Affirmative action: an idea whose time has come... and gone

Yesterday, in an update to "Hey whitey! You'll never work for the CBC again!", Walt mentioned that the cover story in this week's Economist is a briefing entitled "Time to scrap affirmative action". The "briefing" consists of three articles, examining the reasoning (?) behind and consequences of affirmative action policies in the USA, South Africa and Malaysia. Here are the titles and a few select quotes.

Unequal protection (on access to universities in the USA)

Lino Graglia, holder of an endowed chair at the University of Texas at Austin law school, thinks "lower[ing] standards to admit members of preferred groups" is "a bad idea".
Black law students fail the bar exam at four times the rate of whites.

A study...found that black students with average grades and test scores were almost three times more likely than Asians with similarly average qualifications to get into medical school.
More black than white high-school seniors aspire to science and engineering careers, but once in college twice as many black students as white abandon those challenging fields.

Universities can ensure diversity without race-based affirmative action. If [the Supreme Court's] ruling...helps bring America's experiment with well-intentioned discrimination in universities to a close...it will not be because the country has entered...a "post-racial" period. It has not. Blacks and Hispanics will still lag behind white in income and education levels, and still exceed whites in incarceration rates. But one set of injustices does not excuse another.

Fool's gold (on South Africa's black empowerment policy)

Black empowerment has not worked well. Nor will it end soon.

The white elite at the top of South African business has been joined by a sliver of super-rich blacks. ...Cyril Rampaphosa, a union-boss-turned-tycoon who is now the ANC's number two (and therefore perhaps the next president of South Africa), is worth $675 million.
The lot of poorer blacks, however, has not improved much.

The binding constraint on greater black participation in the economy is education.... It is no good setting quotas if there are not the skilled workers to fill them....

A Never Ending Policy (on policies favouring ethnic Malays in Malaysia)

The policies which favour ethnic Malays and other indigenes at the expense of Malaysia's ethnic Chinese and Indian citizens are an oddity. [These citizens] chafe at being second-class citizens. Quotas in university admissions are particularly resented. Chinese and Indian students flock to private and foreign [universities]. Those who leave often stay away.

Critics of [the policy] worry that it dulls [Malays'] incentives to excel. There is evidence of a skills gap.
A survey...found that 71% of Malaysians agreed that "race-based affirmative action" was "obsolete" and should be replaced with a "merit-based policy".

Further reading in this week's Economist, and by far the leader in online comments is this week's editorial, "Time to scrap affirmative action"

Note from Ed.: The Economist has a paywall, so the links may or may not work for you. If they don't, and the fallacy of affirmative action concerns you, consider buying a copy of the print edition, if you can find a newsstand or other store that still sells magazines.

Or you might think about subscribing. The Economist is the one and only magazine Walt actually pays to get. And no, we're not getting paid to say so.  

And one more note... This is Walt's 1500th post. Congratulatory messages may be written on the back of a cheque (or "check", if you're American) and sent to the usual address.