Bias and Bigotry in Academia
A decade ago, activist Ron Unz conducted a study of the ethnic and religious composition of the student body at Harvard.
Blacks and Hispanics, Unz found, were then being admitted to his alma mater in numbers approaching their share of the population.
And who were the most underrepresented Americans at Harvard?
White Christians and ethnic Catholics. Though two-thirds of the U.S. population then, they had dropped to one-fourth of the student body.
Comes now a more scientific study from Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford to confirm that a deep bias against the white conservative and Christian young of America is pervasive at America's elite colleges and Ivy League schools.
The Espenshade-Radford study "draws from . . . the National Study of College Experience . . . gathered from eight highly competitive private colleges and universities (entering freshman SAT scores: 1360)," writes Princeton Professor Russell K. Nieli, who has summarized the findings:
Elite college admissions officers may prattle about "diversity," but what they mean is the African-American contingent on campus should be 5 percent to 7 percent, with Hispanics about as numerous.
However, "an estimated 40-50 of those categorized as black are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants, or the children of such immigrants," who never suffered segregation or Jim Crow.
To achieve even these percentages, however, the discrimination against white and Asian applicants, because of the color of their skin and where their ancestors came from, is astonishing.
As Nieli puts it, "Being Hispanic conferred an admissions boost over being white . . . equivalent to 130 SAT points (out of 1,600), while being black rather than white conferred a 310-point SAT advantage. Asians, however, suffered an admissions penalty compared to whites equivalent to 140 SAT points."
"To have the same chance of gaining admission as a black student with a SAT score of 1100, a Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have 1230, a white student a 1410, and an Asian student a 1550."
Was this what the civil rights revolution was all about—requiring kids whose parents came from Korea, Japan or Vietnam to get a perfect SAT score of 1600 to be given equal consideration with a Jamaican or Kenyan kid who got an 1150? Is this what it means to be an Ivy League progressive?
What are the historic and moral arguments for discriminating in favor of kids from Angola and Argentina over kids whose parents came from Poland and Vietnam?
There is yet another form of bigotry prevalent among our academic elite that is a throwback to the snobbery of the WASPs of yesterday. While Ivy League recruiters prefer working-class to middle-class black kids with the same test scores, the reverse is true with white kids.
White kids from poor families who score as well as white kids from wealthy families—think George W. Bush—not only get no break, they seem to be the most undesirable and unwanted of all students.
Though elite schools give points to applicants for extracurricular activities, especially for leadership roles and honors, writes Nieli, if you played a lead role in Future Farmers of America, the 4-H Clubs or junior ROTC, leave it off your resume or you may just be blackballed. "Excelling in these activities is 'associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds on admissions.'"
Writes Nieli, there seems an unwritten admissions rule at America's elite schools: "Poor Whites Need Not Apply."
For admissions officers at our top private and public schools, diversity is "a code word" for particular prejudices.
For these schools are not interested in a diversity that would include "born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, lower- and middle-class Catholics, working class 'white ethnics,' social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children or older students just starting into college and raising children."
"Students in these categories," writes Nieli, "are often very rare at the most competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League."
"Lower-class whites prove to be all-around losers" at the elite schools. They are rarely accepted. Lower-class Hispanics and blacks are eight to 10 times more likely to get in with the same scores.
That such bigotry is pervasive in 2010 at institutions that preen about how progressive they are is disgusting. That a GOP which purports to represents Middle America, whose young are bearing the brunt of this bigotry, has remained largely silent is shameful.
Many of these elite public and private colleges and universities benefit from U.S. tax dollars through student loans and direct grants. The future flow of those tax dollars should be made contingent on Harvard and Yale ending racial practices that went out at Little Rock Central High in 1957.
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While I agree with Mr. Buchanan's positions on many issues, if not most, and while the facts he presents in this piece correlate with those which I am aware, Mr. Buchanan seems to make the terms, agendas and actions of the civil rights movement in the late fifties and sixties his moral benchmark; therewith does he undermine his entire piece. One hears speeches of MLK echoing in the background as if they were the touchstones of what modern conservatives should believe.
Dr. Peters, I think he is writing for a more mainstream audience?
Bruce @ 2
I, too, assumed that; however, the medium, i.e. the civil rights rhetoric, does distort the message. It is not unlike our churches who believe that they can Jesufy the liturgies of the secular world, i.e. the liturgy of the rock concert or the liturgy of the mall, and not have the Gospel diluted, warped or perverted. The same is true with attacking abortion with abolitionist rhetoric.
Gentlemen, Mr. Buchanan does not justify the 'civil rights era' in his comments, he uses the above mentioned point in history to illustrate his point about a functioning hypocrisy. He is making the subtle point that equal rights means, for minorities and liberals, special and unequal rights for the preferred class: blacks, mestizos, gays, jews, etc.
Mr. Buchanan is right of course: he usually is, but we have only ourselves to blame.
Ivy League schools have long been overrated academically. They have all admitted to grade inflation for their students, particularly for non-whites. An old finance professor I knew from my graduate program once said most Ivy League students couldn't clear a simple fraction.
Sadly racial preferences for non-whites and discrimination against lower-middle income whites for college admissions is pervasive throughout American colleges.
I agree with Mr.Peters, Pat's message is distorted with the civil rights platitudes. Please spare us the "I have a dream" rubbish.
