of preventing “hostile environment” harassment. The fusion of speech codes with anti-harassment efforts is reflected in our university’s current harassment definition, which reads,Harassment is unwelcome conduct based on race, color, religion, creed, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status or sexual orientation that is either a condition of working or learning (quid pro quo) or creates a hostile environment.
It should not take much time to discern two serious problems with this exceedingly vague definition of harassment. First of all, it makes no distinction between verbal and nonverbal conduct. Second, it does not include any requirement that the conduct in question be repeated in order to constitute “harassment.” A harassment charge could result from a single instance of verbal conduct that creates a so-called hostile environment. In other words, a person could be charged for simply saying something that makes someone feel uncomfortable on a single occasion.
That is not merely a matter of speculation. It is, in fact, what has happened on more than one occasion at UNC-Wilmington. A couple of actual examples:• A professor in the political science department was accused of sexual harassment for calling a female student “honey.” The student was administering first aid after the professor had sprained an ankle. He was directing her to the source of a physical injury. He was hardly in a position or state of mind to make a real sexual advance. Thankfully, the charges were later dismissed.
• A philosophy professor went to her dean with a sexual harassment complaint about another philosophy professor. Her allegation was that the professor had argued that some rapes are worse than others, and that therefore there should be more than one degree of rape in the criminal rape statutes. It is worth noting that this is, in fact, the current law in most states. Nonetheless, the professor accused her colleague of sexual harassment because she felt (emphasis on “felt”) that he was saying that some rapes were not serious, which she felt (more emphasis on “felt”) created a hostile environment.
More recently, campus speech codes have been used to remove protection from speech seen as “homophobic” by gay rights activists. An illustrative and enlightening example of this trend occurred on our campus just a couple of years ago. One UNCW student wrote the word “fag” on the apartment door of another UNCW student. Despite the fact that the incident occurred off campus, UNCW authorities investigated it.
When it was discovered that the incident was nothing more than a stupid joke between friends—notably, a joke between two heterosexual friends—the matter was dropped.
But that was not enough to satisfy a gay male secretary who worked on campus. He continued lobbying to have the incident classifi
ed as the “hate crime” of homophobic “hate speech.” He even contacted the county civil rights office in order to re-open the investigation. Thankfully, his efforts failed.
Zach, I am thankful when such cases fail for one very important reason. Such cases always cause harm to the groups they seek to help. In other words, they bring down the very groups they seek to elevate.
White racists have always seen African Americans as hypersensitive and volatile. To the extent that we use speech codes to try to protect black people from ever being offended, we reinforce that stereotype. (Not to mention that the notion that we can use speech codes to protect black students from being “offended” and simultaneously hire performers such as Ludacris and Kanye West, rappers famous for lyrics including words like “n----r” and “b---h,” to sing on campus is obviously deeply hypocritical. I am referring to our decisions to hire Ludacris and West to perform on our campus a few years ago.)
This same line of reasoning is similarly applicable in the case of women. Sexists have always seen women as hypersensitive and emotionally volatile. To the extent that we use speech codes to try to protect them from ever being offended, we reinforce that stereotype. (The notion that we can sponsor feminist plays featuring words like “c--t” and simultaneously protect women from being “offended” is also deeply hypocritical. I am referring to our decision to sponsor The Vagina Monologues every year.)
And, finally, in the case of homosexuals, the same reasoning still applies. Their critics have always seen gay people as hypersensitive and emotionally volatile. To the extent that we use speech codes to try to protect them from being offended, we reinforce that stereotype.
Progressives do not have an agenda that resonates with a majority of the people. Hence, if they want to effect real political change, they must get various victim groups to join together in forming these kinds of coalitions. Much of what the victims’ coalition promotes goes under the name of “diversity,” but what it really boils down is to a kind of cultural Marxism. And the only thing these “diverse” groups really have in common is that they are equally harmed by the condescending hypocrisy of the authors of campus speech codes.
Plus, there is one especially good reason why two of the three parts of the unholy trinity of diversity should not be joined together. I call the trinity “unholy” because, quite literally, one of these groups is killing off another with its principal public-policy position. Feminists work tirelessly to keep abortion legal, while about half of all unborn black babies are aborted. Talk about “institutional racism.”
LETTER 7
Explaining Unexplained Variance
Zach,
It is time for me to speak very directly about one of the main reasons why I no longer consider myself to be a progressive—and why I am urging you to reconsider your commitment to progressive politics. I am speaking here of the substantial setbacks in race relations that progressives in the social sciences have caused. These pseudo-scholars have amassed volumes of pseudo-scientific literature that does more than simply exaggerate the amount of racial discrimination in modern day America. It actually invents the patterns out of whole cloth. Sadly, few offenders have been worse than contemporary criminologists—many of whom received their training in departments of sociology.
One of the worst examples of illusory racism I have seen comes from a book called Race and Criminal Justice, edited by Michael Lynch and Britt Patterson. In several chapters of the book, the authors ably demonstrate that it is easy to present an illusion of racism where none exists by using statistical manipulations that few people understand. Their chapter on racial disparity in bail allotment is particularly disturbing in this regard.
