I was particularly struck by one item in the long New York Times analysis of the state of the Democratic Party:
an effort by Governor Richardson to create a political action committee to train Hispanic political operatives and unify Hispanic voters across current divisions of those with Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban or Central-American ancestors.
The Democrats, in short, find it necessary to spend money to train Hispanics how to be, and vote like, Hispanics.
If “Hispanics” are in need of training so that they begin to think and act like, well, Hispanics rather than Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc., then what happens to the rationale for “diversity” preferences to “Hispanics”?
If the advocates of “diversity” really believed in diversity, shouldn’t admissions officers at, say, the University of Texas be giving preferences to Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Vietnamese, etc., and not simply to “Hispanics,” who without more refinement in the process would probably always be preponderantly Mexican-American? Does anyone know how many Hispanics at the University of Texas, or anywhere, are not Mexican-American? If diversity really were the purpose of “diversity” preferences, wouldn’t those numbers be easy to come by?
The most prominent national defender of “diversity” preferences at the moment is the University of Michigan. But, as mentioned here, its Hispanic preferences are limited to Mexican-Americans and Puerto Rican-Americans born on the mainland. What on earth is the “diversity” justification for that? Why wouldn’t Cuban-Americans or Honduran-Americans (think Miguel Estrada) provide as much “diversity” as Mexican-Americans or American-born Puerto Ricans?
Diversity is a good thing. “Diversity,” as a justification for racial and ethnic discrimination, is divisive bunk.
ADDENDUM – As quoted in Judge Friedman’s opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3256 (March 27, 2001), the district court trial of the Michigan law school case [pdf file, p. 10], Michigan’s Trial Exhibit 6, p. 81, states that preferences are extended to “prospective students who are African American, Mexican American, Native American, or Puerto Rican and raised on the U.S. mainland[.]”
You’re grossly distorting the use of “train” in this article. The purpose is to train persons of Hispanic descent as political operatives, not train political operatives (or anyone else) how to “be Hispanic.”
As for seeking ways to find common ground between the various groups listed — why not? I don’t think Prop. 187 cared, did it?
And Judge Friedman’s interpretation of the UM policy is wrong, as has been noted a number of times. See, e.g., http://www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/legal/grutter/grutter_appeal.html at footnote 32.
With all due respect, I think you (whoever you are) are mistaken. First, it was not Judge Friedman’s “interpretation.” He was quoting a Univ. of Michigan document. Second, I have looked at the cite you refer. All Footnote 32 says is that “there was no testimony from any witness” making the distinction between mainland and other Puerto Ricans. So? Neither Judge Friedman nor I said anything about witnesses. We referred to a Michigan statement of Michigan’s policy.
John: Your (conveniently) anonymous antagonist gloms onto a thin reed here; though a point is made–and a much larger one missed.
It appears the PAC is organized to train operatives and not hispanics. Yet what exactly is the function of the operatives? To train hispanics! It seems these wayward hispanics are diverse in their cultural milieus, rather than the manageable monolith that their would-be handlers in the Left seek to cultivate.
Quite a pity, really. If only these people weren’t so diverse, they could be more “diverse.”
As an aside, it’s great to see some dissenting respondents on this site. I’ve been eternally fascinated with the hypocrisy of left-wing racial politics, and always enjoy feedback from the Kool-Aid drinkers.
Stuart – You are exactly right. The whole point of training the operatives is to train Mexican-, Cuban-, Guatemalan-, etc.-Americans to behave more like “Hispanics” and less like Mexican-, et. al. Americans. And, of course, the same need exists for that distinctly, perhaps uniquely, American category of “Asian-Americans,” too many of whom, to the dismay of the Democrats, continue to think of themselves primarily as Japanese-, Chinese-, etc.-Americans.
You are also right to appreciate dissenting views here, which I do as well.
A couple rejoinders:
1) To suggest that persons of “Hispanic” (read broadly) backgrounds share common interests in this country — interests that may even, at times, transcend the smaller group associations of Mexican-American, Cuban-American, et al. — hardly states more than a tautology. I’m not denying that important fissures exist in the “Hispanic” community, nor do I suggest that those fissures are somehow invalid. But to suggest the opposite — that no coherent “Hispanic” identity exist — I think goes too far. Again, I will ask: what about Prop. 187? Are the distinctions relevant for those purposes?
