Minorities Don’t Like Racial Preferences: 5 Ways the Media Hides the Truth
Minorities Don’t Like Racial Preferences: 5 Ways the Media Hides the Truth
Plus a pretty comprehensive roundup of opinion polls
Here’s your weekly dose of Shiny Herd, served up a day later than usual due to Independence Day.
In addition to pointing out five ways the media misleads us, I’ve compiled a pretty extensive list of recent polling data.
Thanks for reading!
Ted
So what do you think of racial preferences? If you oppose them, you’re probably white … Or Asian. Or Hispanic. Or black.
But don’t be surprised if the press frames the Supreme Court's recent ruling differently. Many media accounts will leave you with the impression that racial minorities strongly support racial preferences in college admissions and beyond.
Let’s stroll through the post-ruling coverage, and note some of the ways media outlets mislead us.
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#1. Mixing affirmative action with racial preferences
The flimflam often begins with fuzzy definitions of crucial terms.
The supreme court’s ruling was not really about affirmative action, which is a broad term that includes many rather uncontroversial practices.
The justices were not considering the constitutionality of, say, outreach to minority communities or employee support programs. They were focused on a specific kind of affirmative action—racial preferences.
News accounts often slip in and out of discussions of these two terms, without acknowledging how different they are. Reporters could do us all a big favor by ditching the term “affirmative action” in instances when what’s really at stake is “racial preferences.”
More on that below.
#2. Cherry picking experts
An unhinged NPR piece calls upon Sally Chen from the group Chinese for Affirmative Action to explain how opposition to race-based policies is often “rooted in anti-blackness.”
Then NPR passes the mic to another monoculture-approved expert.
"In the case of university admissions over the past decade, Asians serve as this sort of mask for white privilege," says activist and writer Jeff Chang. "A mask that white privilege can wear in order to hide itself."
Got it.
Baddy whites are hiding their sinister intentions behind Asians.
But where does his analogy leave Asians and other minorities who oppose racial preferences? Are they merely doing the bidding of their white maskers?
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
He’s an Asian expert who hates the Supreme Court decision and somehow linked it to white privilege. He’s done his job. He’s implied that the official minority position (and thus the official white ally position) is pro preferences.
One of the most consequential instances of expert cherry picking involves the framing of post-preferences California. Voters outlawed racial preferences way back in 1996 and an even bluer electorate voted them down again in 2020.
What happened over the past quarter century might deliver powerful fodder to one side or the other.
Zach Bleemer is an assistant professor at Princeton. He’s studied the issue and tells a sad story in which the end of racial preferences harmed many minority students.
Richard Sander is a law professor at UCLA. He’s studied the issue for decades and tells a happy story in which the end of racial preferences delivered great benefits to minority students.
It’s the kind of monumental disagreement that should invite a deep dive from a taxpayer-supported outlet devoted to creating a more informed public, especially since Sander makes some serious charges against Bleemer.
He claims Bleemer’s research is “worse than useless in assessing the effects of Prop 209 at the University of California.”
Sander continues:
And it is critical to realize that the studies finding powerfully positive effects from Prop 209 are based on publicly available data. Bleemer’s research is based on secret data that neither he nor the university will share with anyone else. Since Bleemer is wrong on many major points, and his other analysis cannot be checked (since the data is secret), none of the material in his paper should be trusted, much less reported credulously.
Others have called out Bleemer, but guess which expert is on NPR’s starred contacts list these days?
#3. Cherry picking anecdotes
Racial preferences deliver both good and bad anecdotes, but reporters are more likely to highlight stories that make their audience sympathize with the pro preference viewpoint.
And it’s too easy to stick with the most overheated reporting to find evidence. So let’s take a gander at a source that AllSides rates as centrist—The Wall Street Journal news division.
In this July 1 account, the writers open with the story of a likable woman who benefitted from racial preferences. Later they include a second sympathetic female beneficiary, before ending the piece with another similar anecdote and a foreboding comment by a physician who worries about how the court’s decision could harm health care for minorities.
Sandwiched in the middle of the article is a quick mention of Calvin Yang, a student who opposes preferences.
The accompanying collection of quick comments by students exhibits a similar slant. Of the 11 racially diverse subjects questioned, nine opposed the court’s decision, one was unsure, and only one supported it.
If racial minorities really do support racial preferences, maybe reporters are justified in slanting their anecdotes so drastically.
But what if minorities usually don’t support preferences?
#4. Misleading on the state of public opinion
Many of the most strident responses to the court’s ruling simply omit public opinion polls, and when big brands do include polls don’t be surprised if they choose the ones that best reflect their worldview (NBC and The View are some of the worst offenders).
But even cooler heads can mislead. Here’s how The Wall Street Journal summarized what Americans think:
Affirmative action has been divisive. Half of Americans disapproved of selective colleges considering race and ethnicity in admissions, compared with 33% who approved, a recent Pew study found. White respondents are most likely to disapprove; Black Americans largely approved and Hispanics were evenly split. Asian-Americans approve of affirmative action generally but most oppose its use in college admissions.
Well, of course whites disapprove (racists).
But Asians sort of approve and sort of don’t? Hispanics are evenly split and blacks largely approve!?
That’s not what I reported last month! I claimed that majorities of all racial groups oppose racial preferences. Can you trust me!
Look closer.
You can tell a different story based on which polls you choose to cite and how survey questions are phrased. In general, Americans like affirmative action but don’t like racial preferences.
Reporters, activists, and others muddy the water by mixing discussions of racial preferences with affirmative action. The Journal writers engage in a bit of both—muddying and choosing a poll with rather unusual phrasing.
I’m not accusing the Journal writers of being dishonest. They chose to highlight a recent poll (June 2023) by a respected brand (Pew). That makes sense. But Pew asked respondents whether or not they approve of selective colleges considering race and ethnicity in admissions.
