How likely is it that racial gaps will be substantially eroded in 25 years, so that the use of racial preferences is no longer desirable? Is the year 2028 a logical endpoint for special efforts to ensure that underrepresented minority groups are given a fair chance in admissions or employment, or will the vestiges of past discrimination and unequal treatment still largely be with us then?
These are not the legal grounds on which the court ruled, but the question is not without interest, and it is undoubtedly tied to society's demand for diversity in institutions of higher education.
Although a definitive answer is impossible, estimates of the extent of income mobility from fathers to sons provide a rough forecast. Studies find that 40 to 60 percent of the gap in earnings between a particular individual and the average worker is closed from one generation to the next. Results specifically for blacks tend toward the lower end of this range but are not significantly different, according to research by Bhashkar Mazumder of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
In 1969, the average 30- to 39-year-old black male worker — who had attended separate and unequal schools and entered the labor force before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred discrimination — earned 37 percent less than the average white worker. This gap was mainly because of the legacy of discrimination.
If — and it is only a hypothetical if — the depressed income of black workers is not prevented from regressing to the mean because of subsequent discrimination, then the gap would be expected to close to 15 to 22 percent for the next generation, and to 6 to 13 percent when members of the third generation reach their 30's, around a quarter century from now. The actual earnings gap for men in their 30's in 1999 — roughly the second generation — was 19 percent, so the forecast appears on track.
Continuing discrimination or backsliding on civil rights enforcement would slow this convergence, so Justice O'Connor's expectation is probably optimistic. Nevertheless, it is not unrealistic, at least when it comes to earnings, to think that the lingering effects of discrimination could be substantially reduced, though hardly eradicated, in the next quarter century or so.
| The New York Times' Alan B. Krueger tries extrapolating race-based affirmative action's prospects in "Why Affirmative Action Matters"
posted in articles on July 27, 2003 3:41 AM | t (0)
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