New paper debunks claim that ending affirmative action benefits Asian Americans at the expense of African Americans and Latinos
06.21.06 - Posted by AsiansVote
William C. Kidder has published an important paper (click here to download the pdf) in the Michigan Journal of Race and Law that debunks a Princeton study's claim that eliminating affirmative action would shift college admission slots from African Americans and Latinos to Asian Americans.
As Kidder notes, the Princeton study, conducted by Thomas Espenshade and Chang Chung, claims that without affirmative action, Asian Americans "would occupy four out of every five seats created by accepting fewer African American and Hispanic students." But Kidder notes that the Princeton study ignores the fact that Asian Americans are sometimes subject to "negative action," wherein admissions programs hold Asian Americans to higher standards than other applicants. Kidder then uses the Princeton study's own data to demonstrate that in a race-neutral system, the "lion’s share of APAs’ gains in admission offers stem from the abatement of negative action." In short, had the Princeton study separately estimated the effects of ending negative action and affirmative action, it would have become clear that "Whites, not APAs, would occupy the largest number of the seats created by ending affirmative action at the elite universities in question."
Kidder nails his argument home by analyzing data from law schools that have eliminated affirmative action. He notes that these are schools that had not previously demonstrated negative action against Asian Americans. So Asian Americans would not stand to gain from the elimination of existing discrimination against them. The data supports the hypothesis -- when these schools eliminated affirmative action, enrollment of Asian Americans increased only marginally or actually decreased.
As Kidder notes, the false conclusions of the Princeton study have been used to pit Asian Americans against other minority groups in discussions about affirmative action:
... in commenting to the press about Espenshade and Chung’s study, Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity—a leading advocacy group working to dismantle affirmative action —cast the issue in starkly (and falsely) divisive terms: “If eliminating race-based admissions results in more Asian students or fewer African American students being admitted to top schools, so be it.”
A new anti-affirmative action ballot initiative goes before Michigan voters in November 2006. As the discussion heats up, let's hope Kidder's paper will help put the lie to the effort of anti-affirmative action advocates to pit Asian Americans against other minority groups.
For more information, click here to download Kidder's entire article as a pdf. Don't be shy -- it's well written and relatively short!
Hat tip to InsideHigherEd.com for the link.
06.21.06 |
Affirmative Action
