WSJ columnist Jason Riley on the “myth” of affirmative action

“Black people lifted themselves out of poverty well before affirmative action policies were put in place.”

When Jason Riley was a student at the University at Buffalo, he was offered a job by the local newspaper. An editor with whom he had worked at the college paper congratulated him on the offer and added, “I heard they were looking for more minorities.”

The implication that Riley—who is Black—was selected due to his race stung, and he now sees that moment as an example of the “psychological toll” that affirmative action policies have taken on Americans of all races.

“This affirmative action has left a lot of Black people doubting their own capabilities,” he says on last weekend’s “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover.”

Riley, a columnist and member of the editorial board at The Wall Street Journal, makes a provocative argument in his new book, “The Affirmative Action Myth.”

“Affirmative action has been credited with lifting Black people out of poverty,” he tells Margaret. “Black people lifted themselves out of poverty well before affirmative action policies were put in place.”

Riley felt compelled to explore the issue after seeing how many on the left responded to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which deemed most race-based college admissions policies unconstitutional.

Critics of the decision warned it would halt Black economic progress, but Riley argues Black Americans made much greater economic gains in the decades before affirmative action became widespread in the 1970s than they have since then.

"If these policies worked, that would be one thing," he says. "In fact, I see evidence that they do just the opposite, by setting up smart Black kids to fail." When asked what evidence he could point to that directly proves that affirmative action policies throttled black advancement, Riley admits that he’s making more of a correlation argument, saying, “Causation is very hard to tease out.”

"I don't think that the affirmative action policies themselves tell the entire story," he acknowledges. "There are other things going on, but I do think they're a large part of the story."

Riley believes affirmative action pushed Black students into more selective schools where they disproportionately struggled, dropped out, or switched to easier majors. This is the “mismatch” theory, and there is some data behind it.

"I don't know that you're doing these kids any favors by sending them to schools where they're going to struggle, rather than sending them schools where they are going to thrive," he says.

However, studies have reached different conclusions on the matter. After California banned race-based admissions statewide in 1996, one of the most significant studies of more than 300,000 applicants to the UC system over a five year period 1995-2000, by Zachary Bleemer of Princeton University found that thousands of minority students “cascaded” into lower quality universities, some students were pushed out of the university system altogether, and post-university Black and Hispanic students saw 5% lower average annual wages. When Margaret asks how Riley responds to those findings, he says he has not reviewed the study.

Riley argues the debate over racial balance on campus misses the point of college education. “I want more thriving Black college students. These schools want window dressing,” he says. “They want a color-coded campus that is racially balanced for, I don't know, their aesthetic sensibilities.”

Riley is a devotee of Thomas Sowell, a conservative Black economist about whom Riley published a biography, “Maverick,” in 2021. Sowell made several appearances on the original “Firing Line” in the 1980s, arguing that government efforts to boost the Black community were ineffective at best and harmful at worst.

Every week, we show our guest a clip from the original show, so we of course looked at Sowell’s interviews. We came across a 1986 debate where Sowell advocated for breaking what he called a “monopoly” that the public school system holds on educating low-income Black children.

Riley echoes Sowell’s assessment when pressed about whether Black students miss out on opportunities if they are underrepresented at the elite universities that, for better or worse, produce many of the nation’s political and business leaders.

“If you are really concerned about more racial balance at our most selective schools, you should do something about the K-through-12 system in this country,” he says. “Anyone familiar with the typical school that an inner-city Black child attends would not at all be surprised that there are so few Black students walking around Harvard campus.”

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