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Jason Riley | Full Episode 6.20.25 | Firing Line with Margaret Hoover | PBS — Transcript

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0:00- Is affirmative action over in America?
0:03An argument against racial preferences
0:05from a prominent Black conservative,
0:07this week on "Firing Line."
0:09- These programs are not only,
0:11according to the Supreme Court,
0:12unconstitutional, they don't work.
0:14- They're not doing the thing they're designed to do.
0:16- They're not doing the thing they were designed to do.
0:17- [Margaret] Jason Riley has been a member
0:19of "The Wall Street Journal's" editorial board for 20 years.
0:23His recent book is titled "The Affirmative Action Myth."
0:26- Affirmative action has been credited
0:29with lifting Black people out of poverty.
0:32Black people lifted themselves out of poverty
0:34well before affirmative action policies.
0:36- [Margaret] Riley's argument is based on
0:38his reading of history.
0:39He says a Black middle class developed
0:41before racial preferences became widespread in the 1970s.
0:45- I want more thriving Black college students.
0:50These schools want window dressing.
0:53They want a color-coded campus that is racially balanced.
0:56If these policies worked, that would be one thing.
1:00I see no evidence that they work.
1:02In fact, I see evidence that they do just the opposite
1:05by setting up smart Black kids to fail.
1:08- [Margaret] With affirmative action ended
1:09as a legal matter since the Supreme Court's 2023 decision,
1:13what does Jason Riley say now?
1:17- [Announcer] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover"
1:19is made possible in part by Robert Granieri,
1:22The Tepper Foundation,
1:24Vanessa and Henry Cornell,
1:25The Fairweather Foundation,
1:27Peter and Mary Kalikow,
1:29Pritzker Military Foundation,
1:31Cliff and Laurel Asness,
1:33The Meadowlark Foundation,
1:35The Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation.
1:38And by the following.
1:40Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc.
1:44- Jason Riley, welcome to "Firing Line."
1:47- Thank you.
1:48- It has been nearly two years
1:50since the Supreme Court ruled that in most cases,
1:54colleges and universities can no longer use race
1:58as a specific factor in college admissions.
2:02You have a recent book, "The Affirmative Action Myth:
2:06Why Blacks Don't Need Racial Preferences to Succeed."
2:11What is the myth you've set out to debunk?
2:15- The myth is that they do. (chuckling)
2:18One of the reasons I wrote the book,
2:19in fact, the impetus for writing the book
2:21was the discussion around that Supreme Court decision.
2:25There was all of this apocalyptic talk coming out
2:28of some members of the media, some members of academia,
2:31some politicians, that this would decimate
2:35the Black middle class if affirmative action went away,
2:38that racial preferences had created the Black middle class
2:42and that Blacks can't get ahead without special preferences,
2:46and so that was the impetus for the book.
2:48I said to myself, "Wait a minute.
2:49That's not what the history shows."
2:51There was a Black middle class in this country prior
2:54to the existence of these policies.
2:56Moreover, it was growing at a faster rate
2:59than it would grow during the era of affirmative action.
3:03- You've made clear, you're not arguing
3:04that the American Civil Rights Movement has made Blacks
3:07worse off, but you still point to the fact
3:11that advances were being made prior to those reforms.
3:15- If you go back to 1940,
3:20the Black poverty rate in this country was 87%.
3:2387% of Black families were in poverty.
3:27You fast forward 20 years to 1960,
3:30that number is down to 47%, less than half,
3:34a 40 percentage point drop
3:36in Black poverty over a 20 year period.
3:401960 is not only before affirmative action policies
3:45or DEI policies or what have you, or Black a president,
3:48it's before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
3:51It's before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
3:56My point is that affirmative action has been credited
3:59with lifting Black people out of poverty.
4:02Black people lifted themselves out of poverty
4:04well before affirmative action policies were put in place.
4:07- And you point to those advances
4:09as partially due to the fact that Blacks were moving.
