Black Issues in Higher Education
YOU CAN PREVARICATE WITH POLLING
BY JULIANNE
MALVEAUX
"Is it right for a college or university to give preferential
treatment
to some minorities in the admissions process even if it means taking
away opportunities for other qualified applicants"?
This question was
part of an "academic life" survey administered by Zogby International
for the Foundation for Academic Standards and Tradition, which is also
known as FAST. Shortly after the survey results and the accompanying
blitz of press material was released, FAST's president, Marc Berley had
an article on the op-ed page of the New York Post titled "Sanity Makes
a Return: College Kids K.O. Quotas.
" It might be news that college students don't like quotas, except for the fact that preferences, quotas, and affirmative action re not the same things. FAST conveniently blurs lines both in the biased questions asked in the survey and in the press "spin" they put on their results. But a quick review of FAST's web page (www.gofast.org) makes it clear that these folks have an axe to grind.
Here's a sample of their propaganda: "Hey, students, concerned about the erosion of academic standards and intellectual freedom? Tired of professors who try to close minds rather than open them? Tired of being forced to talk and write sheepishly in "gender-neutral" language or other politicizing PC shenanigans that mock your attempt to get a solid education? Hungry for some serious learning Great books, art, music -- the various and wonderful debates of the Western tradition?"
Read between the lines, but you don't have to be expert in the fine art of subtlety to figure that FAST is opposed to diversity, fairness, and academic civility. What's wrong with inclusive gender-neutral language? And why must all the "great books" be characterized as Western, except to cleave to a curriculum that features dead white men (yes, that's PC rhetoric) while excluding other voices.
Berley seems a master of doublespeak. In the Zogby poll, questions are asked about diversity, and Berley touts the fact that 84 percent of all students say that having diversity on campus is important. AT the same time he is co-editor of a confused compendium, "The Diversity Hoax", a set of essays by University of California Boalt Hall Law students who whiningly speak of "intellectual terrorism" because they were uncomfortable about campus protest against Proposition 209. Berley tips his hand in "The Diversity Hoax", but in order to publicize his anti-affirmative action ideas, he trumpets diversity to make his non-point about "quotas". Berley's work is hardly unusual. It would hardly be worth a full column to focus on FAST's recidivist ideas, but this study is an all-time low.
Using biased questions, forcing false choices, and failing to offer reasonable definitions of affirmative action programs, Berley and his colleagues virtually assure that the respondents of their poll will say they oppose "racial preferences" (and one has to ask how we get from the preferences mentioned in the poll to the quotas mentioned in his headline).
Why are folks like Marc Berley so threatened by the presence of people of color on campus? Why are they so resistant to inclusion? The answer is hardly complex. These folks want to keep the opportunities to themselves.
The essayists who contributed to The Diversity Hoax were part of an almost all-white class of law students at UC Berkeley, the first class admitted after the passage of Proposition 209. Imagine these privilegedstudents whining about "intellectual terrorism" without them considering the economic terrorism perpetrated when California taxpayers of color subsidize a legal education that they have no access to!
The FAST study, along with anti-affirmative action efforts in Texas, Florida and Michigan should shatter any sense of smugness that anyone has about racial progress in this country. While large gaps in educational attainment and economic status remain, folks like Berley would halt racial progress based on the results of a very biased survey. Imagine being asked another kind of question - Is it right for a college or university to admit students on the basis of their athletic ability, even if it means taking away opportunities from other qualified applicants? Is it right for a college or university to spend money on a library even if it means taking away dollars from other important projects? FAST has pre-determined the answer to the question it poses. It is amazing that an institution as reputable as Zogby would go along with FAST's polling prevarication. Of course, the client is the client, faulty polling methodology notwithstanding.
Those who teach polling methodology, rhetoric, or public relations have a built-in lesson with this FAST poll. It's no news that you can lie with statistics and prevaricate with polling. This poll, though is a stunning illustration of the many ways bias can be codified as "science".
The effort might be amusing were it not for the fact that there are those who would ensure that the ivory tower remains as ivory as possible, out of the reach of African American and Latino students who gain when affirmative action programs are administered. This is more than a war of words. This is a battle over the future composition of our nation's educated class, a struggle over the way power and privilege will be divided in the twenty-first century. Berley says his poll favors diversity without "quotas", but the content of the poll suggests that it favors a return to the higher education climate of the 1950's, when the curriculum was Western, the students of color were few, and the academy was a narrow white occasion. But as law professors Chuck Lawrence and Mari Matsuda have stated "we won't go back", not even when nudged by the biased results of a faulty poll.