DAMN BAMN: Double Standard Double Talk

BAMN is the acronym for a militant affirmative action group, The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action & Integration and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary. It is not a group known for the subtlety of its tactics or analysis. For example, in responding to the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear oral arguments from a group of minority intervenors it represented, BAMN commented (from its web site):

The Court’s refusal to hear the minority student intervenors amounts to a decision to hear ONLY the racist white people’s PHONY CLAIMS of reverse discrimination and NOT TO HEAR ANY of the extensive and overwhelmingly uncontested evidence presented in a trial in federal District Court by the student intervenors in Grutter v. Bollinger, the Law School case, about the REAL discrimination and bias against black, Latina/o and Native American students in the Law School admissions criteria.

To which I reply, DAMN (Damning Accusations Magnify Negativity).

Surprisingly, the normally objective Chronicle of Higher Education has a surprisingly sympathetic — bordering on fawning — article about the Michigan minority intervenors and their BAMN-affiliated representation. (Link requires subscription) For example, the article states:

Black Americans have an enormous amount at stake in the outcome of the two Michigan cases….

Historically, no other minority group has benefited more directly from affirmative action in college admissions. Black students have the lowest average SAT scores of any racial or ethnic group, and continue, for the most part, to receive the biggest boost from race-conscious admissions….

Well, yes. That’s true as far as it goes, but does it go far enough? Blacks, after all, are not unanimous in their support of racial preferences. Some believe, as do most critics, that preferences stigmatize the recipients. At the very least the benefits of preferences are controversial enough that saying, simply, that blacks will suffer if they are eliminated or curtailed presents one view of them as the only view.

Moreover, the article states matter of factly,

the future of black children like those at Murphy Middle School [in Detroit, who were described visiting the Michigan campus] has often been an afterthought as the nation’s courts have grappled over the past decade with several lawsuits challenging the legality of race-conscious college admissions policies.

Black middle school students “an afterthought? To the best of my knowledge there has been no litigation claiming racial discrimination against black middle school students in college, graduate, or professional school admissions. Perhaps there are reasons other than malign neglect for judges and justices to concentrate on issues raised by the matters before them.

But here’s the best example of a certain politically correct softness in this Chronicle article. BAMN and the lawyers for the minority intervenors argue that racial preferences are necessary to balance preferences that go primarily to whites, such as the four bonus points that go to legacies and the 6 points that go to residents of the sparsely populated northern peninsula of Michigan. (Minorities, by contrast, get 20 bonus points. Recipients of perfect scores on the SAT get 12.) “In this society,” the article quotes Miranda K.S. Massie, the lead lawyer for the intervenors, “white people are systematically given unearned benefits and privileges.”

Unearned? Does that mean the minority intervenors believe benefits should go only to individuals who earn them? Apparently so. If race-based preferences are curtailed, “Ms. Massie predicts a wave of challenges to admissions preferences for the children of alumni.” Theodore Shaw, associate director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, also

foresees similar challenges to college admissions policies that rely heavily on standardized-test scores or somehow penalize low-income minority students for their lack of access to quality elementary or high schools.

“We will have to turn up the scrutiny,” Mr. Shaw says. “We are not going to sit around and allow double standards to apply in terms of who gets access to higher education.”

The article did not notice the irony of one of the leading advocates of preference based on race opposing “double standards.”