Blaming Tests Won't Close the Gap

At the core of the affirmative action debate surrounding Proposition 209, the "California civil rights initiative," is the question of whether merit standards traditionally used by universities and companies are racially biased against blacks and other minorities. If tests are racially or culturally biased, after all, then merit-based entitlements become suspect, and an argument can be made for allocating social goods according to other criteria, such as proportional distribution between racial groups.

Opponents of Proposition 209 have vehemently contested the validity of traditional merit standards, especially at the college and university level. According to Richard Seymour of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, standardized tests widely used for college admissions and employment are an "engine for the exclusion of minorities." African American writer Ellis Cose argues that such tests promote "the myth of meritocracy." Consequently, civil rights activists support racial preferences to remedy what they perceive as unjust discrimination.

In 1994, the Chicago Police Department announced that of the 500 candidates who scored highest on its sergeant's exam, only 40 were black and 22 were Latino. Immediately, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), an African American, charged that "structurally the test was biased." Rush hadn't seen the test. The city of Chicago had spent more than $5 million to produce, in collaboration with minority consultants, a bias-free test. Yet critics assumed that in a city that is more than 50% minority, test results that do not mirror the population must be racially biased.

A few years ago, I asked an admissions officer at the University of California at Berkeley to estimate the probability of acceptance for a black or Latino student with a B-plus high school average and an SAT score of 1,200 out of 1,600. He said the chances that such a student would be admitted to Berkeley were virtually 100%. By contrast, he acknowledged that a white or an Asian student with the same grades and test scores, and the same extracurricular talent, would only have a 5% chance of getting into Berkeley. The official justified such preferences on the grounds that tests systematically "discriminate" against Latino and black students.