Fallacies: a Case Study

An exercise in critical reading of a text produced by a Critical Social Justice follower

Fallacies are not at all what they sound like… some are…. ah, never mind….

Yes, fallacies, them, a.k.a. logically flawed arguments. They come in hundreds of types, more so than the elementary particles. If we want to study them, we will need some worked examples. Better yet, a consistent text filled with them, known as a Case study. And lo and behold! One such text, entitled “How To Boost the Pipeline of Diverse Students in the Anti-Affirmative Action Era,” has just been produced¹ by—of all people—our Chancellor. Below, you will find an unabridged text of that article, with our commentaries. Let’s get to it!

The Supreme Court’s rejection of decades-long precedent on affirmative action in college admissions is the bluntest assault on the fragile edifice erected to protect diversity in higher education by considering race (among other things) when colleges are deciding which students to admit. But the court’s elimination of affirmative action is neither surprising nor novel, given some of its most recent opinions. Nationally, the affirmative action ban will mostly affect highly selective universities — the Harvards, the Yales, and such. But its symbolism and its effects will be geologic.

Almost there, at the fallacies. But before we get to them, a comment (or two) on the introductory paragraph above.

Nobody is in mourning here. Affirmative action was discouraging² for and demeaning³ to the African-Americans and Latino, and discriminatory⁴ towards the Asian-Americans. As for the “likable” little lazy Lyam, he and his executive dad are horrified now by the loss of it: Lyam’s “likability index” will no longer be able to outweigh Jon Wang’s perfect SAT-MATH. And also: the legacy admissions are on life support⁵.

More to the point, according to Glen Loury, the SCOTUS decision begins a “new era” (0:43) in the African-American struggle for equality, the era when they can and will compete against others “on a level playing field” (0:53).

And one more thing… When WWIII is over, we will also learn the extent of the damage that affirmative action inflicted on our ability to defend ourselves, as a country. At the time when “China’s global lead extends to 37 out of 44 [crucial] technologies,” Asian-American boys and girls are advised to learn less math and do some theater instead, in order not to look like a “cookie-cutter Asian kid.” Looking at them as “kid[s] just sitting in [their] school on [sic.] classes studying away math, and not doing anything that has an impact on society” doesn’t help our case either. A word that starts with t comes to mind… then r… there are at least two of them that fit, you choose.

On to the fallacies at last!

We already know that banning affirmative action drives down enrollment among under-represented groups. California, a powerhouse in public higher education, has been living sans affirmative action since a quarter century ago when voters approved Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action at public universities in the state. Prior to the ban, UC Berkeley (where I received my Ph. D.) and UCLA (where I served as dean for a decade) had student bodies roughly representative of the California high school graduate population eligible for enrollment at universities. After the ban took place, Black and Latino applicants at UCLA and UC Berkeley became at least 40% “less likely to be admitted,” according to a 2020 study by economist Zachary Bleemer. Not surprisingly, he found, as “a result, Prop 209 caused a substantial decline in the number of high-earning early-career URM [underrepresented minorities] Californians.” A quarter-century and half-billion dollars in alternatives later, the gap remains.

Meet post hoc ergo propter hoc = after this, therefore because of this. College admission is not a golden ticket. It is not a stimulus check, neither it is a tax break. It is an admission (pun intended) that the applicant has acquired enough K-12 knowledge to be able to learn how to build a bridge, design a fusion reactor, or remove my tumor. When the same standard is applied to everybody, it becomes apparent that Black and Latino applicants were betrayed by their schools districts, and they did not have the money to pay for the “after-school enrichment” either: affirmative action was just a fig leaf designed to obscure this grim reality. “Dear” affirmative action, good riddance!

The anthem of the enemies of affirmative action pits two constructs in binary opposition: “colorblindness” vs. “diversity.”

“Colorblindness” vs. “diversity” is an example of a false binary, also known as false dilemma. More to the point, the writer attributes this fallacy to his opponent. Meet the straw man fallacy then.

The logic of colorblindness favored by the new ruling is facile:…

“Facile”, really? Here is your appeal to ridicule.

… In the kingdom of individuals, we must relate to each other as such; ….

Oh, the word escapes me… mmm.. “Liberal spirit?” “Enlightenment" maybe?

… race, ethnicity, sex and other ascribed statuses are irrelevant to the higher education social contract.

Argumentum ad lapidem = dismissing a claim as absurd without demonstrating proof for its absurdity. “Race, ethnicity, sex and other ascribed statuses” are irrelevant indeed: higher education is not a “social contract”: it’s an education, for those who are qualified to receive it.

The logic of diversity, however, flows from a theory of human development. We are a nation constituted as bundles of ascribed (born-into, fixed) and achieved (accomplished, realized) statuses; we are formed, above all, by systems of meaning, shared experiences, cognitive models and social practices that emerge from collective experiences. We are socio-cultural beings with disparate histories and experiences, …

This is, probably, an acute case of a Chewbacca defense, a deliberate half-nonsense designed to confuse your opponent. Correct me if I am wrong, in the Comments.

… including, of course, cumulative experiences of privilege and oppression.

“Privilege” vs. “oppression” is another example of a false binary.

In higher education, privilege lives everywhere…

Argumentum ad populum = appeal to a popular belief.

