Ross Douthat, whom I in the past have unkindly—and even perhaps unjustly—referred to as Ross Dumb Fuck—is at it again, bemoaning the suffering of white Christians, citing a study by Princeton sociologists, Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford for support. According to Ross, Espenshade and Radford provide “statistical confirmation for what alumni of highly selective universities already know. The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions.”
Peter Beinert picks up on Douthat’s piece, arguing that “the combination of race-based affirmative action (which favors middle-class black and Hispanic kids), immigrant overachievement (which ensures a significant representation of Asians), legacy admissions (which favors rich white kids) and the high cost of private colleges (ditto) means that working-class whites, especially from the South and Midwest, are badly underrepresented on elite campuses.”
It’s certainly true that race-based affirmative action programs reduce the number of white Christians on high-end campuses, but let’s get serious. We all know who’s really causing the problems for white Christians: it’s the Jews. They’re up to their old tricks again—studying hard, reading, thinking. So what’s an old country boy supposed to do—give up football?
Here are the facts: According to Yahoo, Harvard undergrads break down as follows: 19% Asian American, 9% Hispanic, 9% black, and about 62% white. According to Wikipedia, citing Hillel, about 30% of Harvard undergrads are Jewish. Discard the atheists, agnostics, and Unitarians, as you damn well should, and the white Christian percentage at Harvard is 30%, tops. Ugly!
Beinert pumps for “class-based” (which presumably means income-based) affirmative action, eliminating existing “legacy” (alumni) admissions as well. This is, in fact, desirable, but I doubt if the beneficiaries would be “working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions.” It would be hard-working Asian Americans and Jews.
Afterwords
The hardest part of switching to class-based affirmative action would be the embarrassing drop in the number of black and Latino students, which has, of course, already occurred in California state universities. Black enrollment at UCLA dropped from 7.1% in 1996 to 3.1% in 1998, due to the elimination of affirmative action programs. In 2010, it was 4.3%, not bad, really, considering rising costs and the decision of California to admit an increased number of out-of-state students. Ultimately, this is a bullet that must be bitten.
It will be interesting to see if conservatives’ devotion to principle will lead them to dismantle not only affirmative action programs for blacks but also for whites, notably legacy admissions. In Virginia there is another form of “pro-white” affirmative action—allotment of admissions to the state’s prestigious state schools by geographical region as well as grades and test scores. The obvious purpose is to prevent kids from Northern Virginia—many of them Asian Americans and, yes, Jews—from completely taking over William & Mary and the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. What would Thomas Jefferson say? Well, I hope he would pour himself a glass of sourmash and smile. If not, to hell with him.
Update
I should have mentioned that the Old Dominion is the home state of Sen. Jim Webb, who has trouble not wrapping himself in the Confederate flag. Over at Slate, Tom Scocca ably dissects Jim’s latest totally non-racist moan, which the totally non-racist Wall Street Journal felt compelled to publish.
