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Head In Sand ... Or Sand In Head?

Professor Mark Peterson, associate professor and department chair of political science at Washburn University, recently delivered a lecture at Kansas State University defending affirmative action. His defense was typical, and thus, oddly, both depressing and encouraging.

Don?t misunderstand me. There are reasonable and intelligent arguments in support of affirmative action, and the fact that I don?t find them persuasive doesn?t make them (or at least not all of them) unreasonable or dumb. Still, typical arguments, like Professor Peterson?s, defy not only a widely and deeply held core American value ? that everyone should be treated by the state without regard to race, creed, or color ? but also clearly observable and amply documented facts. Thus I find it depressing that so many people in positions of some influence routinely make arguments that are patently ridiculous, but also encouraging ? because they are unable to make better arguments, and the ones they do make are so easily refutable.

Professor Peterson, for example, ?denied any legitimacy in the claim that admitting or hiring minority applicants lowers the quality of work or dilutes the selectivity of the school.?

Really? So, admitting minorities with SAT scores that are often 200 or more points below the entering average, with a similar gap in grade point averages, does not ?dilute[] the selectivity of the school? that does that? One can argue that ?diversity? justifies that reduction in selectivity, but I don?t see how any informed, reasonable person can deny the fact of the reduction.

More of the same:

Peterson said that affirmative action does not require hiring or admitting inferior students or employees. He went on to say that preference to a minority applicant is only granted when two applicants are comparable and, most importantly, the organization has identified a need to better represent a particular group.

Now ?inferior? is a loaded term. Again, I think a reasonable and informed person can argue that most of those hired or admitted with affirmative action preferences are not unqualified (although Richard Sander?s data may call this assertion into question), but it makes no sense to deny that they are less qualified than those who would have been hired or admitted but for the preference they received. If that were not true, those affirmative action hires/admits would not have needed the preference they received.

Finally, if Professor Peterson really believes that ?preference to a minority applicant is only granted when two applicants are comparable,? then he either has his head in the sand or sand in his head, which is to say, only somewhat more politely, that he has absolutely no conception of how affirmative actually works at large and even not so large universities.

Full post as published by Discriminations on April 03, 2009 (boomark / email).