Jen, I hope McCain’s off-the-cuff endorsement of the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative holds. And I’d encourage him to support identical initiatives on the ballot in Colorado and Nebraska as well. (Full disclosure: I am one of the official proponents of the Colorado initiative; having grown up in the state and taught at the University of Colorado Boulder, I am also currently a part-time resident.)
Colorado is particularly fertile ground for McCain on this issue. In 1996, my Center for Equal Opportunity released a study of admissions at Colorado’s public colleges and universities for the 1995 academic year, which showed widespread racial and ethnic preferences, especially at the more competitive schools in the state. Among other findings, the study showed that half of white students rejected at five campuses around the state had higher test scores than the median scores for black students admitted to those schools, and GPAs for black students were consistently lower in all state schools as well. Preferences for Hispanics were smaller (as they are at most schools using racial and ethnic preferences); whereas blacks at CU Boulder had median SAT scores 200 points lower than whites, Hispanics’ scores were 70 points lower on average. But preferential admission did not end up helping black and Hispanic students graduate. Less than 40 percent of blacks and only 50 percent of Hispanics graduated from CU Boulder, compared to almost 75 percent of whites. CEO will be releasing a new analysis of Colorado admissions’ data this fall.
But despite compelling and consistent evidence (here are data on 47 public colleges and universities) that racial and ethnic preferences harm white and Asian students in the admissions process but don’t help blacks or Hispanics actually earn degrees, politicians are loath to embrace abandoning this corrupt and ineffective system. And Republicans are rarely better than Democrats on this issue–at least when it comes time to doing something concrete. In those states where Ward Connerly has successfully led efforts to put initiatives on the ballot, most Republican office holders and candidates fled the scene. Nor did Republicans do anything to cut back on such preferences when they controlled both Houses of Congress.
Ironically, in 1998 Sen. McCain failed to support an amendment sponsored by Sen. Mitch McConnell that would have eliminated a racial preference in federal contracting in an omnibus federal transportation bill. The provision in the previous legislation was the source of a challenge in Colorado that resulted in the 1995 Supreme Court decision, Adarand Constructors v. Pena , which held that such racial classifications must demonstrate a compelling state interest in order to be constitutional. Valery Pech Orr, one of the plaintiffs in Adarand, is also the co-sponsor of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, which would ban this type of state contracting preference.
I’m glad Sen. McCain has had a change of heart-he should get some credit with conservatives for this and it may well give him an advantage in November. In Michigan, the most prominent Republican candidate to endorse a similar initiative on the ballot there in 2006 actually won re-election, Attorney General Mike Cox, whereas the Republican gubernatorial candidate who opposed it, Dick De Vos, lost.