From a reader:

Good Morning Jonah,
I just read over your piece on affirmative action and it’s effects of Asians. I am black and entered UT in the fall of 1994 (two years before the hopwood decision) and graduated in 1999. At that time they didn’t have the top 10% rule as they do now, but they still had automatic addmissions. They had a formula using SAT scores and your class rank. The higher your class rank you lower your SAT score could be. So since I was in the top 15% of my high school class I needed an SAT score that was 1100 or above, which I got. I know many of my peers may have seen me as only gaining addmission b/c of affirmative action, but I would have been automatically admitted with my class rank and SATs no matter if I was white, brown, yellow, grey, purple or blue. However, I did get a scholarship that was only for “underepresented minorities” Now my feelings about the scholarship are ambivalent, but I basically got a free education at a top university so I really can’t fault myself for taking it. Sorry about the copious amounts of background, but my comment is about the # of black students. Even when I was there when race was a factor in addmissions the black population at UT was around 4%. That is miniscule. UT was practically beating down doors to even get that many black folks. You mention that the Asian population skyrocketed after the hopwood decision (if I had to guess I would say the the Asian population while I was at UT was about 8-12% maybe higher if you include those of Indian and Pakistani descent as Asian). Well I’m not sure this could possibly be related to the black enrollment b/c we numbered so few. So for instance even if every single black student was kicked out and replaced with an Asian student the Asian population of the university could have jumped, at most, 4%. Not exactly “skyrocketing”. I’m not sure on the hispanic #s. Perhaps in combination they could account for the jump in Asians. However, after an initial drop in black enrollment after 1996, I think that it got back up to 3-4%. In essence my point as it relates to quotas for black students at UT is this: I think it is wrong. Quotas for any race are just plain wrong. However in this case the #’s of black students are so miniscule that I’m just not sure why it is such a big deal. UT is not some of the elite, top tier universities where they seek to have a black population equal to that of the population in general. UT’s black population was only 1/4 that of the nationwide population. So once again why is this such a big deal?
Thanks for you time. I know your very busy.