Good intentions or not, that’s what collegiate affirmative action does:
Mismatch theory, most recently expounded by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, is the most powerful critique of affirmative action yet developed, demonstrating empirically that students admitted to academic environments for which they are ill prepared learn less, and are less likely to pursue rigorous majors, than had they been enrolled in schools where their peers shared their level of academic preparation.
But the Times story conveys a subtler point as well: Racial preferences are not just ill advised, they are positively sadistic. Only the preening self-regard of University of California administrators and faculty is served by such an admissions travesty. Preference practitioners are willing to set their “beneficiaries” up to fail and to subject them to possible emotional distress, simply so that the preference dispensers can look out upon their “diverse” realm and know that they are morally superior to the rest of society.
It’s really quite ugly. I saw this sort of thing with regards to around one-third of my black teammates. Some were perfectly qualified for the university’s academics and did well, others probably should have been somewhere that covered material at a slower pace. But there were some who shouldn’t have been permitted within ten miles of the campus, as they had absolutely no business being there and it was immediately obvious to everyone who tried to help them.
“His writing often didn’t make sense. He struggled to
comprehend the readings for [College Writing] and think critically about
the text….. ‘He would revise his papers and each
time he would turn his work back in having complicated it. The paper
would be full of words he thought were academic, writing the way he
thought a college student should write, using big words he didn’t have
command of.'”
There is nothing more obvious, or pathetic, than a five-cent mind attempting to make use of a fifty-cent word. The problem is that this sort of “assistance” will probably not be abandoned so long as the official mantra remains “education is the answer”. The idea that many individuals are simply ineducable beyond certain levels is just too frightening to be contemplated by everyone who subscribes to the mantra.