Racial discrimination on campus likely to go on forever

The results of this sociological experiment at Yale and other selective schools are only too apparent to anyone reading Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor’s 2012 book Mismatch. Racial quota admissions inevitably, as Fleming foresaw, create a visible minority of students who tend to be less well prepared than average than their schoolmates. This reinforces rather than dispels stereotypes of group inferiority.

Quota admittees tend to drop out more often, tend to avoid college science and math, tend to flunk post-graduation bar and other professional tests. Admissions officers get to brag that they’ve admitted lots of blacks and Hispanics. But many of those admitted would have done better in the long run at a school where most students had similar levels of preparation.

It’s easy to imagine why such students cherish grievances and are on the alert for signs of racism, even from schoolmates of the least racist generation in American history. They know that administrators are lying when they say they don’t use racial quotas, and they resent the inevitable stamp of inferiority. You would too if you were in their shoes.