Race over character: Federal law 50 years after the Civil Rights Act

The country has never fully accepted the racial-entitlement revisionism that leftists have imposed on civil-rights issues. Americans support equal opportunity and outreach but still hold up the goal of a color-blind society. Last year, a Gallup poll found that three-quarters of whites believe that college applicants should be admitted solely based on merit, even if that results in few minorities being admitted. More interestingly, in the same poll, 59 percent of Hispanics said that applicants should be judged only on merit, while blacks were divided in their views, with 48 percent supporting the use of race as a factor in admissions and 44 percent opposing it.

There are sound reasons that so many Americans resist a regime of racial entitlements. Schools now put a race-conscious fist on the admissions scale rather than a thumb and clearly admit students based on race. They aren’t doing these students a favor. Affirmative-action students are 50 to 75 percent more likely to drop out of a science program than are regular admits. At law schools, they are two or three times more likely to fail the bar exam. But students who attend a school where their entering credentials are similar to those of their fellow students are more likely to finish and fulfill their work and life ambitions. We almost certainly now have fewer black doctors, lawyers, and business chiefs than we would have had under race-neutral admissions policies.