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UC Regent Ward Connerly deserves some mention, both for something he recently said, and for something about which he was pointedly silent. 

First, the said part. 

When students apply to the University of California system, they have the option of checking a box to denote their race. The requested information is voluntary, and is supposed to be used for statistical purposes only. For the past 15 years or so, as the multi-racial, multi-ethnic movement has begun to gain ground in this country, UC has given students the option of checking more than one box. If Tiger Woods had applied to UC under that system, for one example, he would have been able to check both “African-American” and “Thai.” 

Well and good. But when it comes time for the UC system to make reports to the federal government on the number of students attending its schools from individual races, federal regulations require that the university arbitrarily assign Mr. Woods to either one checked race, or another. The university makes the choice, a situation which hovers between the ludicrous and the impossible, since by what criteria can a university employee—smart as they are—make a decision on whether Mr. Woods is more Thai or more black, when he is equal parts of both? 

The logic would be for the federal government to allow for the split-the-baby solution: one-half of such a student assigned to one race, one-half assigned to another. But to paraphrase the great “Men In Black” line, the federal government does not exercise any logic of which it is aware. 

So instead, our friend Mr. Connerly has asked that his fellow UC regents include a new box for students to check—“multi-ethnic”—and thereafter lobby the federal government to change its race-reporting requirements to allow for the new category. Mr. Connerly, who campaigned for the late-deceased Prop 54 on the platform of doing away with such race-reporting boxes, now tells a reporter “I don’t like the boxes, but I’m accepting that as a given. But if you’re going to have the boxes, give people a choice to accurately depict how they perceive themselves.” 

Mr. Connerly is onto something here, and if the proposal were being advanced by anyone other than Mr. Connerly, my progressive and liberal friends would almost certainly be a bit quicker to embrace the concept. They (my progressive and liberal friends) like to be known, after all, for being the champions of the unchampioned minority, and no one in the world is more a minority than someone born of parents of different races. 

The problem, of course, is in the numbers. Money and political power in America is often apportioned out by how many numbers is assigned to individual races, leading to a scramble for everyone to sign folks up to their team. Some years ago, before his late extramarital troubles, President Clinton proposed a national discussion on the issue of race. Such a discussion is still in order, but only if we can conduct it like adults, and without all the attendant shouting and poking of fingers in the air. I don’t know if Mr. Connerly’s multi-ethnic category is the answer. But it’s as good a place as any to start the discussion. 

Anyway, on to what Mr. Connerly didn’t say. 

Last week, in an article entitled “UC Reveals Admissions Disparities,” the Oakland Tribune informed us of two things: The number of African-American and Latino students has “plummeted” since the Connerly-initiated ban on affirmative action kicked in, and that African-American and Latino students are being admitted to the UC system at “slightly higher rates” than “similarly qualified” white and Asian applicants. 

The plummeting of the numbers of blacks and Latinos in the UC system was taken as being normal. 

The possibility that “similarly qualified” blacks and Latinos were getting a “slightly higher” jump on their white and Asian friends warranted an investigation, to make sure nothing wrong was being done. 

“We want to determine whether it’s part of the ‘statistical noise’ that occurs in these types of models, or whether it appears the unintentional (racial) patterns are still being exercised in campus admissions policies,” the Tribune quoted Bruce Darling, UC’s senior vice president of university affairs. 

The “discrepancy,” it appears, if one reads the fine print of the Tribune article, is that a UC “model study” predicted how many students of each major race “ought” to be getting into the university, and then noted that the actual numbers were not exactly what the “model study” predicted what they “ought” to be. At UC Berkeley, for example, the study predicted that 32.6 percent of white applicants should have been admitted. Only 32.1 percent of them got in. The difference was slightly larger for Asian students: 34 percent expected, 32 percent admitted. 

One would have thought that such a study of racial percentages would have brought howls of protest out of our good friend, Mr. Connerly, who, after all, has made quite a career in recent years of castigating progressives and civil rights advocates for using race-based statistics to advance their causes. One is tempted to make the conclusion that Mr. Connerly only gets agitated about racial statistics when (coincidentally) they are used to get African-Americans and Latinos in, but is not so exorcised when (again, coincidentally) such statistics are used to keep African-Americans and Latinos out. But perhaps, after all, that is only a coincidence, Mr. Connerly was busy that day, and did not see the news reports. He has time, now, to make amends, if he so chooses. 

But Mr. Connerly, after all, is not really the point here, is he? 

We are merrily—and quite openly and consciously—letting our race attitudes presumptions hang out here, for all the world to see. Does the Tribune run headlines—and do investigations ensue—if African-American and Latino participation falls slightly below the “expected” in some category? If so, we would probably be able to talk about nothing else. And if African-American and Latino students are getting into the UC system in slightly larger numbers than “predicted,” the prevailing presumption is that such a situation cannot have resulted for reasons of merit—greater drive and motivation because such students come from more difficult circumstances, perhaps, or better demonstrated leadership qualities?—but only because of some hidden, unfair advantage. Maybe such suspicions linger because so many of my good white friends (and relatives) know how such a system might operate. 

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