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This is as close to a sensible middle ground as can be found in the
intemperate world of American racial politics, but temperance is not nec–
essarily accuracy. Missing from Bowen and Bok's analysis of the factors
that might be depressing black academic performance is the large shadow
of affirmative action itself. Could growing up in a culture of affirmative
action, wi th its insti tutionalized assumptions of lower performance, actual–
ly lower performance?
No one, of course, thinks that racial preferences are the sole factor in
depressing black academic performance, but the idea that racial preferences
may be some kind of factor has been widely discussed and it is significant
that Bowen and Bok, mesmerized by what they see as the positive effects
of the policy, simply ignore it. What they take as indisputably positive is
that, by means of racial preferences in undergraduate college admissions,
many more black students than otherwise would be the case graduate from
eli te colleges and universi ties, and a very high percentage of these gradu–
ates, with the assistance of still more racial preferences in admissions,
matriculate to the nation's most prestigious graduate and professional
schools. Still further down the river, the black graduates of these elite grad–
uate and professional programs proceed to earn exceptionally high incomes
and, in large numbers, play leading roles in American society.
Most policies, however, involve trade-offs. In the case of racial prefer–
ences in admission, it is perfectly conceivable that many individuals favored
by the policy benefi t subs tantially by having increased opportunities
through the rest of their lives-and that blacks in general are injured by
those racial preferences.
What would it take to determine if racial preferences themselves are a
detriment to contemporary black academic performance? This is precisely
the kind of question, open to regression analysis in a rich database, for
which Bowen and Bok could have made a profound contribution. Racial
preferences in American education, of course, have been an environing
condition for over thirty years and it is thus difficult to find a control group
of African-Americans who have experienced other important aspects of
American life without also experiencing education's version of affirmative
action-difficult but not impossible. Perhaps examining the academic per–
formance of black and white American students who were educated
abroad would shed light on the question. It is not hard to imagine that the
eighty thousand students in Bowen and Bok's sample might include a fair
number of children of di plomatic personnel and business executives living
outside the United States.
But Bowen and Bok attempt no such ferreting out of how affirma–
tive action affects the motivation of black students. On the contrary, they
are content with citing statistics about how few blacks were able to attend
