LAST REFUGE [John J. Miller] When the defenders of racial preferences find themselves on the ropes, they often point to the military--something many of them must hate to do--as an exemplar of affirmative action. That's what the New York Times does today in a story on how racial preferences affect admissions to the service academies: "Even as the Bush administration sides with opponents of affirmative action at the University of Michigan, officials of the nation's service academies say their own minority admissions programs are necessary to maintain both integrated student bodies and officer corps." What the articles doesn't supply are any actual numbers showing how much preference minority applicants receive. For that, it's necessary to read this report from the Center for Equal Opportunity, which shows that preferences do appear to play a role in admissions--but not nearly the role they play at the University of Michigan, whose admissions process is currently under Supreme Court review. At West Point, for instance, CEO found a 100-point gap between the SAT scores of whites and blacks admitted. At Michigan, that's the difference between whites and blacks on the verbal section alone. Posted at 05:39 AM
LAST REFUGE, PT. 2 [John J. Miller] Here's the jawdropping difference between admissions at West Point and Michigan, according to the CEO reports. If two students with equal test scores and grades applied to West Point, and the school had only one spot to award them, it would be almost twice as likely to choose a black applicant over a white one. At Michigan, however, the school would be almost 174 times more likely to choose the black applicant. The fact of the matter is that West Point and the other service academies employ racial preferences, but not nearly on the same scale as this country's top public universities. The defenders of Michigan's race-driven policies obscure the debate when they try to hide behind West Point. Posted at 05:49 AM