California voted for a ban on racial preferences by state government back in 1996. Michigan did so in 2006. If states so infected with “progressive” thinking can do that, you’d think that a state like Arkansas would have long ago put an end to preferences by the state. It’s only now on the verge of doing so, however.
Law professor Robert Steinbuch writes here about the way the Left is trying to preserve state discrimination. Leftists in the state “have finally abandoned their pretextual justifications for affirmative action–now openly admitting they cling to this structural racism to perpetuate quotas, set asides, and preferences.”
One opponent of the bill claims that if it were to pass, the state would have to close its black art museum. That’s simply false, but the sort of thing politicians say when they have no real arguments.
How about the effect on higher education? If the state ended racial preferences, would that be bad for minority students? No, argues Steinbuch:
I collect and study evidence of the effects of race preferences in law schools. In one large data set from Arkansas, the first-time bar-exam failure rate for the largest minority group admitted was double that of whites. This tragic outcome was a direct result of leftist pigment-prioritizing prejudice allegedly designed to be helpful.
When minorities are given massive preferences, however, they do worse on average. Think of it this way: Learning to swim in the middle of the English Channel is harder than in Lake Maumelle. If you’re not up to the challenge of the former, dropping you in a raging current is a really bad idea.
It seems likely that Arkansas will join the other states that have seen the light and banned governmental discrimination.