2. From the law school’s reply brief:
“Contrary to Plaintiff’s assertion, the Policy does not continue the pre-1992 practice of distinguishing between Puerto Ricans born on the mainland and those born in Puerto Rico. The Law School stopped drawing such a distinction in 1992, with the adoption of its Policy. The Law School published a brochure that mistakenly suggested that such a distinction continued, but that error was corrected.”
Jim – Thanks for your comments. Re No. 1, I think reasonable people can disagree as to how much of a “Hispanic community” exists, and how much its existence must be posited as necessary for “diversity.” My point, of course, is not that “fissures” exist in “the Hispanic community,” but that there is less of a Hispanic community than a Mexican-American community, Cuban-American community, etc. I doubt that Cuban-Americans in south Florida have much, or anything, more in common with Mexican-American farm workers in Texas or California than they do with similarly situated non-Hispanic south Floridians. And I doubt even more that whatever they may have in common –Spanish-speaking family members, for instance — justifies giving members of either group a preference, especially when you consider that such a preference could easily go to, say, the son or daughter of a wealthy Cuban physician. (A Gates Foundation minority scholarship went to such a girl — from a wealth family that had come here from Colombia years ago, vacationed in Switzerland, etc. — who attended school with my daughter a couple of years ago.)
Re Number 2: You may be right about Michigan no longer limiting its preferences to Puerto Ricans born on the mainland. You quote law school reply brief stating that the policy ended in 1992, but Judge Friedman’s statement quoted a Michigan document dated 1996. But even if they discarded the policy, what sense — in “diversity” terms — did it make in the first place? Moreover, from what I’ve seen Michigan does continue to limit its “Hispanic” preferences to Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans. Again, how does that square with the “diversity” justification for the preferences? And if its justification is “diversity,” why limit the preferences to Hispanics (whoever they are), Native Americans, and blacks? Do the blacks have to be US blacks, or do Africans count? Detroit has one of the largest populations of Muslims in the U.S. Would they not provide any “diversity”? Why no prefs for them? I would bet that you could fit all the born-again Christians on the Michigan law school faculty into a phone booth, but no hiring prefs for them. Do not different religious perspectives and experiences also provide diversity? In short, as I’ve argued, I believe real diversity has real merit, but the “diversity” preferences are not really based on a desire for diversity.
John-
About point 1: I think we’re arguing about degree. The Cuban-American community in the US is almost the exception that proves the rule — they have political power, influence, commercial success, &tc., that any other group of immigrants from our hemisphere can’t begin to match. Given the host of other issues that the various Hispanic groups might share, what’s wrong with identifying ways to protect them? I can think of innumerable examples of more-diverse groups of people banding together for less coherent goals (see, e.g., opposition to Soviets in Afghanistan).
As to what weight to give prefernces, or the cases like the one for your daughter’s school, I think that has more to do with general complaints about affirmative action than anything particular to the Hispanic community.
About point 2: I have no interest in defending the pre-1992 policy. I agree questions of inclusivity in aa programs are difficult, but I’m not sure that they are so difficult that they detract from their benefits.
And when complaining about diversity among UM’s faculty ranks, I think it’s legitimate to question why there aren’t more evangelical Christians — but then, I’ve never seen people particularly interested in discriminating against them, either. (I would hope there would be more on faculty; of course, I would also hope there would be more persons of color and women, too).
But why isn’t your complaint just the conservative parallel to the IUNS?
Jim – I think you’re probably right about our difference over the degree of Hispanic community-ness being one of degree. I do think, however, that you veer off the debate-over-preferences reservation when you talk about “issues” that “the various Hispanic groups might share.” To the degree that they’re poor or farmworkers or don’t speak English well they might indeed share “issues,” but that is hardly grounds for believing that they possess something unique enough to provide some Hispanic-centered “diversity” to others.
Re the born-agains, I suspect they have in fact been discriminated against in elite academia as much, and probably more, than Hispanics.
The problem of “inclusivity,” in my opinion, doesn’t speak to the cost-benefit analysis of the discrimination involved in offering preferences based on race. It speaks to the disjunction between the stated rationale for the discrimination (“diversity”) and the actual content of the policy. The inclusivity/exclusivity difficulty indicates that “diversity” is not the real reason for the preferences.