Before I proceed, I need to explain why it is so important to employ careful statistical controls when studying racial disparity in the criminal justice system. Let me use a brief illustration within the context of sentencing.
Imagine that you have a prison located in the Mississippi Delta—an area that is notorious for its history of racism. Within that prison you draw a sample of 100 black and 100 white prisoners. You then calculate average sentences for each racial group. Your results indicate that the average sentence for a black inmate is 15.5 years while the average sentence for a white inmate is 12.3 years. Do you conclude that racism accounts for the 3.2-year difference in incarceration length between blacks and whites?
Of course you should do no such thing! Not if you call yourself a scientist. You have not yet accounted for other variables that may explain part or all of the difference in average sentence length. In other words, you have not entered all of the appropriate statistical controls into the equation.
Next, imagine that you do control for two obvious factors that are always relevant at sentencing—offense severity and prior record. Your hypothetical study now finds that the black inmates were committing slightly more serious offenses and had slightly longer rap sheets prior to incarceration on their current offense. Therefore, the statistically controlled sentencing difference drops to 2.2 years of incarceration. Do you now conclude that racism accounts for the difference in incarceration length between blacks and whites? Not yet.
Finally, I want you to imagine that there are three more variables that can legitimately be used in sentencing. You next enter these factors as statistical controls in your study. Now you find that the sentencing difference drops down to 1.5 years of disparity between those same 100 blacks and 100 whites in the prison study. You are now likely to conclude that racial discrimination costs the average black prisoner 1.5 years of his personal liberty. But not so fast.
That 1.5-year difference between blacks and whites is called “unexplained variance.” Once they have exhausted all explanations arising from the severity of the crime and the laws governing sentencing, researchers who study race in sentencing routinely assume that the remaining difference is due to race. After all, no other legitimate factor seems to explain the variance. But such an assumption might not be warranted. It is entirely possible that the unexplained variance could be due to social class or some other variable that simply was not measured in the study.
But what would we think if the researchers in a race study of this kind had failed to control for even all of the legitimate sentencing factors—and still claimed that the unexplained variance was due to race? Of course, such a claim should not be taken seriously.
Enter Lynch and Patterson. In the bail allotment study they published in Race and Criminal Justice, the original researchers failed to control for all of the factors that can be used in sentencing. In fact, they simply omitted several important legal variables from their study. Nonetheless, the researchers claimed that the bail allotment disparity demonstrated racism simply because they found race differences (such as whites getting lower bail, on average) that were not explained by the variables they did include in their study. It bears repeating—they made this claim even though they failed to measure all of the legal variables that judges are supposed to use when setting bail.
In other words, they had no difficulty getting someone to publish a study making unwarranted accusations of racism against criminal justice professionals. Unfortunately, it gets even worse than that.
In another chapter, Lynch and Patterson’s book includes the same egregious error again—this time in the context of race and the death penalty. This skewed study, conducted by a University of Central Florida criminologist named Robert Bohm, goes even further—actually making false claims of genocide on the basis of crude models lacking simple statistical controls.
In his study, Bohm examines differences in the relative frequency of black and white executions before and after the seminal Supreme Court case of Furman v. Georgia, decided in 1972.
Zach, as you recall from taking my criminal justice class, the Furman case involved a black man named Willie Furman, who was convicted of killing a white man. After he was sentenced to die, Furman appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming that Georgia death penalty statutes were rigged in such a wa
y that it was virtually impossible for a white man to be sentenced to die for killing a black man. In contrast, he claimed, it was not just likely but indeed probable that a black man would be sentenced to die for the premeditated murder of a white man. The Furman case was one that involved real evidence of racism.
The result of the case was a moratorium on executions in the United States that lasted for five years. After the case, states modified their sentencing statutes to reduce racial disparity in executions. After executions resumed, many criminologists began examining executions to see whether those legal modifications had worked to iron racism out of capital punishment. Professor Bohm published his study in Race and Criminal Justice after several hundred post-Furman executions had been carried out. Unsurprisingly, he claimed evidence of continued racism in executions.
As evidence of continued racism, Professor Bohm cited the fact that nearly half of those executed since Furman have been black, while African Americans constitute only about 12 percent of the population. What Bohm had obviously failed to emphasize—or, apparently, even consider—is that most homicides are committed by African Americans despite the fact that they constitute only 12 percent of the population of the United States. As of this writing, statistics indicate that blacks commit about 53 percent of all criminal homicides in the U.S.
In other words, Professor Bohm perpetuates the myth of racism in the death penalty by failing to account for even the most basic of statistical controls—actual criminal behavior. This would amount to professional malpractice if only criminology were considered to be a serious profession. Fortunately, Professor Bohm’s studies are not widely read by the public. But they are assigned to college students in their sociology and criminology classes, with two unfortunate results:1. They motivate some students to dedicate their professional lives to finding solutions to nonexistent problems.
Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand Page 3
