On Minding the Campus, Robert Weissberg has a sharp essay on the latest disguise for racial preferences in admissions at top colleges and universities. We will see increasing use of proxies for race, particularly in those “personal essays” students submit along with their applications.
I particularly like Weissberg’s concluding point that one serious cost of the “diversity” obsession is that it tells minority students that the way to get ahead is through “affirmative action” by others (politicians and college officials) rather than through their own actions. It’s just like the minimum-wage law and other “compassionate” interventions — the supposed beneficiaries are led to believe that the path to their advancement is demanding favors.