Richard Sander, a law professor and economist, has no objection to racial preferences in principle

National Review, March 14, 2005

* Richard Sander, a law professor and economist, has no objection to racial preferences in principle. But he has done a study that suggests that racial preferences in law-school admissions are having the perverse effect of reducing the number of black lawyers. Preferences are putting black students who would have done well at some law schools into schools where they cannot compete, and sometimes drop out as a result.

Sander therefore thinks that preferences should be scaled back. His study puts statistical flesh on the bones of an old conservative argument about preferences. It has also drawn critics who say that preferences do help increase the number of black lawyers. Interestingly, these critics do not contest Sander's claim that law schools put a heavy thumb on the scale for black applicants. They do not, that is, repeat the official line that the law schools and the academy at large use for p.r. and legal purposes. To our mind, the fact that the universities feel obliged to lie habitually about their practices tells against those practices. That preferences may hurt black students is not the only argument against them; so is the deception. But we wonder if there is a deeper deception at work here. Are we quite sure that university administrators would stop employing preferences if they became convinced that they were counterproductive in the sense Sander describes? Are we sure, that is, that the purpose of preferences really is to help blacks (and Hispanics)? We suspect that the universities have their own imperatives, and that making themselves, and their students, feel good ultimately matters more to them than whether they are actually doing good.