Reason 562 Why 'Color Blindness' Is Wrong

Mad Professah saw this post by Angela Winters at The Moderate Voice blog alerting me to an article in the Washington Post on the success of African American students in Advanced Placement courses in the Washington, D.C. suburbs of Fairfax, VA and Montgomery, MD. I immediately was reminded that if African American conservative Ward Connerly had his way, such race-specific data would not be available.

Connerly was a University of California Regent appointed by Republican Governor Pete Wilson who was the main spokesperson and force behind two racially divisive ballot measures, 1996's Proposition 209 (which eliminated affirmative action by the State of California based on race or sex) and 2003's Proposition 54 (which would have barred the State of California from collecting or using data based on race, color, ethnicity or national origin). The so-called Racial Privacy Act was an extreme manifestation of the conservative principle of "color blindness" which they claim is the best way to heal racial divisions in this country.
Tomorrow, we are likely to see another manifestation of this when the United States Supreme Court rules on two important school racial desegregation cases; most observers expect a 5-4 decision saying that race can not be taken into account even when it is argued that it being used to preserve racial and ethnic diversity.

The Post reviewed AP data from nine of the 10 school systems in the nation with the largest black populations, from New York City, with 115,963 African American students in grades 9 through 12, to Baltimore City, with 22,225. One of the 10, Detroit, declined to provide data. The analysis considered 20 other school systems, all among the 80 largest for black high school populations, that are known for their rigor. The smallest systems studied were Prince William and Anne Arundel, each with about 5,000 black high school students.

The analysis considered the number of passing exams by black students and weighed it against black student enrollment in grades 9 through 12. A score of 3 or higher on the five-point AP scale is considered passing because it is the typical cutoff for credit and advanced standing in college.

Outside the Washington region, no school system analyzed produced more than four passing AP tests for every 100 black high school students -- half the success rate of Montgomery and Fairfax.

Here's a graphic illustrating the results