An Affirmative Action Dilemma

Greg Mankiw writes about how many of the black students at Harvard are black immigrants not African Americans. So recent black immigrants to the U.S. are benefiting from affirmative action at elite colleges.

Many elite colleges feel they must have a certain minimum number of black students. Thus African Americans and black immigrants are in competition for affirmative action slots. To the extent that black immigrants are doing well, it reduces the number of African Americans who are admitted to elite colleges.

If the point of affirmative action is to increase diversity and diversity is define by skin color then this is not a bad thing.

If, however, the purpose of affirmative action is to counteract past discrimination in American society then it makes little sense to give affirmative action benefits to recent black immigrants.

Being a cynical economist, I tend to see affirmative action as a form of rent-seeking in which certain groups have successfully organized and gotten special benefits for themselves.

African American groups fought to get affirmative action benefits. But the affirmative action programs were set up not to just help African Americans but to help people with black skin. When there were few African immigrants almost all people with black skin in the U.S. were African Americans, so it made sense for black groups to fight for affirmative action for all black people in the U.S.

But now a large number of well-educated African immigrants reside in the U.S. They, almost accidentally, qualify for affirmative action benefits. And in so qualifying they reduce the affirmative action rents available to African Americans. As a consequence, I predict that African American groups will soon start to fight to have special affirmative action benefits for the descendents of people who were U.S. slaves.