4:12- Oh, yeah. - To more productive
4:13areas of the country.
4:14- Exactly. - From South to North-
4:15- You have- - From rural to urban.
4:17- Exactly, and both of those points are important.
4:19The great migrations of the 1930s and '40s
4:23were tremendously instrumental
4:24in Blacks lifting themselves out of poverty,
4:27and this was of course the post-World War II economy
4:31that we had that was lifting all boats.
4:33Whites were making tremendous gains as well,
4:36just not as fast as Blacks were making gains,
4:38so you not only saw Black uplift, Black upward mobility,
4:42you saw Blacks gaining on whites.
4:45There was a convergence occurring during this area
4:48of the 1940s and '50s and '60s
4:51and we would see that start to peter out right around 1970,
4:55right around the beginning of affirmative action,
4:58of the era of affirmative action.
4:59- You write, quote, "At best, racial preferences
5:02helped to continue something that was already happening.
5:06At worse, racial preferences did more
5:09to throttle than expedite Black upward mobility."
5:12- Yeah, and the data I point to has not only to do
5:15with leaving poverty, but also home ownership rates,
5:19incomes, educational attainment,
5:22entering the skilled professions,
5:24and on all of these indices,
5:27we're moving in the right direction.
5:29- So here's my question.
5:29Is this a causation versus correlation question,
5:32or do you have specific evidence that you can point to
5:37that shows that affirmative action
5:38actually throttled upward mobility?
5:41- I'm making a more correlation argument.
5:43Causation is very hard to tease out.
5:46People can draw their own conclusions.
5:48What we do know, however, from looking at the data,
5:51is that we saw certain trends taking place
5:54prior to the government deciding
5:57to put in place racial preferences
6:00in hiring or in college enrollment.
6:03That's what we can look at.
6:05So I don't think that the affirmative action policies
6:09themselves tell the entire story.
6:11There are other things going on,
6:13but I do think they're a large part of the story.
6:16- One of the arguments you reference
6:19with respect to affirmative action
6:22is the fact that it's hard to shake
6:24for Black Americans the stigmatization-
6:27- Oh, yeah.
6:28- That comes with affirmative action.
6:29You write about the downside of that stigmatization
6:33in your own experience when you received a job offer
6:37from a local paper and a former editor
6:39from your college newspaper said, quote,
6:41"Congratulations, I heard they were looking
6:43for more minorities."
6:45You wrote that that remarks stung.
6:47- Oh yeah, it does sting, and to me,
6:50it's evidence of the sort of psychological toll
6:53these policies have taken.
6:55- Yeah.
6:57- Not only on Blacks, but on whites as well,
6:59in terms of stereotyping.
7:03You know, this was referenced in the Supreme Court decision
7:08ending race preferences in the Harvard case where, you know,
7:12if you're a white student at an elite school
7:16and you look around you and most if not all
7:19of the Black students at that school seem to be struggling,
7:22seem to be pooling at the bottom of the class,
7:25seem to be dropping out at higher rates
7:26or switching to easier majors,
7:28when you leave college, what is your impression
7:32of the intellectual capabilities of Black people
7:36based on your college experience?
7:38And that's one of the downsides I think
7:41of shoehorning kids into schools
7:44where they're overmatched academically.
7:46- This is the mismatch theory.
7:47- This is the mismatch theory.
7:48But it has also taken a psychological effect
7:50on Blacks themselves.
7:52There were a lot of Black elite intellectuals out there
7:57saying, "I only got where I got in life
8:00because of these policies.
8:02I was only able to get into a good college
8:05because of these policies."
8:07So affirmative action has left a lot of Black people
8:11doubting their own capabilities
8:14and I think that's yet another downside of these policies.
8:17- You know, it reminded me of a passage
8:21in Condoleezza Rice's memoir where she acknowledges
8:25and writes about the fact that her hiring at Stanford
8:28went through the affirmative action process,
8:31and her dad said to her, "Don't worry about it.
