 The professor says is if it's just as true as the fact that the sky is blue or water is wet that affirmative action is Working and and that it is increasing the ranks of the black middle class Again, there was a black middle class before affirmative action It has continued to grow but at a much lower rate. I quoted Robert Putnam Directly who looked at this data and said despite the fact that white educational gain attainment was also rising between 1940 and 1970 black educational attainment was rising even faster before 19 between 1940 and 1970 but after 1970 that catch-up progress drastically slowed in the case of high school and actually ended in the case of college This is a math problem when you're talking about growing from a really tiny base No, no, no force the rate is I trust that I we're not talking about simply absolute gains. We're talking about gains Relate black gains relative to white gains whites weren't standing still They were advancing as well and blacks were catching up at a much much faster rate Prior to affirmative action higher education than they were in the in the during the affirmative action era That is the point the issue is to judge the value of these policies And I think you can compare them using empirical data. What was going on pre 1970? What's been going on since and the data shows that faster progress was taking place in the pre-affirmative action era? I don't I don't think the data actually shows that Do you have okay, I'm sorry. I guess what you've quoted Robert Putnam It's even Abigail Thernstrom. Yeah, I could also quote Richard Vetter and they're quoting census data And I've also just quoted quoted statistics Harvard's faculty in the 1970s had zero black faculty among the tenure flat faculty in the early 1970s It's about 8% now So you can look across the universities in terms of the diversification of faculties and student bodies since the 1970s and there were black people who taught at Ivy League institutions I'm saying I'm saying 70. I'm saying among the tenured Faculty in the arts and science Tom soul taught a Cornell. Yeah, no I'm talking about I was I mentioned Harvard just then but I'm not saying that there was no there were no black faculty at any And any institutions of higher education? Of course, I'm not saying that but I'm saying that those numbers have Absolutely increased and only because of affirmative action not only because of affirmative without affirmative action blacks can't teach me teaching the I don't know. No, that's not at all. What I'm saying. That is not what that is not what I'm saying I'm saying affirmative action policies have been part of the diversification of higher education in a way that has been helpful And in a way that has actually worked. That's what I'm saying That's all I'm saying. It's really simple Derek Bach who is president of Harvard wrote the shape of the river in 1976 they studied Several hundred. I mean came out it came in the 1980s But the study is based upon a group a cohort that went in under affirmative action 1976 and It showed what they what they found there in that in that book was out of the 700 people that they studied At the end of that college cohorts experience over 30 percent had ended up with advanced or professional degrees over 300 of them had become civic leaders and I think around 120 had become business leaders I haven't someone in my know that anyway the point they found now that is what they thought that is not what they found I can tell you what they found that is not what and and and what they and what they showed in That study was that those rates were remarkably similar to and very close to The white cohort that they compared it to no yeah That book attempted or or or suggested that it was measuring Racial preferences in higher education What Bach and Bowen did not do however is to disaggregate the blacks who had been admitted Under racial preferences from the blacks who had not been admitted under racial preferences But got into the school under the same credentials as everyone else. They never disaggregated that data They just looped it all together and reported averages the entire argument over affirmative action is not whether Blacks can can can do well at these schools. It's whether the blacks who are let in With lower credentials can do better at these schools But when in Bach did not disaggregate that data not only that they not disaggregated they wouldn't release Their findings so that other social scientists could check their findings and see if they could come up with the same results That book did not do what you were suggesting it did that was the finding of the book I mean you've offered a discrediting of their finding and that's what social scientists do They discredited each other's findings. I mean, I I didn't come I didn't come here I didn't come here to really debate like the merits of affirmative action I think that we can we can find like we can find Examples of where affirmative action has succeeded absolutely and where it has has had benefits That's really it's really a minimal claim Matt may I just make just add put a finer points as we've been discussing put a finer point on the question Gets back to the question I put to you Jason Are you saying that affirmative action didn't help or are you saying that affirmative action hurt and if so how? It's it's it's done more harm than good and in a number of ways Hey, I just Believe it's unconstitutional. Well, we're talking about the harm with the good So pretty much like that But but regardless of whether it's it's it's constitutional I think the data show that it's done more harm than good and it's done more harm than good primarily by setting up smart kids to fail I'll give you an example There's a study done of MIT students black students at MIT some years ago Black students at MIT had scored in the 90th percentile on the math portion of the SAT of all kids in the country 90 percentile But among their peers at MIT. They were in the 10th percentile So black students who would be hitting it out of the park at a less selective institution We're struggling in MIT You mentioned how after California ended It's racial preference policies and college admissions Black enrollment initially fell at the flagship schools of UC Berkeley in UCLA You're right. It did those students however went on To enroll at UC can Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara where they could handle the work and they graduated What is the point of flunking out of Berkeley instead of graduating from UC Santa Barbara? What is the point of flunking out of MIT or struggling having to switch to an easier major? Rather than graduating in the major you want to study in from the institution And that's what I mean when I say that it has set up smart kids to fail It is not about these kids not being smart not being able to handle the work Anywhere not belonging in college It's about whether they can handle the pace and it's it has to do and it doesn't it's not limited to race Students who are let in because their parents went to the school legacies Students who are led in because of athletic ability with with lower credentials and the average student also Struggle at these schools if you decided to let in Left-handed blondes with lower credentials than the average student at Harvard You would see left-handed blondes concentrating in the bottom of their class. You would see them Struggling with the work you would see them dropping out at higher rates That is what is being done to black people in the name of helping them