The schools at the center of the Supreme Court case—Harvard and the University of North Carolina—are indeed selective. On the other hand, what happens at selective colleges will affect only a tiny fraction of students. And the ruling’s impact will be felt far beyond the fancy campuses.
Wouldn’t it have been better to highlight polls that ask Americans about racial preferences in college admissions more generally?
In my previous post, I cited two recent polls that do that:
When a 2022 Pew Research poll asked if “race or ethnicity should be a factor in college admissions,” 63% of Asians said no. Majorities of other races said no as well—black (59%), Hispanic (68%), and white (79%).
A 2022 YouGov survey found similar results when pollsters asked if “qualified minorities should be given special preferences in higher education.” Black respondents said no (52%), as did Hispanic (66%) and white respondents (76%). (Asians weren’t polled.)
I’ve identified more polls since I last addressed racial preferences, so let’s see what minority opinion looks like when the dust settles.
It turns out that one of the Pew studies the Journal links to includes a more general question (from December 2022 — see figure below) about racial preferences (one that does not limit the issue to selective colleges).
After pollsters restricted the question to those who had actually heard of affirmative action (which seems like a smart move), they discovered that Americans of all races are even more united in their opposition to racial preferences in higher ed.
Pew found that 82% of Americans said colleges should not consider race or ethnicity when deciding which students to admit. Strong majorities of all racial groups opposed preferences— Asians 76%, blacks 71%, Hispanics 81%, and whites 84%.
The question Pew posed to Asians came from a separate Asian American-focused survey conducted in June 2022, one that was broken down in greater detail than usual. The results revealed widespread opposition to racial preferences across subcategories. Similar shares of Indian (77%), Chinese (76%), Filipino (76%), Vietnamese (76%), Korean (72%) and Japanese (70%) American adults opposed preferences.
It’s something NPR producers might keep in mind the next time they book a representative from Chinese for Affirmative Action.
The polls roll on a bit more.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll (Feb 2023) found more widespread opposition to “considering race at all in admissions” among whites and minorities (52% of minority respondents were opposed).
Two polls show majority support for racial preferences among one minority group (black respondents).
In a new ABC News/Ipsos survey, a majority of Americans (52%) approve of the court’s decision including majorities of whites (60%) and Asians (58%). Hispanics were evenly split (40%), but only 25% of black respondents supported the decision.
The strangest poll I’ve seen comes from the Associated Press and NORC.
It’s the only one I’ve found that reports support for racial preferences in admissions among all racial groups, including whites (Asians weren’t polled). That strikes me as fishy because white opposition to racial preferences is consistent across other polls.
Unusual phrasing may account for the unusual result. The question posed to respondents reads, “Do you think the Supreme Court should or should not prohibit the consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions?”
The question invokes the Supreme Court—a rather unpopular institution. So maybe the public’s distrust of the supremes makes respondents less inclined to allow the court to prohibit anything. Framing the issue as a court decision may also account for the lower support for race neutral admissions in the ABC News/Ipsos poll.
Whatever is going on with the AP-NORC poll, the public’s opinion flips in a follow-up question. When asked how important race or ethnicity should be in the admissions process, majorities of blacks, Hispanics, and whites said “not at all/ not too important.”
If we add the polls that focus on preferences in hiring, the evidence that minorities generally oppose racial preferences gets stronger. Two fairly recent polls revealed that all racial groups oppose such preferences: FiveThirtyEight (2020) only questioned black respondents, and Pew (2019) questioned white, black, and Hispanic respondents.
Reporters could help clarify the state of public opinion by demonstrating how the poll of the day comports with other recent polls.
By my tally (see table below), a majority of Asians oppose racial preferences in three out of three polls. The same can be said of black respondents in six out of eight polls, and whites in seven out of seven polls. Majorities of Hispanics opposed preferences in five polls, and the numbers were split equally in two polls. [NOTE: Updated to incorporate the July 10 Economist/YouGov poll in which majorities of white, black, and Hispanic respondents opposed racial preferences in admissions. Also, a majority of white respondents and a plurality of black and Hispanic respondents supported the Supreme Court ruling. The Economist/YouGov poll is not listed in the table below.]
I didn’t include the AP-NORC poll for reasons described above or the Reuters/Ipsos poll because it didn’t break down findings by racial group. Of course, my roundup of polls could be incomplete, and there’s always an argument for factoring in results from statewide initiatives (I explore that here).
Whether you look at the total number of polls or the best-phrased polls, it’s clear that minorities usually do not support racial preferences. So news outlets that imply that they do are misleading audiences.
Even Pew delivers straightforward findings underneath a mealy mouthed frame. The headline for the survey that found overwhelming opposition to racial preferences among Asians reads: “Asian Americans Hold Mixed Views Around Affirmative Action”
Why is “affirmative action” in the headline? The reason for conducting the poll is the Supreme Court case that examines racial preferences.
And how lopsided do responses have to get before Pew will speak plainly about the issue?
# 5. Leaving dogma unchallenged
Media outlets mislead in many fundamental ways that I didn’t address above.
They often cite racial preferences as the best way to increase black and Hispanic representation, and such framing is suffused with hidden assumptions and dogma.
It gives little attention to other ways to increase representation, it focuses too narrowly on admissions (as opposed to graduation rates) at prestigious colleges (rather than colleges in general or life outcomes), and it naively treats nearly any racial disparity as evidence of discrimination. (Thomas Sowell’s excellent book Discrimination and Disparities should be required reading for every university employee. )
So how should we regard the discussion about racial preferences?
We who yearn for a fair fight of ideas could bemoan the depth of the bias. Or we could celebrate the fact that so many Americans still see through the flimflam.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and a soon-to-be-released feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.