The Washington Post Outlook Section does a much better job today discussing diversity than did the New York Times (see previous post), running a typically impressive article by John McWhorter.
Regarding “diversity” as “a coy, Orwellian euphemism for treating middle-class black students as lesser minds,” McWhorter refutes the idea that preferences in practice are nothing more than a “plus factor” or “tie breaker” to decide between roughly equal candidates (something the Center for Equal Opportunity has been doing in reports for years). Along the way he makes a very powerful, and rare, argument that preferences are unfair … to blacks.
In developing mature social policies, we must face the fact that unequal outcomes do not always result from unequal opportunities. And here is where racial preferences perpetuate the problem they were designed to alleviate. The tragedies of America’s racial past are obvious. But the fact will always remain: Lowered standards lead to lower performance. Incentive lies at the heart of all human endeavor, and if we set the bar low, then only the occasional shooting star will have any reason to rise above it. Many Asian students work almost obsessively to do well. With nothing to be gained by hitting the highest note, none but a sliver of black students will. Ever.
And a handicapping policy is especially pernicious for a group whose history has left its young ambivalent about the scholarly endeavor. As long as preference policies are in place, black students and their parents, as well as schoolteachers and college administrators, lack a crucial incentive to address this strain in black peer culture.
If administrators are content to admit middle-class black students under the bar, then there are two possible explanations. Either they think black people are not up to performing at a high level, or they really don’t care whether they ever learn to. A tragic and complex history has brought us to this point. It is up to the Supreme Court to bring out the best in all of us and outlaw the use of “diversity” as a fig leaf for policies that have kept two generations of black students from showing what they are made of. Consigning the “diversity” rationale to the dustbin of history would be the first civil rights victory of the new millennium.
I couldn’t say it better, so I’ll stop here.