8:34Their processes have been excluding us for years.
8:37Just go show them how good you are."
8:40- Wow.
8:41- Which gave her the confidence to move forward and do it.
8:43How do you respond to having a different viewpoint about it?
8:48- Well, I just point to the data and the data shows
8:52that the most important characteristic
8:55in admitting a student to a selective school
9:00is whether that student's preparation,
9:03entering test scores, entering grades,
9:06match those of the typical student at that school.
9:10When there's a gap,
9:11the data shows that the student tends to struggle.
9:14It doesn't matter if the student is Black, white.
9:18If there's a gap in that objective criteria,
9:22that student tends to struggle,
9:24but my point is that racial preferences,
9:28or preferential treatment,
9:31it's not doing these students any favors,
9:36because typically at these elite schools,
9:39the Black students who are admitted,
9:40even with lower standards,
9:42have standards that are well above the national average.
9:46So these students could be hitting it out of the park
9:48at a less selective university.
9:50They could be thriving at another university
9:53where they met the credentials
9:54of the average student at that school.
9:56The best example of this we have
9:58is what happened at the University of California system-
10:01- I was just about to go there.
10:03- Back in the 1990s, and you know a number-
10:05- So let's recap what it is
10:06just to reset it for the audience.
10:07A ballot initiative, ballot initiative 209 was passed
10:10in the state of California,
10:11which eliminated race-based preferences
10:14for college admissions-
10:16- Throughout the university.
10:17- Throughout the University of California system.
10:19- System, right, on the elite campuses
10:20throughout the UC system,
10:21so we're talking about Berkeley and UCLA,
10:24you saw an initial drop, sharp drop in Black
10:27and Hispanic enrollment on those campuses,
10:30but you saw an increase in overall enrollment
10:35throughout the UC system,
10:36so fewer Black and Hispanic kids might have been going
10:39to Berkeley, but more were going to UC Santa Cruz
10:41or UC Santa Barbara, and moreover, more were graduating.
10:47They were graduating on time.
10:49They were graduating with higher GPAs,
10:52and they were graduating in the more difficult disciplines.
10:55So my point is that a program, affirmative action,
11:00that had been put in place to increase the ranks
11:03of the Black middle class had in practice
11:06been producing fewer Black doctors and lawyers
11:10and architects and engineers than we would've had
11:13in the absence of the policy and that's why I say
11:18these programs are not only,
11:19according to the Supreme Court, unconstitutional,
11:23they don't work.
11:24- They're not doing the thing they're designed to do.
11:26- They're not doing the thing they're designed to do
11:27and California is one of several examples of that.
11:31- There's another study by Zachary Bleemer
11:33of Princeton University that argues the opposite point.
11:37His study, which was conducted
11:39with 300,000 applicants to the UC system,
11:42shows that after banning affirmative action,
11:45the measure caused 10,000 minority students to, quote,
11:49"Cascade into lower quality public and private universities
11:53pushed some students entirely
11:55out of the university level education
11:57and resulted in a 5% average lower annual wages."
12:02What is your understanding of that study?
12:05- He seems to be making a version of the argument
12:08that even if you admit a slightly less qualified student
12:13to a better school, they're gonna get a better education
12:16'cause they're at a better school,
12:18and that will have ramifications
12:21throughout their career after they graduate.
12:24There have been studies, however,
12:26showing that that's not necessarily the case.
12:28Now, I'll tell you about one that I mentioned in the book.
12:30Law school students at Howard University,
12:34the historically Black school in Washington DC,
12:38were compared with law school students
12:40at George Mason University,
12:42and it turns out that Howard University
12:45Black law students passed the bar exam
12:48at much higher rates on their first try
12:51than George Mason University students were Black.
12:53HBCUs do not use affirmative action,
12:57yet they punch well above their weight
12:59when it comes to producing Black professionals
13:02in this country and always have.
