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Thomas Sowell has a point on this, affirmative action allows in students that cannot reasonably do the work and it results in higher failure rates for students that got in with affirmative action.

His point is that they got in and feel like a failure when they could have gone to a different school and done just fine and not felt that way. And that, as such, affirmative action was actually having a negative effect on minorities.

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I see how that could happen, and probably has. But, for example, I can also see how the top x black applicants to Harvard would be capable of doing very well at Harvard even if those applicants are not in the top 4.6% of SAT scorers who apply to Harvard. (where x is maybe 14% of entering class size to be proportional to US population, and 4.6% is I think the Harvard acceptance rate.)

Anyhow, it's a tough problem and I don't know the right answer and don't envy anyone having to set admission policies.

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