Many political discussions will follow the Supreme Court decision to outlaw race-based affirmative action. Whether we agree or disagree with the 6-3 SCOTUS verdict, we should agree to make sure our foundational assumptions are evidence-based, and not based on popular hearsay. I write as an economist to dispel five commonly believed myths regarding the effects of affirmative action.
- Affirmative Action makes it much harder for White and Asian applicants to get into universities.
In the early 2000s, a world-renowned statistician named Stephen Raudenbush analyzed the effects of affirmative action at the University of Michigan. He demonstrated that the vast majority of applicants of any race are either very unlikely to be admitted, or very likely to be admitted. A smaller proportion of applicants are at the “margin,” within a range in which affirmative action could make a difference. Importantly, there are very few underrepresented minorities at the margin. As a result, taking away race-based affirmative action would have relatively small effects on the admission of White and Asian applicants at the margin, and no effect at all on the vast majority.
- Underrepresented minorities have a much easier time getting into universities with affirmative action, and as a result unqualified applicants get admitted.
Raudenbush’s calculations showed, for the same reasons, that race-based affirmative action doesn’t have any effect on most underrepresented minorities (URM), who are either very unlikely or very likely to gain admission. Again: it does nothing for unqualified minorities. Instead, affirmative action strongly increases the likelihood of admission for those at the margin (“barely qualified”). However, among students at the margin, it helps URM much more than it harms represented students, because there are so few URM at the margin. Raudenbush’s work demonstrates that arguments regarding the lack of fairness of affirmative action to White and Asian students are severely overblown at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. His analysis was instrumental in the state of Michigan’s 2008 decision to allow race-based affirmative action.
- If we move from race-based to class-based affirmative action, underrepresented minorities will still benefit.
The argument goes something like this: it seems unfair to allow race-based affirmative action, but maybe we should let poor people get ahead regardless of race; and because underrepresented minorities are disproportionately poor, this will still benefit them.
This seems convincing at the surface, but it isn’t necessarily true. It depends on the composition of the applicant pool. As Harvard economist Susan Dynsarski and Nobel Prize winner David Card have both demonstrated, this could go either way. In a school that gets a lot of poor URM applicants, class-based affirmative action can reduce racial inequality. But at many institutions, class-based affirmative action could actually increase racial inequality because there are so many poor White applicants. This nuance is rarely discussed: class-based affirmative action only works as well as our efforts to remove barriers to poor underrepresented minorities being college-ready in the first place.
- Affirmative action harms the quality of universities, corporations, and the economy as a whole.
Another commonly believed myth is that affirmative action harms the productive capacity of universities and corporations. But there is substantial evidence debunking this assertion. First, in the university context, affirmative action bans in California reduced college quality, as demonstrated by Zachary Bleemer at Princeton. Second, even temporary affirmative action can have persistent effects in the labor market, by increasing employers’ abilities to select quality URM applicants, and by increasing the diversity of referral networks. As a result it can improve the productive capacity of firms in the long run, as demonstrated by economists such as Conrad Miller at Berkeley and Lukas Bolte at Stanford. Third, a number of social scientists, including Scott Page at the University of Michigan, have demonstrated scientifically that diversity can improve the productive capacity of universities and corporations by enhancing innovation. Together this evidence suggests that affirmative action can benefit the economy as a whole, by improving the productive capacity of firms and universities. It is intellectually irresponsible, given the state of the scientific evidence, to assume affirmative action harms universities, corporations, or the U.S. economy.
- Affirmative action violates meritocratic principles, so that people who work the hardest are rewarded the least.
Meritocracy requires that two people with equal opportunity are rewarded according to their productivity. Equal opportunity is a foundational requirement of meritocracy. Yet, this nation was burdened by blatant racial injustices for at least 7/8ths of its history, and their well-evidenced, intergenerational, economic effects deny present-day Black and Brown children equality of opportunity for reasons outside of their control. We cannot have equality of opportunity, and hence meritocracy, unless we have rectified the effects historical injustices have on today’s children. Not only does affirmative action not violate meritocratic principles: meritocracy may very well require affirmative action given the impact of history on children.
Moreover, neither college admission nor hiring is generally intended to be a reward for past performance. Corporations hire applicants on the basis of what they will contribute to the corporation in the future. Any evaluation of past performance is only taken seriously to the extent that it predicts future contributions. College admission should function similarly, on the basis of what a student contributes intellectually to other students, the research of faculty, and to society as a whole after graduation. Racial diversity can play a role in each of these considerations above and beyond measures of past performance.
Albert Einstein once said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” We have outlawed affirmative action using the same kind of ahistorical, linear thinking that allowed us to believe that the effects of 250 years of slavery would vanish with seven years of Reconstruction. Or that 100 years of Jim Crow would vanish with twenty years of court-ordered integration. Or that the effect of funneling cocaine into Black communities would fade away if we just told kids to say no to drugs. We believed that 350 years of injustice would vanish with 50 years of colorblind teaching and public policy. Yet, Sandra Bland surprised us just as much as Trayvon Martin. Breonna Taylor surprised us just as much as George Floyd. I suppose it would also surprise us to learn that an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an opposing force. That force was just outlawed by a Supreme Court that habitually ignores the physics of justice.
David McMillon is an assistant professor of economics at Emory University, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Georgia, and an affiliate of the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality. As a Saginaw native, he is an alumni of the ACT-SO program under John Pugh, the Gamma Kappa Kudos youth group under Mary Currie, and Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy, SASA, when Janet Nash and Melleretha Moses-Johnson were administrators. His parents are Dr. Vincent and Dr. Gwen McMillon of Saint Paul Baptist Church, and he does not eat mac and cheese.
