 Policies like affirmative action have hampered black upward mobility And we you know, we've had affirmative action policies in place for a half century now So we don't have to speculate about what will happen. There's some natural experiments out there that have already occurred the University of California system back in the mid 1990s ended race-based admissions throughout the entire University of California system after it did that Black graduation rates went up and Not by a little bit by more than 50% Including in the harder disciplines the more challenging disciplines of math and science and engineering grade point averages of 3.5 or higher among blacks increased by more than 50% after the University of California system ended racial preferences in college admissions So a policy that had been put in place to increase the ranks of the black middle class To increase the number of black doctors and lawyers and engineers had in practice led to fewer of These individuals than we would have had in the absence of the policy So aside from whether you think affirmative action is constitutional Or makes sense in an increasingly pluralistic society to have a racial spoil system like that in place The other question is whether it actually works and I would argue that 50 years of it shows that it is not working as intended Comment from you Nick Hill on anything that Jason has said the question Oh, well, there's no question that affirmative action has worked to expand the ranks of the black Professional managerial class over the last like 40 50 years. There's no question and That's been shown by countless studies The University of California example I don't know for sure that what was just said is exactly right one thing that definitely happened after affirmative action was Outlawed in the University of California system was that the flagship campuses saw a tremendous drop in African-american Latino enrollments and black and Latino enrollments went up at the at the satellite campuses There was less access to some of the premier parts of the University California system when affirmative action went out, but the the the real issue for me and I think the really important issue is Is that we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the number of like black students to get into Harvard or whatever? And we actually don't think about the whole educational landscape and how it was transformed since the 1970s Public higher education was free in the University California system until the 1970s It was free in the city of New York until the 1970s So now we know what what's happened since that time is is that public higher education has become extremely expensive The greatest barriers to going to school for people are the cost That's the greatest barrier and that's the one thing that can't seem that that we can't seem to reduce Right, what do we get since the 1970s? We got cheap electronics and we got Costly education we got cheap consumer goods and we got Really expensive health care We got a lot of cheap things that kind of made us have a feeling that we have a decent standard of living But the cost of housing skyrocketed So this is about political economy Right, and I really think that these are the things that we should be talking about because when we're talking about people of modest means People who are who have to work for a wage people that don't have inherited wealth people that come into the world with disadvantages based upon past discrimination then these are the things that really matter and Affirmative action has helped in some realms where it was designed to do so It has helped to diversify the professions It has especially helped white women Yale's faculty in 1976 was one point six percent women its faculty of arts and sciences Can you believe that one point six percent women? And now it's closer to fifty percent. That's a good thing That was part of what affirmative action did it didn't just do stuff for African Americans It's not just a policy that was even just about African Americans It was about the gendered and racial segmentation of the professions and that changed since the 1970s in a way That's a really really good thing for our society whether it should continue now and What should be the policy now is an open question and I'm certainly willing to have that conversation I Guess Jason what perhaps you have an exchange of Jason's if you want to make a comment Yeah, 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 is working 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, what's the rate is? 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? 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 tenured 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 I'm saying among the tenured Faculty in the arts and science Tom soul taught at Cornell. Yeah, yeah, no I'm talking about I was I mentioned Harvard just then but I'm not saying that there was note 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 Only because of affirmative action not only because of affirmative without affirmative action blacks can't teach in the No, no, 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 was 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 That 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 that anyway the point they found no 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 one in Bach did not disaggregate that data not only did 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 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 put a final point since we've been discussing it put a final point on the question Which 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 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 Consequentialized 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 you see 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 is 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 let 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 No restriction on the light. Well, okay We at least we have the the difference is clear and you may be able to speak do you want to make a comment? Can we go to a question to kill? Yeah, I mean I don't have that much more to say about it Okay, I think we put like way too much emphasis on a firm. Okay, all right And that hasn't really been the sort of weight of the arguments that I've been making tonight at all about I've won it because it's a progressive policy It is one progressive policy and it's one progressive policy that has had some benefits And it's certainly one progressive policy that has Engendered a very large amount of contention and it's probably about to be ruled unconstitutional. Yeah, well, okay fair But there's also a way I mean I mean the the military has been one of the biggest institutions that's been in support of affirmative action Affirmative action has really been about diversifying pathways to leadership That's why people end up focusing on these these very elite institutions now Has that has that occurred in in some institutions is the military a good example of having? successfully Established pathways to leadership by using what they would admit is affirmative action Absolutely, so I don't know if you want to contradict the whole idea of the what the US military has done as an institution One of the most respected at institutions in American society. I mean go ahead, but I would say that Examples of success so so I'm not saying that it's the only I'm not saying it's the only thing that we should be hinging this argument on You know, I think they're actually really legitimate agreements Disagree, I mean legitimate disagreements to have about affirmative action and I know why people get so upset about it seems It really is a contradictory policy We should be a race-blind society and then we find that we have to take race into account to deal with something like this But you know, it's it's it's a very I mean we should have a separate debate on this topic because it could go on and on