Sunday, May 15, 2016

Today's University Race Problems Were Not Only Predictable But Predicted

The amazing 1969 prophecy that racial preferences would cause the exact grievances of protesters today:
As that essay was going to press, Heterodox Academy member Amy Wax sent us the text of an astonishing letter written in 1969, at the dawn of racial preferences, from Macklin Fleming, Justice of the California Court of Appeal. Judge Fleming had written a personal letter to Louis Pollack, the dean of Yale Law School. Fleming was concerned about the plan Dean Pollack had recently announced under which Yale would essentially implement a racial quota – 10% of each entering class would be composed of black students. To achieve this goal, Yale had just admitted 43 black students, only five of whom had qualified under their normal standards. (The exchange of letters was later made public with the consent of both parties; you can read the full text of both letters here.)

2 comments:

Pseudotsuga said...

That is astounding prescience. He knew, logically, exactly what would happen, yet he was ignored because of RightThink(tm), or rather, people wanting others to say they are doing the right things.

Anonymous said...

Great crystal ball. Following the links back, one of the commenters said he'd been on an elite campus in the 60s and, at his school, the (few) blacks were assumed to be academically equal and likely better than whites, because of prejudice in admissions. Now, it's a hard row to hoe for highly-qualified blacks and Hispanics at elite schools, because they're assumed to be far less qualified than they are and they are also likely to be shunned by their AA race/ethic types - who would likely be better served at schools matching their academic records. I read a column by a black writer who insisted on this for his own kids.

I know a kid who almost left an Ivy at the end of his first (straight A) semester, because he had no friends - and he had mid-700s in both math/verbal as an 8th-grader, as part of his application for highly-ranked magnets, super grades and IBs and perfect SATs. Fortunately, his social situation turned around the next semester.