Yep. Everywhere you look someone is jumping up and down with glee and shouting “Gotcha! Gotcha! Gotcha!” because he or she, unbeknownst to him or her but for the umpteen thousandth time this week alone, has just discovered that white people sometimes benefit from preferences!!! Can you believe it? All this hoopla about blacks receiving preferences when white folks have received them — because their parents or grandparents attended the ole alma mater, or they play the oboe left handed, or whatever — for years and years. Yes, people, the familiar Invidious Ubiquitous Non Sequitur — all discrimination is of a piece; racial discrimination is no worse than a leg up to legacies — has appeared yet again, today in a truly atrocious column in USA Today by Roland Martin, “editor of BlackAmericaWeb.com, news editor of Savoy magazine, and author of SPEAK BROTHER! A BLACK MAN’S VIEW OF AMERICA.”
At least the article doesn’t require extended comment since it says the same thing all IUNS do: legacies get preferences; Bush was a legacy and therefore “he benefited from a quota system…. That’s right. Our own president is an affirmative action baby.” Etc.
To be consistent, those who are against affirmative action should be against all preferences; they shouldn’t wimp out by saying one is OK while another isn’t.
Wrong. To be consistent, anyone who thinks racial preference is no different from legacy preference should propose repealing or amending the Civil Rights Act. It says nothing about legacies. Why should it?
The most telling and fundamental criticism of racial preference is not that it violates the merit principle. Merit is not a constitutional mandate. It is that it violates the principle that is at the core of the American creed, which is that distributing burdens or benefits based on race or religion is wrong.
UPDATE – One other point about this column. Consider the following from it:
Blacks weren’t able to attend many of the nation’s schools for more than half of the 20th century. As a result, a significant number of black students weren’t able to write on their application that they were a “legacy” because a different legacy — that of racism and Jim Crow — didn’t allow their parents and grandparents to have the same educational opportunities as their white counterparts. So if you or your grandparent graduated from the University of Texas, Georgia, Mississippi State, Florida or countless other schools, then you and your children are taking advantage of America’s racist legacy.
And that is the inherent issue with affirmative action. Despite the denial of so many today, America cannot make up for its vile, humiliating and deadly racist past. But to level the playing field does mean taking into account the benefits individuals get in this society because they are white.
Now, let’s grant the argument in the first paragraph above, even though many current Americans who are not given preferences arrived here too late to take much, if any, advantage. But even letting that go, I somehow doubt that shouting about all whites benefiting from America’s “vile, humiliating, and deadly racist past” is the best way to persuade them to (from this point of view) penalize themselves and reward others, many of whom are not victims.
You know, I understand what he means about Texas and Florida; they’re both very competitive public universities. But Mississippi State isn’t any more competitive than any other Mississippi public university, as decided in the Ayers case settlement. Admission is strictly by grades and ACT/SAT, and not particularly hard to obtain. Alumni children do get a half-waiver of the out-of-state portion of tuition, but that’s not admission, and it’s pretty easy to get residency.
Otherwise, it doesn’t matter if your dad was governor. You’ve got to have the grades.