Benefits and Losses (Fred Speaking)
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		Ann				Malik

Let's back up and look at this a different way. We have assumed that strong affirmative action benefits black people. We should question that. What if affirmative action harms its 'beneficiaries?' When blacks are hired or admitted to the best professional schools under strong affirmative action programs, many people wonder whether they really have the necessary skills. Some believe that they just don't have what it takes and that they are only there because of political clout. Those suspicions create an atmosphere of hostility. The black people involved have to live with that, and I don't see how we can regard that as a benefit. In other words, the program can hurt the people it is supposed to help.

There are lots of other problems. The self-esteem of the black 'beneficiary' suffers. More important, I think we are building in failure where we could be building success.

When an affirmative action program puts a black student into a school where he or she can't do the work, that student is likely to fail. How else can you explain the high dropout rate of black college students? Only 46% of black students graduate in five years at Berkeley compared to 76% for whites. It's a disaster.

If those same students had gone to schools where they met the ordinary admission standards, they would have succeeded.

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