Julius Chambers, former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and now director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina law School, called for a new kind of college admissions preference at a conference on “The Politics of Inclusion” in Chapel Hill yesterday.
Colleges should give preference in admissions decisions to students from high schools whose populations are racially and socioeconomically diverse, a lawyer who rose to prominence working on school-desegregation cases told conference participants here on Tuesday. Doing so, he said, could increase diversity on campuses and halt the resegregation of public schools.
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In his comments on Tuesday, Mr. Chambers called on elite private and public institutions to consider an applicant’s attendance at a diverse high school a “plus factor” in admissions decisions.
“The future of the integrated public school in America is in jeopardy,” said Mr. Chambers. “This is an opportunity for universities to support racially and economically diverse public schools while enhancing their own diversity.”
Mr. Chambers gained national prominence while working as a lawyer on desegregation cases in the Charlotte, N.C., public schools. But today, he said, 30 percent of black students in the South attend racially segregated high schools, and the figures are higher in the border states (46 percent) and the Northeast (51 percent).
But wait a minute. This proposal sounds highly counter-productive; it would reward students who need it less, which probably isn’t what Mr. Chambers really wants. If Chambers is serious about proposing preferences to students who attend “diverse” schools, that would exclude the 30% of black students in the South, the 46% in the border states, and the 51% in the Northeast who attend schools that are “racially segregated,” since “racially segregated” schools are the antithesis of “diverse.”
Consider a hypothetical small city with two high schools — School A is 80% black, 10% white and 10% Hispanic, and virtually all of the students are poor; School B is 40% white, 30% black, 20% Hispanic, and 10% Asian, and the students come from all socioeconomic classes. If an elite university followed Chambers’ recommendation and gave admission preferences to students attending the school with the more diverse population, the preferences would go to the students at School B.
Is that really what Mr. Chambers intends? Perhaps, but it’s hard to say. Of course we all know that most of the people who worship at the altar of “diversity” don’t really mean diversity. They mean “black,” but don’t have the courage to say so. Most of the time this results in nothing more than run of the mill politically correct duplicity, but sometimes, as here, it leads to literal incoherence.
The reality is that, in the words of the blogger Fred Reed, the races do not appear to crave each other’s company.
I’ve only read your summary of his comments, but it sounds like his logic goes something like this:
1. Rich white people want to get into Harvard.
2. Rich white people tend to go to undiverse schools.
3. If Harvard implements this policy, rich white people will be at a disadvantage in getting into Harvard.
4. Therefore, rich white people will act to make sure their schools are diverse, so that they won’t be disadvantaged.
The problem is twofold:
1. As you note, it would disadvantage poor black people as much as it would rich white people.
2. It’s not clear how step #4 is supposed to work, anyway. It would make sense if lack of diversity were the result of discriminatory laws or policies, but of course that’s not the case. Harvard can’t repeal economics by fiat.
(And if it were the case, then why would Harvard do this? It’s really odd how the remnants of the civil rights movement simultaneously think that (1) most people out there are racist and yet (2) the government and universities and other institutions will implement policies which benefit blacks.)