13:04- So then with respect to the Bleemer study,
13:08that suggests that actually
13:10underrepresented minorities ultimately suffered.
13:15Your response is...
13:16- Well, I don't know if that's a causal argument
13:19that he's making, I don't know which students
13:22went into which professions.
13:25It's just, I haven't looked at the study,
13:27so I can't respond at that sort of granular level to it,
13:31but what I can say is that I don't see it,
13:36what his conclusion is disproving, the mismatch theory,
13:39which I think is what he's trying to do.
13:41- When the Supreme Court was considering
13:43Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard,
13:45the University of California president
13:47and all 10 chancellors submitted an amicus brief
13:51to Harvard in support of Harvard
13:53and UNC's affirmative action policies,
13:55writing that despite years of extensive efforts, quote,
13:59"UC struggles to enroll a student body
14:01that is sufficiently racially diverse
14:03to attain the educational benefits of diversity."
14:07What do you make of the UC leadership,
14:11arguing the opposite side of their own policies,
14:14in that case?
14:15- Well, what is the point of a college education?
14:22I mean, I guess the problem here
14:24is that the schools have one agenda.
14:27They wanna make their campuses look like America.
14:29They think it helps their reputation.
14:31I'm more interested in whether it benefits the students.
14:34I want more thriving Black college students.
14:38- Yeah.
14:39- These schools want window dressing.
14:42They want a color-coded campus that is racially balanced
14:46for, I don't know, their aesthetic sensibilities,
14:50but to me is not what college should be about,
14:53and the reality is that not only in an era
14:57prior to these policies
14:59did we see college completion among Blacks rising,
15:03we have state after state after state example,
15:06prior to the Harvard ruling, of the same thing happening.
15:09In other words, better Black college outcomes
15:14in states that use race blind admissions policies,
15:18and so I'm just following the data here.
15:20If these policies worked, that would be one thing.
15:24I see no evidence that they work.
15:26In fact, I see evidence that they do just the opposite
15:28by setting up smart Black kids to fail.
15:33- The window dressing argument
15:34I think in their defense they would say
15:36it's not as so much about window dressing as about ensuring
15:39excellent outcomes for racially underrepresented minorities.
15:43- Well, at these HBCUs Margaret, I mean,
15:48go speak to a college administrator
15:51at Howard or North Carolina A&T
15:56and find out if the Black students on campus
16:00have difficulty learning mechanical engineering
16:03'cause there aren't enough white students around
16:05to enrich their learning experience.
16:07I doubt you will find that.
16:10So again, this is an argument I just don't,
16:13this whole idea is that Black students
16:16need to be sitting next to white students
16:17in order to learn. - Isn't that about
16:18white people?
16:19- It just annoys me.
16:21And too often racial balance
16:23seems to be the highest priority in our education system
16:26and I see no evidence that it should be.
16:28- There's an argument on the left.
16:29It has come about since the affirmative action decision
16:33that, by the way, Clarence Thomas has also suggested
16:37is meritorious in his memoir that
16:41we should not discriminate based on race,
16:43but class-based discrimination
16:47ought to be considered if we're trying
16:49to create a more fair system.
16:54You've recently written a column
16:55in opposition to this approach.
16:58Why do you not see class-based admissions
17:03as a viable alternative?
17:06- Well, one problem I think is that they
17:10may not pass muster with the Supreme Court.
17:14Chief Justice Roberts said in his majority opinion
17:17that the court would not accept using proxies for race
17:23and I think class would be used as a proxy for race
17:27if that's what proponents are trying to do here.
17:30- But if we're talking about upward mobility.
17:32- Well, you have sort of a quantitative problem
17:35and a qualitative problem.
17:36Quantitative problem is that there are way more
17:39poor white people in America than poor Black people
17:41or poor Hispanic people, so you could easily fill
17:46a class-based system with poor whites,
17:50so that's not gonna get you the diversity
17:52you're looking for.