Mr. Peter's comments are always pointed and remarkable for their insight. So many times conservatives are satisfied to highlight the hypocrisy of the left instead of piercing to the truth of the matters under discussion. Pat does a good job of illustrating the double standard here, but Mr. Peters penetrates to the very essence of the problem.
Unless it was missed, there did not appear to be a study made in the
last decade of how many families with grads from high-school preferred not to even consider an "Ivy League" school for further
education? Only time will tell how America benefited from those
decisions. Pat Buchanan does have much history to his benefit for
some of the subjects he writes on.
Natural society suffers from government meddling..(duh)...I have taught music at the academic level for 36 years. Something I have noticed is that the real minorities--they who have a religious background,understand how to defer when they dont know something--are easier to teach. And it is not some mystical quality that they have, it is simply that they accept authority quicker. The bulk of students in the govt-inflicted schools would fit right into the barnyard in Paul Lake's "Cry Wolf" and it takes them the better part of their 4 years to simply pay attention. The sludge mentality that goes along with their uncompromising belief in natural rights turns them into the sorts of groovies that attempt to make skepticism a pro-active philosophy--being skeptical and "questioning authority" when they don't know what they are really skeptical about, or what question they might have for "authority." Their final recitals are adequate at best, and this is all so unnecessary. The time wasted in seeking out the most abstract autonomy could have been better spent working.
So-called "civil" so-called "rights" does not allow for the under-represented to have a voice so much as it makes the naturally occurring talented voices become an under-represented "minority."
Mr. Sheeley @ 7
I have received and have just listened to CD 102 made by Mr. Ken Myers of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. Among those whose interviews are on the CD is one with Thomas Hibbs who states, and I paraphrase, that after all of the legitimate reasons for doing art, legitimacy being rooted in the order of being or the created world in which we live, have been deconstructed or have decayed in the onslaught of liberalism, all that is left is the self-centered and narcissistic notion of "self expression" which is written large and claims, in fact, to be art in late modernity.
Mr. Buchanan asks: "Was this what the civil rights revolution was all about—"
I don't remember any civil rights revolution. What I saw on the black and white set with the overheating sound tube that had to be jiggled every few minutes to keep the audio feed was one part of America turning on another part.
I saw the federal government send in the mighty and invincible U.S. Army, recent victors over evil Japs and Germans, saviors of the free world and the heroes of every little boy's backyard battles, to stand with fixed bayonets in the path of their fellow Americans. I saw the tears of rage, humiliation, and heartbreak as these Americans realized they were no longer free men, and that their fight to preserve their communities and to protect their children from entanglement in an alien culture was lost.
To complain about the lack of "historic and moral arguments for discriminating in favor of kids from Angola and Argentina over kids whose parents came from Poland and Vietnam", is simply to legitimize the use of other such arguments - presumably the "right" ones - such as those that began to be used against white parents at Little Rock Central High in 1957. It is not "ending racial practices that went out at Little Rock Central High in 1957" that should be Mr. Buchanan's concern, but rather ending the ones that began then.
Mr. Peters,
Once one decides that art is about self-expression rather than truth, there is no end to the mischief; and there can be no learning.
Mr Peters and Mr Jacobi have pointed out what needed to be said.
When will it ever be recognised by the mainstream that the Federal occupation of Little Rock was in fact a crime? Never, of course, as long as the current regime stands.
Allen @11
The answer to your question is never. The media apparatus both left and right celebrate fixed bayonets pressed to the throat of Southern citizens.
As a piece of rhetoric, though, this column does a good job of exposing the hypocrisy of egalitarians and of making the intellectual descendants of the 1950s/1960s look ridiculous. If that is enough to make some people think a little bit harder about what these folks are really about, this column will have proved a net plus for the world.
But why would a conservative, especially a religious conservative, want to attend a top-flight college? Today's conservatism seems to be marked by a denial of modern scholarship (famous examples: evolution; origins of Bible; climate change). If they're committed to a pre-modern worldview, let them attend the alternative institutions they have constructed. Harvard, Stanford et al shouldn't waste precious space admitting people who fundamentally don't want to learn anything new and upsetting.
Oh my ! Aren't we all surprized... Perhaps, if the middle class is prevented from entering places like Princeton and Harvard, it can be saved yet.
But why would a conservative, especially a religious conservative, want to attend a top-flight college?
Money.
Oh my ! Aren’t we all surprized… Perhaps, if the middle class is prevented from entering places like Princeton and Harvard, it can be saved yet.
The underlying vacuousity of Ivy League scholarship aside, the fact is that the exclusion of Middle America from these institutions effectively excludes Middle America from any significant position of power in the country. There is almost no one in the government today to represent the soul of the heartland.
That said, given the current condition of the middle classes--notably, given what they've done to themselves even without Harvard--I'm not sure what if anything will save them.
#14 Jack, "Today’s conservatism seems to be marked by a denial of modern scholarship (famous examples: evolution; origins of Bible; climate change).
Truth and science can not really be at odds with each other and therefore conservatives, especially those who embrace a true religious faith, are very much interested in both the dialectical method and results of experimental science as well as divine revelation. This very idea of scientific truth as something superior or at odds with divine truths is very American or perhaps even English, but it is also very silly. Carl Sagan was not a serious student of Darwin or even serious about the origens of life itself. He was a popularizer of issues by combining pop science with pop culture. Why these folks get such a wide audience to the exclusion of other more serious scientists is the better question.