The Consequences of Colorblindness

By Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom

The bad news was expected; the good news has been ignored. The number of black and Hispanic undergraduates admitted to the University of California is down, now that racial preferences are gone. On the other hand, the number expected to graduate is up, although you'll never see a university administrator explore that vital question.

The admissions picture has been front page news across the country.  With most of the focus on Berkeley and UCLA, the two most competitive of the eight UC campuses. Since last year, when racial preferences were still permitted, the number of African Americans receiving letters of admission has dropped 57% at Berkeley and 40%, at UCLA. Hispanic acceptances have declined 40% at Berkeley and 33% at UCLA.

Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl continues to downplay the role racial preferences had played in admissions, insisting that it was not the only factor the university took into account. But the numbers speak louder than Mr. Berdahl's words: If race really were but a minor factor, the number of blacks and Hispanics admitted to Berkeley would not have dropped so steeply.

But belatedly released figures reveal that Berkeley and UCLA arc unrepresentative of the UC system as a whole. In all eight campuses combined, thc number of African-American admissions plunged not 57%, but only 18%. And the tally for Hispanics was off not 40% but 7% . Many students who would have needed preferences to get into Berkeley or UCLA found places at less competitive schools like UC Riverside, where black admissions were up 34%, and Hispanic admissions 43%.

The impact of race-neutral admissions at the most selective schools is a matter of concern. But the key question is not the number of blacks and Hispanics who made it through the admissions door. Rather, what's important is how many actually acquire a degree. By that measure, preferential policies have proved a miserable failure.

In order to monitor the academic progress of students involved in college sports, the National Collegiate Athletic Association regularly compiles and publishes figures on the proportion of all students in Division I schools who graduate within six years of entering. Four of the eight University of California campuses are included in the NCAA data—Berkeley, Irvine, UCLA and Santa Barbara. At each of them, black students have dramatically higher dropout rates than their white or Asian counterparts. Hispanics also rank well below whites and Asians. For example, only 58% of the African-American students from the freshman classes entering Berkeley between l987 and 1990 managed to complete the degree requirements within six years. For Hispanics, the completion rate was 67%, better than the black rate but far below the white rate of 84%.

Here’s a thought experiment. Forget about race. Suppose that a high school in a racially homogenous town, concerned about equal opportunity, started a special program targeted at students with low test scores. Suppose further that one consequence of that program was a markedly higher dropout rate for the participating students. Such a program could hardly be deemed a success. The point applies equally to racially preferential admissions. The dropout rates alone suggest they don’t work.

And that brings us to the good news. Given our knowledge of attrition rates by race and ethnicity in the past, it's easy to estimate how many of the freshmen admitted in 1997—last year—will actually get a degree. And we can estimate how many of the freshmen who enter this fall will do so.

Presumably, black and Hispanic students chosen by the same criteria as whites will have similar graduation rates. Calculate the expected graduation rate for black students at Berkeley in the 1997 and 1998 entering classes, and the declines become less precipitous: The 57% decline in admissions becomes a 38% drop in the number likely to graduate. For Hispanics at Berkeley, the 40% dip in admissions translates into a decrease of 24% in the number earning a degree.

System wide, the numbers are dramatic. While the number of blacks admitted to UC schools fell by l8% the new admissions system is likely to increase the number graduating, by a solid 19%. The number of Hispanics accepted was down by 7%, but the number likely to earn a degree also rises, by 17%. Even if we assume that blacks' and Hispanics' likelihood of graduation only half closes the gap with whites—to 66% for blacks and 70% for Hispanics—the total number of blacks graduating would still be about the same as under preferences, and the number of Hispanics graduating would increase by 5%.

The shift to race-neutral admissions will also have the benefit described by a Hispanic student from Los Angeles who was turned down by UCLA but accepted at Santa Barbara. "I think that taking away affirmative action has hurt me in a way," she said, but “in a way, I think it is better because they don't emphasize who you are but what you can do.”

Theodore Shaw of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund has warned of universities "returning to a race-exclusive status" absent preferences. This is nonsense. In f act, significantly more African American and Hispanic students ale likely to earn the degrees they need to start their careers. Many of them will be attending less prestigious schools than they would have if preferences had remained in effect. But surely it is better to have a degree in engineering from the University of California at Riverside than to have flunked out of Berkeley or UCI.A after a year or two.

Who is getting those coveted slots at Berkeley and UCLA anyway? Consider: Asians make up to one-ninth of the California population, but one-third of all those admitted to the UC system for the fall of 1998. At Berkeley 38% of the places went to Asians, at UCLA 41%. By contrast, non-Hispanic whites comprise 54% of California's population but only 36% of newly admitted students. Asians thus have three times as many university slots as their numbers would warrant, while whites have a third fewer than their share of the total population. Race-neutral admissions policies are indeed having a disproportion ate racial impact—they are negatively affecting the state's most "privileged" racial group.

Here is perhaps the best news of all: Almost 7,000 of the students accepted at the University of California this year—more than one in seven—refused to check the racial classification box on their applications, triple the number last year. These young people are saying, in effect: We won't play your game any more. You can take your racial/ethnicity cards and stash them in a box marked "relics from our racist past." Or perhaps ''memorabilia from a best-forgotten era.''

Mr. Thernstrom and Ms. Thernstrom are the authors of “America in Black and White:  One Nation Indivisible” (Simon & Schuster, 1997).

© The Wall Street Journal

About Abigail Thernstrom: articles, bio, and photo
About Stephan Thernstrom: articles, bio, and photo