17:53The other problem is that low income white students
17:57outperform low income Black students,
18:00both on standardized tests and in terms of grades,
18:03so do low income Asian students.
18:06So again, you have a problem there
18:07where you will have to really fiddle with the definition
18:11of poor or underprivileged or needy
18:16to get the right racial mix that you're looking for.
18:18What you're gonna have to do is find proxies
18:20so you're gonna have to say,
18:21"Okay, we have, we want more poor Blacks."
18:24We can't just go on income
18:26'cause there are a lot of poor whites with the same income,
18:28so we're gonna have to say, you know,
18:29"Do you come from a segregated neighborhood?
18:31What about your school? Was that segregated?
18:35What about family makeup?
18:37Did you come from a single parent?"
18:38We're gonna have to really stretch the definition
18:40of disadvantaged in order to get the right racial mix,
18:44and it's not, you know, there's some people
18:47that still have this sort of Yale or jail mentality
18:50where if you don't get into the best schools in the country
18:53or the most selective schools in the country,
18:56your life will be a failure.
18:58I don't buy that, I don't understand that,
19:01and most people don't go to elite schools.
19:04Most rich people don't go to elite schools.
19:05Most poor people don't go to elite schools.
19:07You can get a very, very good education
19:09at other institutions and thrive in doing so
19:14and that's what I think should be the goal here.
19:16- It's true that most haven't gone to elite universities,
19:19but of the Fortune 500 CEOs,
19:2211% went to the elite universities.
19:2425% of current US senators went to elite universities.
19:2741% of presidents since 1960 went to elite universities.
19:3071% of Supreme Court justices since 1963
19:33have gone to elite universities.
19:34So there is an argument
19:36that there is enduring cultural clout
19:39and power associated
19:41with having attended the elite universities,
19:44and thus some detriment and risk to minority students
19:47if the numbers drop in the wake of the SCOTUS decision.
19:50That's I think one of the arguments.
19:51- I think that if you are really concerned about
19:55more racial balance at our most selective schools,
19:59you should do something about the K-12 system
20:01in this country- - Yeah.
20:02- Where you have Black students,
20:03Black 12th graders graduating at reading levels
20:07of white eighth graders.
20:08That is not something a few remedial classes
20:10are gonna make up freshman year in college.
20:13That is where the focus needs to be,
20:15and unfortunately the powers that be at the K-12 level
20:21are very entrenched in keeping the status quo
20:26in K-12 in terms of having most of our students
20:29attend public schools based on their zip code,
20:32and all attempts to fiddle with that system,
20:35school vouchers, charter schools, tax credits,
20:38meets very strong resistance,
20:40namely from the teacher's unions
20:41who benefit from the current K-12 status quo,
20:44but I think that should be the target
20:46of any attempt to fix what we see on college campuses
20:52in terms of racial balance.
20:54- Jason, you're also the author
20:55of a biography on the Black economist Thomas Sowell,
20:59and Sowell, as you know,
21:01appeared on the original "Firing Line"
21:03with William F. Buckley Jr. many times-
21:06- Yes, yes.
21:07- Individually and also in the debate format,
21:09and in one debate was about education
21:13and the need for competition in K-12 education.
21:18Take a look at this clip of Sowell
21:20making this point in a debate with Buckley.
21:23- 40 years ago, I received a far better education in Harlem
21:28than the people who are living in Harlem today
21:30have available to them.
21:33It's not a question of whether it'd be disorder
21:35or this method of teaching or that method of teaching,
21:38if there's pandemonium in the school,
21:40no method of teaching is going to work.
21:44As long as the public school system is a monopoly,
21:48they will act as other monopolies act
21:50towards their customers, with contempt.
21:54- What do you make of Sowell then?
21:56- Well, it shows that he's been right
22:00for a very long time, very long time.
22:02If anything, all of his arguments
22:04have strengthened over the decades.
