Nationwide, African American graduation rate is only at 40%. In California, after prop 209, African American graduation rate is 70%. Of course the national rate includes states such as CA and Michigan that disallow racial preference. So essentially graduation rate is 100% better when you don’t create artificial mismatch of students and schools.[/quote]
It’s not necessarily stacking the deck against these students. For the 40% (just taking your numbers) of the disadvantaged students who DO manage to graduate, many Affirmative Action advocates would say that the degree of improvement in their lives is far greater than the relative degree of improvement in the life of a person who always had an academic edge (IQ, parental resources, better schooling, etc.). One might also argue that by using these students as role models for other upcoming students in the disadvantaged communities, they can change whole communities and the expectations of the students from those communities…getting far more “bang for the buck” from the Affirmative Action programs, relatively speaking.
