AA Substitutes

This New York Times article on how public California Universities (in this case, UCLA) have tried to replicate the benefits of Affirmative Action in the wake of Proposition 209 is a good one. On the one hand, it notes that, not being able to rely on race-based procedures, universities tend to respond by pumping up class-based preferences, which have a broader base of support and help answer the classic "what about the poor White kid?" question. Since I think that both Blacks and poor Whites are disadvantaged in American society (albeit along different axes), I have no problem with this, and indeed am glad to see these students get a fairer admissions shake.

On the other hand, it notes that many of the AA surrogates are of questionable legality. I'm using "questionable" literally here -- not as in "they're blatant loopholes" but rather "there's a lot of murkiness." As one player notes, nobody seems to dispute that colleges can take into account an applicant's "disadvantageous" upbringing. Being Black is a disadvantage in America. So, in theory, can they take race into account that way (not race qua race, but race qua disadvantage)? Who knows. Moreover, often times faux-affirmative action programs, like Texas' 10% plans, greatly magnify AAs flaws while weakening its benefits. One scholar noted that, quests for it notwithstanding, there is no proxy for race -- nothing measures the particular impacts race has on performance, life chances, social position, etc., other than race. So the proxy programs will never achieve quite the same benefits that an explicit race-based affirmative action program would. There is an excellent case to be made that, insofar as colleges should be pursuing a diverse campus, they should be doing it in as forthright a fashion as possible. Colleges should proclaim their explicit desire for a more economically diverse community, a more racially diverse community, a more ideologically diverse community -- basically, a community full of different people with different outlooks who can contribute to each other's education in a variety of ways. Cloak-and-dagger AA really isn't the best way to go to get to that outcome.