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Is intelligence fixed? - 'The Bell Curve': A Symposium - Cover Story
National Review, Dec 5, 1994 by Nathan Glazer
Finally, on affirmative action Herrnstein and Murray tell us much that is not generally known but has been available for a long time--ever since Justice Powell, in his opinion in the Bakke case, contrasted Allan Bakke's scores on the Medical College Admission Test with the remarkably lower scores of those admitted under the affirmative-action program; ever since Thomas Sowell began making his powerful arguments on the too-large gap between black and non-black students in colleges that aggressively recruit the former; ever since Robert Klitgaard, in his important book Choosing Elites, demonstrated how far down in the pool highly selective college and graduate programs have to reach to get substantial numbers of black students.
We know the story, but what is to be done? Once again, white students who feel they have been discriminated against by an affirmative-action program are suing an institution of higher education (the University of Texas Law School), and the Supreme Court will have to consider the matter. The documents in the case--no surprise--show that without the program of special preference, blacks would constitute only 1 to 2 per cent of the class, a fraction of the number now enrolled. The degree of preference could be less, the amount of perceived unfairness reduced. But I do not see how a country that has struggled so long, and still struggles, to make blacks full and equal participants can take a purely meritocratic position on such matters. If higher education served only to qualify students to become theoretical physicists or Sanskritists, we could remain indifferent to group consequences of purely meritocratic selection. But it does considerably more than that. Group representation must be a consideration, and all we can do is argue about the details.
COPYRIGHT 1994 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
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