[Nasional-e] The luck of George

[Ambon]

The luck of George
 Nicholas D. Kristof NYT  Saturday, January 25, 2003
Merit and Diversity

NEW YORK In America's coming battle over affirmative action, triggered by
three white students who assert they were denied admission to the University
of Michigan in favor of less qualified minority candidates, we might reflect
on a case where the system worked just as it is supposed to - the case of a
boy named George applying to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.
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It was a stretch for George to get into Andover, which then accepted only 20
percent of applicants overall, and fewer than half even of applicants whose
fathers had attended. Inauspiciously, George had already been rejected by
St. John's, a private school in Houston.
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(While writing about George W. Bush - for of course it is he - during the
2000 campaign, I heard from his family friends that he had been turned down
by St. John's, so I asked him about it. He indignantly denied the story. A
few days later an aide called and said that Bush had checked with his
parents and that it was true. I found his willingness to confirm this
unflattering detail an impressive example of his political integrity, and it
was this kind of honesty that won Bush the respect of many journalists who
were covering him.)
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Andover ended up admitting young George for a couple of reasons. It wanted
Texans to diversify its student body, which was heavily from the Northeast.
In addition, using just the kind of point system that Bush now derides as
quotas, Andover gave George three extra points on a 20-point scale for being
the son of an alumnus. That's a higher percentage than a Michigan applicant
gets for being black.
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Bush has urged the Supreme Court to declare Michigan's admission policies
unconstitutional. But instead of mocking him for hypocrisy, we should focus
on something else: The affirmative action succeeded. If he was in part a
diversity candidate, so what? He flourished at Andover, and classmates
remember that he enlivened the academy by teaching them about drawls,
scorpions and exuberance. Eventually he returned to his roots,
cross-fertilizing both New England and West Texas.
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A few years later, in gaining admission to Yale, Bush also enjoyed special
preferences. He had never made honor roll at Andover - unlike 110 others in
his class, according to his high school yearbook - and his SAT scores of 566
verbal and 640 math were far below the median scores for students in his
Yale class: 668 verbal and 718 math. But in the end, having a Yale pedigree,
a grandfather on the Yale board and a Texas background bounced him into the
entering class.
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Affirmative action is a tough issue because it reflects the collision
between two aspirations - diversity and meritocracy - all in the
hypersensitive zone of race. But this spring as Americans debate the cases
before the Supreme Court, it would be a mistake to consider preferences for
blacks in isolation. How can we evaluate the justice of preferences that
favor blacks without considering preferences that benefit whites (legacy),
athletes (football players), the wealthy (children of donors), and farm kids
from Oregon (me when I applied to colleges)?
.
I admit it: I benefited from affirmative action. Pretentious East Coast
colleges wanted the occasional country bumpkin, and I milked this by larding
my application essay with scenes of me vaccinating sheep, harvesting
strawberries and competing in the Future Farmers of America. If I'd been
just another applicant from the Bronx High School of Science, I wouldn't
have had a chance.
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It also made sense to accept me over a more qualified applicant from Bronx
Science: It's good for colleges to have hicks from the sticks, to tease city
slickers and coach them on the differences between a gilt, a barrow and sows
that farrow. And it's even more important to have black students in those
late-night dorm discussions. How can college graduates understand the world
and have intelligent views on racial matters - such as affirmative action -
if they have never mixed with people of other races?
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The University of Michigan system promotes diversity of many kinds. It gives
points to applicants from underrepresented counties (mostly whites), to
athletes, to poor applicants, even to men who seek to study nursing - as
well as to children and grandchildren of Michigan graduates. Each reflects a
retreat from pure performance criteria, and one can argue about the wisdom
of each trade-off. But it seems deeply unfair for the White House to jump up
and down about the injustice of preferences for blacks while acquiescing in
preferential admissions for jocks, rich kids, Oregon farm boys - and, yes,
Texans with names like Bush.