Debate over whether racial preferences stigmatize recipients (and, if so, so what?) by now is old hat. The Blair Affair, however, has brought to the fore the issue of whether Jayson Blair’s fabrications, and the preferences he received that are implicated in his treatment by the New York Times, may have stigmatized all minority journalists. in short, does Preferences = Stigma2?
Any number of minority journalists have rejected, sometimes bitterly, the belief that race had anything at all to do with the Blair Affair. Everyone and her third cousin has discussed this already (including me, here), and so when it appeared online a few days I decided to take a pass on a hyperventilating “open letter” to minority journalists by a Berkeley journalism professor, Neil Henry, that appeared about ten days ago in the Chronicle of Higher Education. (Link probably requires subscription) I felt no guilt at letting this one get away because the normally mild-mannered MediaMinded had given it a much-deserved working over (“how about a much deserved ‘fuck you’ to this asshat”).
So, I was content with letting it slip through the DISCRIMINATIONS net … until I saw that the Chronicle now plans to hold an online colloquy on the article (I suspect it’s limited to subscribers, but you can check here). (Some comments are coming in as I type, and, predictably, Henry has just replied to one that this is “a story of personal disgrace and unethical behavior, and not a problem related to race.”) The colloquy induced me to re-read the original article, which is too bad for now I find that I can’t avoid commenting on it.
Henry apparently was at the Washington Post during the scandal over Janet Cooke’s fabricated story and returned Pulitzer. Drawing on that experience, he writes:
the toughest part of the Cooke disgrace was dealing with the suddenly sharpened skepticism and questioning attitudes directed our way by a few white peers and editors about our skill, our ability, our credibility, our trustworthiness, even our right to work there. Bitter and jealous that an “undeserving” young black woman like Cooke had taken the job of a more “competent” white, they blamed affirmative action for opening the Post’s door to Cooke and other black reporters in the first place.
Aha! a few white journalists seemed to say, by mood as well as furtive whisper: See what happens when you give them a chance? (Emphasis in original)
Now, he says, things are a bit different.
For one thing, there are more of you working in your institutions now than in 1981. There are more African-Americans in positions of authority, as well.
….
But despite such progress it’s also plain that racism has a way of adapting from one era to another and poisoning people just as powerfully as it ever has.
Things are better, but racism is just as bad as it ever was. And then, again, the predictable litany:
In the days ahead you will run into a few narrow-minded, race-obsessed co-workers who will feel suddenly emboldened to question your motives, reporting, writing, sourcing — your very right to hold your jobs. Already the conservative right is pointing to the Blair incident as emblematic of what it considers the wrong-sighted diversity culture, one in which a young black journalist was unfairly coddled and promoted over more deserving (and “trustworthy”) whites, to the very detriment of the public’s right to know. We’re starting to read this nonsense in editorial pages, and the heartland is hearing it on right-wing television and radio programs as well.
Few seem yet willing to point out that the Blair experience, while painful and infuriating, is no more than an anomaly. It has nothing to do with race or diversity efforts at all. It’s the singular story of an emotionally troubled human being who crumbled under the very corporate pressure you guys courageously contend with, indeed flourish in, each day. The system at the Times did not catch on until too late. This human being was very young, and he happened to be black.
There are two points here that I think are revealingly significant. First, notice Henry’s emphatic interpretation of the motives of those who think the Blair Affair does implicate preference policies: “Aha! … See what happens when you give them a chance? Actually, leave aside the clear implication that critics of preferences are racist. What is even more noteworthy is the unconscious assertion that chance, i.e., opportunity, now means, indeed requires, preference. Abandoning preferences and giving everyone equal opportunity would be taking away a chance. That easy and false equation should be slapped down every time it raises its head.
Second, and equally interesting, Henry is saying that when we look at Jayson Blair we should see not someone who is “Black” but instead a “human being” who just “happened to be black.” An individual with problems.
Others have pointed out far better than I, as Joseph Perkins of the San Diego Union Tribune put it, that it is much easier to see white miscreants as individuals and not representatives of their race.
