[lbo-talk] MAINLY IMMIGRANTS OR BIRACIAL

[Brad DeLong]

>what do list members make of this?
>
>R
>
>
>cited in Undernews from Sam Smith's Progressive Review site:
>
>HARVARD'S BLACKS ARE MAINLY IMMIGRANTS OR BIRACIAL
>
>NY TIMES - While about 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates
>were black, Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates
>Jr., the chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies
>department, pointed out that the majority of them--perhaps as many as
>two-thirds--were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to
>a lesser extent, children of biracial couples.
>
>They said that only about a third of the students were from families in
>which all four grandparents were born in this country, descendants of
>slaves. Many argue that it was students like these, disadvantaged by the
>legacy of Jim Crow laws, segregation and decades of racism, poverty and
>inferior schools, who were intended as principal beneficiaries of
>affirmative action in university admissions. What concerned the two
>professors, they said, was that in the high-stakes world of admissions to
>the most selective colleges--and with it, entry into the country's inner
>circles of power, wealth and influence--African-American students whose
>families have been in America for generations were being left behind.
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/education/24AFFI.final.html?ei=5007&en=92df04e0957d73d3&ex=1403409600&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=all
>

If a leg up on admission to Harvard is supposed to be some kind of 
reparations for slavery, it's a truly bizarre idea.

If the idea is to get Black faces into positions of prominence, and 
to ensure that the power elite contains at least some people with 
powerful social links into America's minority community, it seems to 
me that affirmative action--understood as a leg up on admission to 
Harvard--is a great success.

I don't like the way the numbers appear to be presented. Somebody 
with three grandparents born in this country descendants of 
slaves--but with a fourth, white grandparent--doesn't count. Somebody 
with two grandparents born in this country descendants of slaves--but 
with two other grandparents born in the West Indies--doesn't count. 
They've crafted their definition of "American Black" to be as narrow 
as possible. So I don't know what the situation really is, and I 
don't know what conclusions to draw.

Brad DeLong