Justice in the Process, Not in the Results

Walter E. Williams: John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and chairman

of the economics department at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
The End of Racism is a book with considerable information and analysis of the many
injustices done in the name of racial equality; however, the excerpt presented in these
pages leaves room for additional opportunities in addressing affirmative action issues.

D'Souza contends that the concept of proportional representation, having taken on a

seemingly axiomatic status in discussions of racial equality, is an outgrowth of cultural
relativism. I disagree. The origins of proportional representation as a norm are far
simpler and have their roots in a false vision of justice. That vision holds that equality of
results is a measure of justice. The results people use to determine and measure the
presence or absence of justice are statistics on educational attainment, occupational
and income status, life expectancy, and other socioeconomic data. Seeing significant
statistical differences in racial group comparisons, people conclude that these
differences would not exist, and surely not stubbornly persist, without racial injustice.

Justice cannot be determined by results. Justice can only be evaluated by examining

process. Consider a scenario where three people play a regular game of poker. The
typical evening's outcome finds individual A winning 75 percent of the time, and
individuals B and C winning only 15 and 10 percent of the time, respectively. Knowing
only the game's result, nothing unambiguous can be said about whether there has been
"poker justice." Individual A's disproportionate winnings are consistent with his being
either an astute player, a clever cheater, or just plain lucky. The only way to determine
whether there has been poker justice is to ask process questions such as: Did the
players play voluntarily? Were the poker rules neutral and unbiasedly applied? Was the
game played without cheating? If affirmative answers can be given to those questions,
the process was just. There was poker justice irrespective of the poker results.
If justice is a process question, how can it help us evaluate the university admissions
process that D'Souza rightly criticizes? In examining the process question, I want to
discuss an issue never touched upon in the debate about university admissions policy.
There is a broad consensus that university admissions should turn on meritorious
standards such as SAT performance and high school grades. A consensus on a
process, however, is not necessarily synonymous with justice.

Most universities and colleges receive the largest portion of their financial support from
federal and state revenues. Students who attend receive a highly subsidized education.
Taxpayers, be they waiters or dentists, intelligent or dull, find a portion of their earnings
going to support institutions of higher learning. Access to the benefits is selective across
the state's citizens based on such "meritorious" criteria as SAT performance and high
school grade point averages.
Access to a publicly financed service, based on high school academic performance and
SAT scores, raises the question: What standard of justice or fairness justifies compelling
one to contribute toward the support of a service and yet be denied the enjoyment of its
benefits? With admission based on meritorious criteria, it is a safe prediction that the
son of a waiter has a much smaller chance of attending University of California at
Berkeley than does a son of a dentist because it is much more likely that the son of a
waiter attended inferior quality primary and secondary schools. Waiters pay state taxes
just as do dentists. Moreover, there is the possibility that, because of numerical
differences, collectively waiters pay more. Thus, we have a situation where people with
poorer education and lower income find some of their earnings going to support the
careers of the better educated and higher income persons.
I cannot think of a moral argument that can make the case for requiring someone to pay
for something while simultaneously denying him the benefits. We would find the idea
reprehensible if a grocery merchant were to use intimidation, threats, and coercion
(methods employed by government to collect revenue) to require a person financially to
"contribute" to the purchase of the merchant's goods and then establish certain
"meritorious" criteria in order for one actually to receive the merchandise.

An argument based on justice would require that taxpayer-supported universities and

colleges have an open admissions policy whereby all those who contribute to the
financing have an equal chance of being admitted, regardless of education or skills.
That, of course, would constitute a serious misallocation of resources. A solution far
more consistent with both justice and efficiency requires that taxpayer financing of
higher education be terminated altogether. Institutions of higher learning should be
financed through tuition and voluntary contributions. If that were to be the case, the use
of admissions criteria yielding any demographic mix of students would be consistent
with justice.
While there are these philosophical issues arising from taxpayer financing of higher
education, from a strictly black perspective, there are efficiency questions that arise from
university affirmative action admission policies like those of Berkeley.

The average SAT score of black students who gain admission to Berkeley is 952, which
is higher than the national average of 900.[1] However, the average SAT score for white
students at Berkeley is 1232 and for Asians 1254. Despite having SAT scores higher
than the national average, 70 percent of Berkeley's black students fail to graduate. At
MIT the average black student scored in the top 10 percent of all students nationally on
the mathematical portion of the SAT; however, compared to other MIT students, he
lagged far behind, in the bottom 10 percent on the mathematical portion of the SAT.
Nearly one-fourth of MIT's black students fall to graduate. Those who do graduate have
significantly lower grade point averages than do their colleagues.

The problem for black students at Berkeley, MIT, and elsewhere is not that they are
academically unqualified in any absolute sense. The problem is academic mismatch
due to affirmative action policy. Those black students who failed to graduate at Berkeley
might be very successful attending San Jose State University, where they would be
more evenly matched with other students. This tragedy is cast in an even more ominous
light by the black student failure rate at San Jose State University, where more than 70
percent fail to graduate.[2] We have a situation where black students who would be
successful at San Jose state University have been recruited to Berkeley and have
turned into failures in the name of affirmative action, diversity, and multiculturalism.[3]

The self-interested economic efficiency question for black people as a group is not if
there is proportional representation of blacks at universities like Berkeley or MIT. The
question is: Are there so many blacks achieving SAT scores higher than the national
norm and scoring nationally in the top 10 percent on the mathematics portion of the SAT
that we can afford for them to be sacrificed and turned into failures for the sake of
assuaging liberal guilt, affirmative action, diversity, multiculturalism, or anything else?

University affirmative action admissions policy is counterproductive in another important

way. If there is a more effective way to sabotage black academic excellence than the
current public school system in most cities, it has yet to be revealed. Black students
often graduate from high school anywhere from two to four years, and more, behind
white students. In some cases, black students may simultaneously have a high school
diploma and be functionally illiterate. The fraudulent education black youngsters receive
is reflected in their performance on academic achievement tests, their need for college
admissions criteria other than academic merit, and their need for remedial classes and
retention programs.

Because of affirmative action, poor academic achievement does not necessarily mean a
student is denied college admission. Students are admitted even if they do not meet the
college standards and even if they academically differ significantly from other students.
Were admission based on academic criteria only, there would be an obvious paucity of
black students on many campuses, particularly the nation's most prestigious, as
D'Souza observes. If black students were conspicuously absent on the campuses of the
nation's top colleges, it might give rise to black parents and civic organizations using
political muscle to demand that public schools cease fraudulent education and the
issuance of diplomas not worth the paper they are written on.
There is no evidence of current racial discrimination against blacks by college
admissions offices. The academic problems of black students lie in poor primary and
secondary education, poor academic motivation in many instances, and a complete
unawareness by many black students and parents about academic competition and the
quality of education their children receive relative to others. Somehow that fact must be
communicated. After all, the determinants of success in college are established long
before a student even thinks about the application process.

Notes
1. Thomas Sowell, Inside American Education: The Decline, The Deception, The
Dogmas (New York: Free Press, 1993), 144.
2. Ibid., 146.
3. This behavior does not differ significantly from an ordinary person asking me to
teach him how to box, and the first fight I get him is with Mike Tyson. He may have
the ultimate potential to be a good fighter, but he is going to get his brains beaten out
and never box again.