Oh wait, I forgot–we’ve redefined “equity,” haven’t “we”? Now it means equal outcomes (quotas). Darn! I still haven’t memorized that little red DEI-to-English dictionary provided “free” during one of those toothpick-assisted eye-opening re-education gavages.
The outcomes of these racialized policies are terrible. I collect and study evidence of the effects of affirmative action in law schools. In one large Arkansas dataset, the first-time bar-exam failure rate for the largest minority group was double that of whites; 40 percent of the Black graduates failed on their first try.
That’s bad for the students who weren’t given refunds after being, uh, “helped” through holistic admissions. Thanks, no thanks. That’s bad for the community that has access to fewer practicing lawyers. And that’s bad for schools trying to entice college graduates to attend while showing weaker bar-passage rates.
Leftists complain about merit selection because they correctly observe that law-school graduates compete for jobs based in part on the stature of their schools. All else being equal, graduating from Harvard offers a leg up when compared to, say, Marquette.
But–and this is the critical step elided by race hucksters–all else isn’t equal. So when minorities are given massive placement advantages, as they often are, and they attend better-ranked schools, as they often do, they do worse on average.