22:07Anyone familiar with the typical school
22:11that an inner city Black child attends
22:14would not at all be surprised
22:16that there are so few Black students
22:18walking around Harvard campus.
22:20I mean, Black students are relegated
22:22to some of the worst K-12 schools in this country,
22:26with the least experienced teachers,
22:28the most violent schools in the country,
22:30and the ones that graduate
22:32the fewest percentage of students.
22:34Why is anyone surprised
22:35that more of them aren't at Berkeley or UCLA?
22:38And again, if you wanna address what's going on
22:40on college campuses, this is where you should start.
22:45- This is how to fix the pipeline.
22:46- Yeah.
22:47- In your recent columns in "The Wall Street Journal,"
22:50you have been critical of President Trump's assault
22:53against universities like Harvard, but you have also said
22:57that, quote, "Academia certainly had it coming."
23:00- Oh, sure.
23:01- But citing the administration's attacks
23:04on scientific research and international students,
23:07you write, quote, "Is the goal to fix
23:11what's wrong with higher education or to destroy it?"
23:14- Yeah.
23:15- What is your answer to that question?
23:17- I sympathize with President Trump's
23:22dismay at the antisemitism we've seen on campus.
23:26I think that's a legitimate concern.
23:29I'm not sure you address it by banning grants
23:35to these schools that are conducting research
23:38on Alzheimer's and other debilitating illnesses.
23:43That's good work that needs to continue
23:46and I don't think it has much to do
23:47with the antisemitism going on in other parts of the campus
23:52and so I'm not sure how you address your concern
23:55by going after these research grants.
23:59- Final question, and this relates
24:01to the theme of your book.
24:02Last month, the Students for Fair Admissions,
24:05the group that sued Harvard
24:06over the affirmative action policy,
24:08sued UCLA's medical school
24:10alleging that it is still engaging
24:12in discrimination on the basis of race
24:14by asking questions that allow universities
24:16to glean the race of the applicants from their responses.
24:21Going forward, how confident are you
24:23that race really will cease-
24:26- Oh, I'm not at all confident.
24:27- To be an deciding factor?
24:28- I'm not at all confident that it'll happen anytime soon.
24:32You know, I liken it, Margaret, to what happened
24:34after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision,
24:40which ended racially segregated schools.
24:43It's not as if the Southern segregationists
24:45threw up their hands and go,
24:46"You know what, we lost at the Supreme Court,
24:48I guess we're just gonna have to desegregate now."
24:51No, they fought and fought and fought for decades.
24:56There had to be dozens and dozens of follow-up lawsuits,
24:59follow-up court orders to get Brown enforced.
25:03I think you're going to see the same thing happen
25:05in the wake of Students for Fair Admissions.
25:08I think Students for Fair Admissions and Edward Blum,
25:11the gentleman who runs it, have their work cut out.
25:14They will have to continue to follow up with these schools
25:17who will try and cheat and do end runs around the decision
25:20just as the Southern segregationist did.
25:21These are opponents of a universal standard for everyone,
25:25regardless of race and ethnic background.
25:28That's what the Supreme Court said we should have,
25:30that's what our Constitution says we should have,
25:32but we still have people in the society today
25:34who do not want that and they're gonna fight.
25:37- Jason Riley.
25:38- Thank you.
25:39- Thank you for joining me.
25:40- Thank you.
25:41- It's been a pleasure. - Thank you.
25:43- [Announcer] "Firing line with Margaret Hoover"
25:45is made possible in part by Robert Granieri,
25:48The Tepper Foundation,
25:50Vanessa and Henry Cornell,
25:52The Fairweather Foundation,
25:54Peter and Mary Kalilkow,
25:56Pritzker Military Foundation,
25:58Cliff and Laurel Asness,
26:00The Meadowlark Foundation,
26:01The Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation,
26:04and by the following.
26:06Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc.
26:10(upbeat music)
26:36(gentle music)
26:40(gentle music)
26:42- [Announcer] You're watching PBS.

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