According to an article in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, the pro-busing Civil Rights Project at Harvard has released another set of studies, this time of the various percentage plans, purporting to show that alternatives to “explicit racial preferences” are ineffective. (Link, which requires free registration, thanks to Erin O’Connor)
[F]for those race-neutral alternative percentage programs to work, they must be combined with outreach, financial aid and support programs that are often race-conscious themselves, targeting underrepresented minority communities, the reports contend.
The findings of the studies have been disputed by the White House, the state of Florida, and several of the involved universities, but I would like to make a different point, or rather to re-emphasize a point I’ve made before: preferences based on race is racial discrimination; “race-conscious” is not the same as, and does not necessarily lead to, racial discrimination.
The original, pristine version of affirmative action — taking affirmative steps such as recruiting in minority communities, etc., to insure that no one is discriminated against because of race — can be described as race-conscious. (“What?” I can hear them protesting. “‘recruiting in minority communities’ requires the continued existence of segregation to be effective…!”) The central component of racial discrimination is double standards, evaluating members of different races differently. “Race-consciousness” does not require that, but race preference does.
Critics of colorblindness, who are fond of repeating that alternatives to explicit racial preferences “don’t work,” i.e., don’t produce the same amount of “diversity” as preferences do, thus overlook or ignore what I believe is the basic point — that racial discrimination is wrong, bad policy, and is (or should be) illegal and unconstitutional. It’s rather like saying that alternatives to torture aren’t as effective at sending guilty people to jail.
You return to a point that is immaterial to one part of your audience and crucial to another part.
One part: Racial discrimination as practiced through affirmative action is wrong, and stop. End of story.
The other part, in which I include myself, is becoming progressively more uneasy with affirmative action on learning more about the specifics. It’s the “sausage-making” aspects–things sound good when described as generalities, but look pretty ugly when examined in detail. The current U. Michigan case, and the concrete meaning of their “20 points” is the current poster child.
And yet–people like me have seen a transformation of US society in our lifetimes, and the superficial increase in diversity (greater participation by “visible minorities” as they say in Canada) is a change that we applaud. Black and Asian and women cops, cf. white-male-only when I was a kid–these changes are improvements. We want to see a society of opportunity and inclusion. In particular, we want a high proportion of those who self-identify as members of traditionally-discriminated-against groups to believe, correctly, that their opportunities for success are equal to those of any other American.
Abandoning affirmative action may be morally or legally necessary. But if it leads to the richer and professional parts of society becoming much “whiter”, then we see this as a big negative.
It gets back to the question of whether non-race-based programs can serve the honorable purposes of a.a. (if they are honorable–a related question). You tackled this issue in the post and lengthy comments back-and-forth on the Texas “top 10% of HS grads” initiative a few months ago.
Are there ethical alternatives to a.a. that would pass a “smell test”, and also accord with a plain reading of the 14th amendment? What happens if the 20 points get reassigned to “experienced economic hardship”? “overcame adversity”? Does this simply tempt admissions officials to read closely for “jr. year, member African-American Student Society”? Does it lead, perhaps to a less-black frosh class? If it does, is that a bad thing after all?
I recognize that you do post on such matters–one disadvantage of long posts is that older ones are easier to miss.