They are not viewed as members of a separate class or designated group, mainly because they were not hired through some special program that appears from afar to hold its beneficiaries to less demanding standards than those outside the program. (Link via MediaMinded)
But I think there’s a larger point here. Let’s call it the scheme of “having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too.” Whenever some benefit is to be bestowed — college admissions, employment or promotion opportunities, special internships, set aside programs, etc. — preferentialists equate colorblindness with racism. They are foursquare behind “taking race into account,” whether the rationale is “diversity” or compensation or multicultural representation or whatever. On the other hand, when a burden is involved, or the possibility of some negative implication from racial association, then all of a sudden the erstwhile preferentialists surround themselves with the armor of colorblind individualism. Racial profiling is the classic example, whether by police or airline screeners.
It’s fine for the Jayson Blairs and Janet Cookes — and the Neil Henrys for that matter, if it’s the case — to be hired or admitted or promoted at least in part because they’re black. And if they succeed, one can almost hear the unspoken chorus in the background, they’re “a credit to their race.” But if they fail or commit some transgression, their failure is purely and totally individual; it “has nothing to do with race or diversity efforts at all.”
Preferences, in short, stigmatize not only their direct beneficiaries, but everyone who shares the preferred characteristics.
I read this in your entry
It’s fine for the Jayson Blairs and Janet Cookes — and the Neil Henrys for that matter, if it’s the case — to be hired or admitted or promoted at least in part because they’re black. And if they succeed, one can almost hear the unspoken chorus in the background, they’re “a credit to their race.” But if they fail or commit some transgression, their failure is purely and totally individual; it “has nothing to do with race or diversity efforts at all.”
It reminded me of this article about Patrick Chavis-the person that booted Allen Bakke from med school.
“Dr. Bernard Chavis is a perfect example,” (Sen)Kennedy said. “He is the supposedly less qualified African-American student who allegedly `displaced’ Allen Bakke at the University of California-Davis, and triggered the landmark case. Today, Dr. Chavis is a successful ob-gyn in central Los Angeles, serving a disadvantaged community and making a difference in the lives of scores of poor families.”
That’s precisely why the common comparison of affirmative action programs to nepotism and other favortism by advocates is in the end destructive to their own argument.
Yes, nepotism occurs. Yes, in colleges, athletes and legacies are let in. Can anyone possibly deny that stigma exists, though? If the boss’s son gets hired and screws up, don’t you assume that he wasn’t really that talented, and was just hired because of Daddy? Don’t people everywhere assume that legacies and jocks at college are unlikely to have gotten in on pure merit? Of course they do.
If you have affirmative action, you’re going to have some of the stigma that applies to those other practices, for the same reason. Affirmative action can be more insidious, though, because skin color is so visible. It’s easier to escape nepotism, or legacy, or athletics, by going somewhere else. Backgrounds can be hid. Yes, minorities can avoid going through special affirmative action programs, and get less stigma that way. Unfortunately, questions will remain. (And one can’t completely fault people for having them.)
Tom and John – Very nice comments! As the article Tom cites (and many others) show, Chavis was revealed to be not the poster boy for affirmative action but an even more disturbing Blair-like representative of what can go wrong with it.
Returning to stigma, John’s comment is right on target. Although critics of preferences have often pointed to their stigmatizing effect, I’m surprised that more hasn’t been made of that stigma as a violation. After all, preferentialists have argued that prefererences are “benign” and thus not real discrimination because they don’t stigmatize. If they do stigmatize, then that defense fails.
Finally, one caveat. Preferences stigmatize because of the reasonable assumption that their beneficiaries have less “merit” (defined as grades, scores, etc.) than the non-preferred. This is clearly the case with athletes, muscians, etc., but it frequently is not so clear with legacies. Several recent articles have pointed out that at some schools (Middlebury was one) the grades and test scores of admitted legacies was above the class average. But it is worth emphasizing that many people, with very good reason, still regard legacy preferences as unfair. They do not regard accident of birth as a legitimate grounds for preference. To justify preference based on most grounds, traditional notions of fairness must be minimized.