Hard Truths and Half-Truths About Race on Campus, Part I
Hard Truths and Half-Truths About Race on Campus, Part I
Not color blind, not quotas
Posted Jun 11, 2016
In an essay titled Half Truths About Race on Campus,
posted at TheMedium.com, Evelyn Carter (a postdoctoral psychologist at
Purdue) and Lisel Murdock-Perriera, a graduate student in Stanford’s
Psychology program (hence, C & M-P), objected to many of the
arguments Jon Haidt & I made in our Wall Street Journal editorial, Hard Truths About Race on Campus.
Pointing out how they are wrong is more complex, and therefore, longer than a simple blog. So, welcome to my three part reply. This reply focuses primarily on summarizing our editorial, their critique, and a single issue: Did we argue for a colorblind approach?
First, a synopsis of our and their points:
SYNOPSIS OF OUR ESSAY
The recent spate of campus protests have included all sorts of demands to combat social injustices, especially with respect to those of historically marginalized groups. Although some are reasonable, if you have not seen how bizarre and extreme many are, I strongly suggest you take a look here – and this is posted by a group that supports the protests.
Although Jon Haidt and I strongly support goals of combating discrimination and inequality, our essay argued that some of the specific demands of the current spate of student protests are likely to be counterproductive or are costly social interventions of unknown effectiveness. We reviewed both scientific evidence and real world experience showing that interventions that bring people together, cooperatively, on approximately equal terms, in situations where race is truly uninformative about a person’s skills or qualifications are more likely to be effective. We ended our essay by calling for small scale, rigorous, true experiments assessing the effectiveness of the many programs that universities are currently rushing to create before implementing $100 million worth of such programs (as is Yale).
SYNOPSIS OF C&M-P’s CRITIQUE
They claimed:
Here is the full quote from their critique:
Haidt and Jussim begin by suggesting universities “set things up so that race conveys less important information than some other salient factor” and that “people [will] pay less attention race.” This is classic colorblindness ideology (Apfelbaum, Norton, & Sommers, 2012), and although it may be tempting to naively believe that we can deemphasize race and focus on “other prominent social characteristic[s],” this approach will not resolve tension.
They quoted us correctly, but selectively. We also wrote:
Since its introduction during the Kennedy administration, affirmative action has referred to a variety of initiatives to improve the recruitment, training and retention of talented minority candidates. Such programs are not color blind, and we strongly support them.
We then continued:
The Army invested more resources in training and mentoring black
soldiers so that they could meet rigorous promotion standards. But
crucially, the standards were lowered for no one, so officers’ race
conveyed no information about their abilities. The Army also emphasized cooperation
and positive-sum thinking, by strengthening pride in the Army and in
America and by linking policies, even those about race, to the
overarching imperatives of unit cohesion and combat readiness.
There is nothing “color blind” about these approaches. We did not even advocate for completely abandoning preferential selection. We wrote:
Universities need not abandon racial preferences, but should consider using them less, rather than more, while maintaining or increasing other elements of affirmative action.
Last, there is nothing at all “ideological” about our perspective. In fact, Jon and I do not even have the same ideological beliefs. Instead, our perspective was based on our best understanding of what the actual social science research says. When the research says something different, we will be open to changing our views. Let’s see the data on what works, because the data is vividly clear that much of what the protestors advocate does not work; and much of what C&M-P advocate is not data-based...
Their claim that we advanced a “color blind” ideology or policies? Completely false.
See my next two entries for responses to other portions of their critique:
Hard Truths and Half-Truths about Race on Campus, Stereotype Threat? (link to be added after posting)
Hard Truths and Half-Truths about Race on Campus, Race Differences, Microaggressions, Rigorous Research (link to be added after posting)
Pointing out how they are wrong is more complex, and therefore, longer than a simple blog. So, welcome to my three part reply. This reply focuses primarily on summarizing our editorial, their critique, and a single issue: Did we argue for a colorblind approach?
First, a synopsis of our and their points:
SYNOPSIS OF OUR ESSAY
The recent spate of campus protests have included all sorts of demands to combat social injustices, especially with respect to those of historically marginalized groups. Although some are reasonable, if you have not seen how bizarre and extreme many are, I strongly suggest you take a look here – and this is posted by a group that supports the protests.
Although Jon Haidt and I strongly support goals of combating discrimination and inequality, our essay argued that some of the specific demands of the current spate of student protests are likely to be counterproductive or are costly social interventions of unknown effectiveness. We reviewed both scientific evidence and real world experience showing that interventions that bring people together, cooperatively, on approximately equal terms, in situations where race is truly uninformative about a person’s skills or qualifications are more likely to be effective. We ended our essay by calling for small scale, rigorous, true experiments assessing the effectiveness of the many programs that universities are currently rushing to create before implementing $100 million worth of such programs (as is Yale).
SYNOPSIS OF C&M-P’s CRITIQUE
They claimed:
- We advocated a “color blind ideology” which does not work.
- “Well-documented relevant research on stereotype threat” means that admitting more Black students will not necessarily lower standards.
- We argued that “race conveys useful information about the academic capacity of students,” an assertion they characterize as “wholly untrue” on the grounds of research showing the existence of racial bias
- We advocated against “tracking subtle bias” (an issue we did not even discuss and which I do not address further in this essay)
- We argued that students should not be taught about microaggressions, and that our call for an atmosphere of humility rather than self-righteousness, and of forgiveness rather than accusation (apparently) is unjustified.
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DID WE ADOPT A COLOR-BLIND IDEOLOGY?Here is the full quote from their critique:
Haidt and Jussim begin by suggesting universities “set things up so that race conveys less important information than some other salient factor” and that “people [will] pay less attention race.” This is classic colorblindness ideology (Apfelbaum, Norton, & Sommers, 2012), and although it may be tempting to naively believe that we can deemphasize race and focus on “other prominent social characteristic[s],” this approach will not resolve tension.
They quoted us correctly, but selectively. We also wrote:
Since its introduction during the Kennedy administration, affirmative action has referred to a variety of initiatives to improve the recruitment, training and retention of talented minority candidates. Such programs are not color blind, and we strongly support them.
We then continued:
Source: Middle Way Society
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Universities should consider a similar approach.There is nothing “color blind” about these approaches. We did not even advocate for completely abandoning preferential selection. We wrote:
Universities need not abandon racial preferences, but should consider using them less, rather than more, while maintaining or increasing other elements of affirmative action.
Last, there is nothing at all “ideological” about our perspective. In fact, Jon and I do not even have the same ideological beliefs. Instead, our perspective was based on our best understanding of what the actual social science research says. When the research says something different, we will be open to changing our views. Let’s see the data on what works, because the data is vividly clear that much of what the protestors advocate does not work; and much of what C&M-P advocate is not data-based...
Their claim that we advanced a “color blind” ideology or policies? Completely false.
See my next two entries for responses to other portions of their critique:
Hard Truths and Half-Truths about Race on Campus, Stereotype Threat? (link to be added after posting)
Hard Truths and Half-Truths about Race on Campus, Race Differences, Microaggressions, Rigorous Research (link to be added after posting)
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