Did Affirmative Action Work? | 5-Minute Videos

Before Affirmative Action, black Americans were closing education gaps, increasing incomes, and joining the middle class at record speed. But since the introduction of Affirmative Action, that progress has significantly slowed. How can we account for this? Jason Riley, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explains Affirmative Action’s troubling legacy.

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Transcript:
Did Affirmative Action Work?
Presented by Jason Riley

Before Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell was for Affirmative Action, he was against it.

This is noteworthy because Bell is best known for his contributions to critical race theory—which claims that racism is embedded in American institutions and that the historical mistreatment of black people largely explains current disparities.

In a 1970 law-review article, Bell objected to using different criteria to assess student performance depending on race. In the past, he noted, the small percentages of blacks admitted to selective law schools “not only met the usual academic criteria, but were often characterized by a strong inner drive to equal and, if at all possible, excel their white classmates.”

Admitting blacks who did not meet accepted standards was, in Bell’s words, “a form of benevolent paternalism.”

He warned that racial preferences risked tainting the accomplishments of those who succeeded—in the eyes of whites and blacks alike. “Whatever arguments are used to justify such a policy,” he wrote, “there is little denying that it robs those black students who have done well of receiving real credit and the boost in confidence that their accomplishments merit.”

Although Bell later changed his mind, he offered a preview of a half-century of arguments that would be made against racial preferences. That might give pause to those who are inclined to dismiss criticism of affirmative action as racist.

Bell’s concerns about the psychological toll of affirmative action turned out to be prescient. More than five decades of racial preferences have created the impression that black advancement is impossible without them.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, that the Court’s ruling “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the majority had “detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences.”

This doom-saying assumes racial favoritism is a prerequisite for black accomplishment. Because it has been asserted for decades that affirmative action and government programs produced today’s black middle class, few bother to question the claim. But when we do, a very different narrative emerges.

During the first two-thirds of the 20th century—long before affirmative action and an expanded welfare state—black Americans experienced remarkable progress. Education gaps narrowed, incomes rose, poverty declined. This history is often ignored because activists and politicians prefer a narrative of suffering. Yet it should be a source of pride for blacks—and inspiration for other minorities.

In 1940, 25- to 29-year-old whites had 3.6 more years of schooling on average than blacks. By 1960 both groups had advanced, but blacks outpaced whites and the gap had narrowed by more than half, to 1.7 years.

Between 1940 and 1960, the percentage of blacks with a high school diploma more than tripled, again growing faster than whites. But as colleges began compromising admissions standards in the late 1960s, these trends slowed.

According to Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and co-author Shaylyn Garrett, the “fastest and most dramatic progress toward parity [in education] between blacks and whites finishing high school was achieved before 1970.”

The same story can be told about income. More education meant better jobs and higher pay. And just as educational gains among blacks were speedier before affirmative action, so too were wage gains. Yet affirmative action policies were given far more credit than they deserved, mainly because proponents started the story in the middle.

In 1939, the annual median income was $350 for black males and $1,000 for white males. By 1960, those figures had reached $3,000 and $5,000, respectively—an increase of 570% for blacks vs. 360% for whites. All of this occurred before affirmative action and the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s.

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