Everybody knows the general attack on affirmative action in higher education. The claim is that it disadvantages white people, the same claim that has destroyed affirmative action in employment except as a remedy for past discrimination by a particular employer (as opposed to discrimination in society generally).
So far, the Supreme Court has not completely wiped out affirmative action in education because educators have argued with some success that exposure to persons who are neither white nor wealthy is valuable to students who are both. This is “diversity” as a freestanding value.
Indians have a justification for affirmative action in addition to the value of diversity. When tribally enrolled Indians get admissions preferences, the preference is based on political status rather than on race. Some tribes even have treaties that obligate the United States to provide education, and of course a treaty right springs from a political agreement between the tribal government and the U.S.
Perhaps as important from a political standpoint, we are too few in higher education to disadvantage very many white people. While our presence may irritate the white rights organizations, highly selective schools will never admit enough Indians to harm white people even assuming that every Indian displaces a white person.
In addition to white rights, there is another attack on affirmative action that unavoidably scoops up Indians with other minorities in a way we cannot escape if the theory behind the attack is correct. The argument is that affirmative action not only fails to help us; it actually does us harm.
This “mismatch theory” holds that minorities admitted to selective schools under affirmative action plans are thrown into the deep end of the pool with inadequate swimming skills. As a result, they sink, which is to say they either flunk out or perform so poorly that their earning power will never match what is expected of graduates on that level.
Without the affirmative action handicap, the mismatch theory continues, minority students would have been admitted by the regular process at a less selective university more suited to their skill levels. Placed in an academic environment appropriate to their abilities, freed from the handicap of affirmative action, minority students would flourish.
The mismatch theory is difficult to evaluate, since it requires plunging into counterfactuals, but if mismatch theory is correct, then Indians are wrong to demand admission to selective schools and those schools are harming Indians if they accede to misguided Indian demands by adopting affirmative action plans.
In Part II, we will look at evidence that can help us evaluate whether the mismatch theory is correct and we are, objectively, harming our own kids by putting them in situations with which they cannot cope.