As for why my complaint isn’t “just the conservative parallel to the IUNS,” I confess to not understanding what you mean. My IUNS complaint is that it is a non-sequitur (and one that is invidious even though it is ubiquitous) to say that if awarding benefits based on athletic or musical ability (or legacy status) is acceptable, then it must be acceptable to award benefits based on race. I don’t understand how my (to me identical) complaint about preferences based on ethnicity (actually, on ethnic-sounding surnames, since to the best of my knowledge no one has to prove that he or she really is Hispanic, whatever that would mean) is a conservative version of the IUNS that I complain about.
John-
If I veered too far from the debates over preferences, it
Jim – I don’t mean to be uncharitable, and so I appreciate it when others catch me misbehaving. In fact, from everything I know, Gov. Richardson is a fine fellow and in fact I find him one of the more appealing Democrats. Moreover, I think the great majority of the people who disagree with me over the proper way to deal with race are motivated by ideals every bit as high as I like to think mine are. Of course I think they (you) are wrong, in large part because I agree with your point about the continuing salience of race. I would like to make it less salient, and I am convinced that race preferences contribute mightily to the continued racializing of just about everything. Finally, lest there be any confusion, perhaps I should add that I do not think law schools, colleges, etc., should “take account” of religion to provide religious diversity the same way they now “take account” of race, i.e., award preferences, to promote racial diversity. In fact, I think the bar against religious discrimination drinks from the same well as the bar against racial discrimination: the core American principle giving every person the right to be judged “without regard” to race, religion, or national origin.
John-
Having acknowledged the continued salience of race (and I’ll set aside for now whether or not it is desirable — I’m conflicted on that question myself), what are we to do about it if the government itself cannot acknowledge or respond to it? I assume that over the course of the next few hundred years the salience and inequalities might work themselves out, but is that the sort of just or moral society we want to strive for?
It may be that affirmative action programs extend racial salience. But I don’t believe that if they were removed salience would disappear overnight. And there is a serious moral problem, I think, in the distribution of costs from Day 1 to Day N of the new, post-aa world.
(“Yes, you can eat in the big house. Someday. But not now. Because that would mean replacing someone already at the table.”)
Jim
Jim – These are good points. If dealing with race were easy, it would have been done by now. I pretend to no ultimate answers, or even penultimate ones. I have no trouble acknowledging that by far most of those who advocate affirmative action/racial preferences do so with the best of motives. Although I am not as welcome in those circles as I used to be, I still have high regard for many of those whom I believe wrong on this issue. Until persuaded otherwise, however, I continue to believe that on balance racial preferences have done more harm than good, and the defense of them threatens to do much greater harm by undermining the “without regard” principle that I believe is absolutely necessary to dealing successfully with race, and religion, over time. I don’t believe we can ever achieve a society where racial considerations will be banished by embedding the legitimacy of race-based preferences in constitutional law. In short, I’m convinced that liberalism in general and the civil rights movement in particular took an enormous Wrong Turn in the 1960s and 1970s by abandoning the colorblind principle, and that we are worse off for it. I believe we should put the effort that now goes into defending preferences where it belongs, which is fighting discrimination. Much more can be done in that arena than has been done, but not if non-discrimination as a guiding principle is rejected.
Jim,
I hope I’m not putting words in your mouth but I hear you saying: In America, white people have screwed black people for more than three centuries and left them in an inferior position. Every black person alive today is in some way scarred. Even if all discrimination ended tomorrow, black people would not be where they should be until every scarred person grows old and dies. (maybe even later as the scarred pass on their injuries)
That is unjust. In order to avoid such injustice, today black people must be given preferences over white people. That will make the day come quicker when blacks are no longer in an inferior position.
This is a powerful argument.
But I think it may actually be backwards.
1) Racial preferences may actually discourage more than encourage black people. The message, “See how racist American society is” may drown out “these preferences will help you overcome that racism.” Preference programs may send the message that blacks are relatively powerless people who are acted upon, not powerful people who can act.
2) By focusing on “under-representation” numbers, they encourage an attitude of entitlement. If it’s a wrong of white society that a lower percentage of blacks than whites graduate high school, then why should black students have to pull white people’s chestnuts out of the fire by becoming better students?
3) To the extent that preferences are concerned with things that happen institutionally, they take attention away from things that are more personal. But those things are incredibly important. On average, black kids start first grade already behind their white peers. If this were changed, much good would follow. But it’s something that–largely–parents must do. If they don’t get help and encouragement, it won’t happen.