In Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, Charles Murray compiled an inventory of 4,002 significant figures over 2,750 years who pursued excellence and accomplished great things in the arts and sciences. His inventory overwhelmingly consists of white European males, as do other authoritative and respected inventories.
Murray made the case that no significant non-European figures and events had been omitted from the major inventories. What was known about great works of other cultures was included, and it was white Europeans who did the research and tried to preserve records of those accomplishments, not the non-European cultures doing all the complaining.
In response to charges that European accomplishment in the sciences is exaggerated and that sources used to compile inventories are biased against non-European countries (about 97 percent of significant figures and events in the sciences are Western), Murray encouraged critics to augment the list of “giants” with non-Europeans, with one caveat: You must use the same rules by which European figures and events were included.
Murray writes:
If the definition of “significant event” or significant person” is relaxed to permit a dozen new non-European entries, hundreds of new entries will qualify for the European list, and the relative proportions assigned to Europe and non-European will not change. They may become more extreme, because the reservoir of non-trivial European accomplishments that did not get into the inventory is so immense.
In other words, even if standards for evaluating great scientific accomplishments are lowered to include more non-Europeans, Europeans would still dominate because there are vastly more European figures and events that didn’t make the list the first time around. Murray noted that the West was “as a rule, prodigiously productive.”
Human Accomplishment, one of my favorite books, came to mind after I read about the University of Wisconsin System’s (UW) new “holistic review” admissions process. UW will consider non-academic qualities, such as race, income, and personal statements, to admit more black students because diversity “enhances the education of all students.”
To unmask the real face behind the holistic disguise, consider these questions: Why would adding weight to personal statements mean that more black applicants would be admitted? If the majority of applicants are white, wouldn’t a holistic review of all applicants yield a greater number of white admittees?
Such questions are not meant to be answered because they’re not meant to be asked.
In response to a decrease in black enrollment, the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) is also adopting a holistic admissions process that places more emphasis on race, despite a state law prohibiting the use of race in public hiring and admissions. Commenting on UCLA’ decision to add weight to personal achievements, blogger John Rosenberg, who frequently writes about discrimination, wrote:
[T]here is no reason to think that black or Hispanic applicants are better at personally achieving (or overcoming adversity, if that’s what personal achievement really means) than Asians or Arabs or whites or anyone else. Short of a preferences-equivalent thumb on the scale (such as granting more weight to personal achievements having to do with overcoming racism or growing up in a non-English speaking home), the proportion of minorities admitted because of their “personal achievements” should reflect their proportion of the applicants who meet the newly lowered academic threshold.
Charles Murray said the same thing about significant figures and events in the sciences. If holistic admissions standards are applied to all applicants objectively and consistently — and not just to “minority” applicants — wouldn’t it follow that more white applicants who didn’t make the cut the first time would be admitted under the relaxed standard?
But such discussions are academic. The goal of holistic review is not to admit more whites; it is to admit more lesser qualified blacks in order to “diversify” college campuses. How do I know that, you ask? If there were enough (however white liberals define enough) qualified blacks, that is, black students who meet UW’s grade and SAT score requirements, holistic review would be unnecessary.
It’s a shame that objective and consistent standards are considered unfair at best and racist at worst, but don’t be fooled by the so-called holistic review (as if my readers would be). It won’t be fair to applicants who’ve made the grade nor will it be applied consistently to white or Asian applicants who haven’t. Holistic review is just another race preference policy.
You never hear about schools trying to raise standards. Never. Always lower and lower for the blacks. Nobody wants to deal with the academic achievement gap. Nobody wants to touch the crisis of fatherless black children and unstable homes. Just leave it alone, say white liberals, and judge them by different standards. They’re not like us.
