The Reasonable William Raspberry

I enjoy reading William Raspberry, syndicated Washington Post columnist, and more often than not agree with him … when he’s not writing about affirmative action. Today’s column, “The Reasonableness Test,” shows off both his skills, and his flaws.

Even in the middle of a column I disagree with, as I do this one, he can come up with a real gem of an observation. On merit and qualifications, for example, he observes that “[h]ardly any black student would demand the right to a seat denied a higher-scoring black applicant.” Preferentialists questioning merit should keep that in mind. But then, in the very next sentence, he exasperates by saying, “[w]hen the issue is cast as a test of individual rights, it’s hard for a court to deliver an answer that makes sense.” To me, that’s about as wrong-headed comment as one can find anywhere. I think it’s quite easy for courts to provide answers to abuses of individual rights, and they’ve been doing so eloquently, if spottily, since the founding of the republic.

Raspberry is above all a reasonable man, and I would like to think I am, too. But there are times, as here, when reasobableness is put forward as a substitute for principle, and then it is not so appealing. Thus Raspberry writes:

The admissions fight is not about equity but about discretion — less a matter of what “equal protection” requires than of what reasonableness allows.

And exactly why is this fight not about equity?

But if equity isn’t the issue, what is? The (white) military officers who testified recently on what affirmative action has accomplished for the armed forces spoke directly to the appearance of fairness, openness and opportunity. How effective could the military be, they asked, if the rank and file were filled with men and women (disproportionately minority) who couldn’t find decent careers outside, while the officer ranks comprised, disproportionately, the sons and daughters of the educated well-off? It makes sense, they said, to take special pains to create an officer corps that looks more like America — not by promoting the unqualified but by searching out and nurturing the qualified.

Leave aside equity, Raspberry is saying, it doesn’t look good, it doesn’t look fair, for there to be a disproportionate number of minorities on the lower rungs of the ladder throughout society.

One can agree that indeed this is not good, however, without agreeing that whatever criteria various organizations have for moving up the ladder should be set aside for minorities, that their race should be “taken into account” in determining their success. Double standards aren’t fair, and what’s more, using Raspberry’s own criterion, too many people regard them as unfair for them to be a viable solution to the problem of minority underperformance. And besides, what do Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, poor people, Southern Baptists, etc., “look like”? Aren’t they part of America, too? Shouldn’t we worry if they are “underrepresented” at the University of Michigan. Raspberry is too reasonable, and probably even too principled, to worry only about people who look like him, but that is a troubling aspect of his argument.

Reasonableness is fine, in short, as long as it stays in its place. Raspberry calls for “discretion” instead of “equity,” but he must have forgotten that one of the central struggles, and successes, of the civil rights movement was precisely to replace what was then called “white male discretion” — by employers, admissions officers, etc. — with the clear, principled bar against discriminating on the basis of race. (Discussed earlier here)

That remains a principle that should not be sacrificed to anyone’s “discretion.”