… — most strikingly in the so-called legacy favoritism in college admissions that vastly increases the chances of the children of the elite to attend elite institutions.

As we said, those will be gone soon. Good riddance just as well!

And, educationally oppression lives in enduring — indeed, increasing — re-segregation of our marked minorities — above all, Blacks and Latinos — in schools that are separate and never equal.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc again: both conservatives and progressives become fiscally conservative when it comes to funding schools. Again, affirmative action was there to hide the absence of such funding—a bandaid sent downstream to cover a tectonic upstream mobility problem no one wants to address.

When the longest-serving member of the high court, …

Ad hominem. No need to mention his age.

… Justice Clarence Thomas, states during oral arguments that "I've heard the word diversity quite a few times and I don't have a clue what it means," he is at once playing to the anti-affirmative action crowd and cynically denying the most salient feature of our achieved identities as socio-cultural beings…

Another Chewbacca? Or is it “baby Yoda” this time?

… In the United States, structures of power and inequality have always been racialized.

Argumentum ad antiquitate = appeal to tradition. “Have always been,” but are they now? And should we continue to racialize in order to solve racism?

And opportunities to learn have always been dependent on discriminatory structural inequalities that formed and deform our segregated cities….

Two fallacies together. (i) Argumentum ad populum again: no matter how often one utters “structural inequalities,” they will not, magically, turn structural one day. We are yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence. (ii) Another post hoc ergo propter hoc: it’s the inequalities who prevent Black and Latino applicants to learn—not to “prep” for a month, to learn for 12 years—what they would need to know to continue to college. And again, affirmative action was there to hide this sad fact.

Diversity refers to the “multitudes” we contain as members of differently endowed and differently privileged social groupings.

And yet another Chewbacca. We have a whole Planet Wookiee C here. No relevance… to the Woke, I mean. None at all.

As our country witnesses the dawn of the age of super-diversity, with people of color now the fastest-growing sector of the population, what is public higher education to do to ensure more and better opportunities to learn for our ever-more diverse, younger population? In the absence of affirmative action, these questions take on more urgency.

A model I helped develop as dean of UCLA’s oldest and highest-ranked school — the School of Education and Information Studies — offers a ray of hope. Because opportunities to learn are differentially distributed by race, and ethnicity and class all start in the early years, we need to significantly increase the role of higher education in K-12 schooling in constructing a muscular pipeline of diverse students who are ready to thrive in higher education. The good news is we know how to do this.

First, public universities need to develop authentic, organic, democratic relations in K-12 systems in disadvantaged communities. Teachers need better support, constant improvement of curriculum and pedagogy, as well as the respect that flows from being professionals now working side-by-side with college faculty.

Second, public universities should endeavor to engage faculties from across the disciplinary spectrum to create college-informed, college-identified, college-loving youngsters from underserved communities.

The above four paragraphs are not so bad actually. Credit where credit is due.

Maybe instead of abolishing the SATs we can finally talk about actual K-12 learning. Like real math instead of the anti-racist math. Why did we need to wait for the death of affirmative action to get real?

Third, the fortunes middle-class parents spend in college test prepping, college essay prepping and college internship prepping⁶ — the vertebrae of privilege in American education — now need to be matched by new public investments in higher education to better serve their K-12 partners.

This is another strawman fallacy. Two of them, actually. (i) “Privilege” here is an effigy of “competence." Yes, the competence of a Vietnamese-American girl whose Singapore Math evening classes had been paid for through and through by her not-so-rich parents. (ii) “Test prepping” is a crude cartoon purporting to depict her thirteen long K-12 years in the Singapore program. Add Math Kangaroo, Math Counts, and the International Math Olympiads to the mix.

The opportunities for our ever-more diverse communities to learn have been damaged by the Supreme Court. Today, more than ever, the practice of democratic citizenship requires more education in order for all children to flourish in an ever more diverse, ever more interconnected, ever more fragile world⁷.

Did I hear this right? Did he say “more education?” Does it mean we can keep high-school calculus after all?

And not a word from our Chancellor about Asians, the inconvenient minority and the main subject of the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling. The very ruling his article talks about.

1. Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, “How To Boost the Pipeline of Diverse Students in the Anti-Affirmative Action Era,” The Messenger, July 6, 2023.

2. John McWhorter, “On Race and Academia,” The New York Times, July 4, 2023.

3. Glenn Loury on the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision, UATX’s Short Video Reels, July 2, 2023.

4. Jay Caspian Kang, “Why the Champions of Affirmative Action Had to Leave Asian Americans Behind,” The New Yorker, June 30, 2023.

5. Nick Mordowanek, “Harvard Faces Another Legal Fight Over Its Admissions,” Newsweek, July 3, 2023.

6. This is the most recent abnormality created by the SAT abolition. A high-school student is now expected to pay between $2,500 and $10,000 to get a “mentor” who “helps” the student to “co-author” a peer-reviewed paper. Our Chancellor is really well informed.

7. What is worrisome is that the motte-and-bailey fallacy had not been deployed even once. The motte-and-bailey is Michel Foucault’s invention—a free undulation between two seemingly similar but very different in reality positions, one of which is reasonable and easy to defend (e.g. striving for diversity), while another is controversial and hard to defend (e.g. abolishing the SAT). It seems like the safety of the motte is no longer needed, since the bailey became mainstream.