Unexpected WSJ Article

Several posts ago I commented on my surprise at finding an OpEd in the Washington Post that actually opposed racial preferences. Now I find that I’m equally surprised by an article in the “Page One” section of the Wall Street Journal making the tired, familiar argument about “affirmative action of another kind.”

The author, WSJ reporter Daniel Golden, is struck by the fact that minority status was not the only non-merit characteristic that allowed some lower performing students of Groton’s class of 1998 to be accepted into an Ivy League college ahead of better performing students. Money, legacy status, connections often did the trick.

As I’ve argued till my fingers are numb, I think it is perfectly legitimate to criticize such preferences, especially when they are tolerated by those who claim to believe (as I do not) that “merit” must always and everywhere trump everything else. But, unless you claim to put academic merit above everything, there simply is no inconsistency in opposing racial or religious preferences while tolerating preferences for legacies or left-handed pitchers.

The implication in all of these articles noting this non-existent irony is that somehow the civil rights movement (the real one, the one that existed until the late 1960s) was hypocritical for opposing racial discrimination while saying nothing about, say, government subsidies that favored soybeans over peanuts, or vice versa.

You wouldn’t think that so many people would have to be reminded so often that all discrimination is not the same.

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  1. stu April 30, 2003 at 2:01 am | | Reply

    And, of course, there’s that pesky 14th Amendment to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Ignoring several recent corrupt and shameful court decisions which tortured the statutory language in a manner worthy of Lewis Carroll, those laws outlaw state (government)discrimination based on race.

    Is it pedantic to point out that our elected representatives have consistently and expressly legislated against racial discrimination, but have apparently not felt that discrimination in favor of the athletically-gifted, the well-born, etc., warrant legal censure? Even our courts, less than vigilant in honoring democratic processes when they interfere with personal notions of fairness, and which have, for example, ruthlessly stamped out all-male, state-supported higher education, despite the total absence of a legislative grounds for such action, have not seen fit to ban legacy admissions.

    Besides, it is a smoke screen. The same people who label athletic scholarships–which by the way disproportionately benefit educationally deficient black males–as inappropriate, unless accompanied by racial favoritism in general admissions, are the very same folks who scream the loudest against admissions’ policies based almost solely on grades and test scores.

    Ultimately, the affirmative action crowd are snobs. They regard asians (geez, I hate that word) as the new Jews. Grubby grinders single-mindedly and relentlessly pursuing honors and success. How gauche they are. Worker bees who let others see them sweat and strive.

    It must be galling as hell to the educrats and intelligensia to know that many of the jaspers (e.g., parents) who pay their salaries have the common sense to know that diversity and affirmative action are just pure BS. As my Dad used to say, it takes a man with an advanced degree to think up something so wrong and dangerous.

    Keep up the good work.

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