Wolfe Reviews Schuck; DISCRIMINATIONS Reviews Wolfe

Alan Wolfe has a long, laudatory review of a new book by Yale law professor Peter Schuck, DIVERSITY IN AMERICA: KEEPING GOVERNMENT AT BAY, that all of us should not only buy but read.

Wolfe enthusiastically recommends the book, even though he disagrees with a significant amount of its argument. This is, as Wolfe says, a tribute to the book, but it is also a tribute to the review, which is so thorough that it’s like one of those long previews that make you feel you’ve already seen the movie.

Schuck’s central theme is that diversity is best produced (and that the best diversity is produced) by the private “market” of individuals acting on their own, not government regulation. Most of Wolfe’s long review consists of sympathetic summary of Schuck’s argument in various arenas, such as housing, immigration, affirmative action, etc., and I’ll not summarize him summarizing Schuck. Read the review, and then read the book. Or vice versa.

But as long as I’m here, I will pick a nit or two around the edges — with Wolfe, not Schuck.

Wolfe points out, accurately, that these days historians “tend not to find idealistic motives among policy makers.” Many of them see the U.S. as a racist society, and thus they find racism everywhere. The Immigration Act of 1965 repudiated racist quotas, however, and

public policy toward immigrants has become more generous since 1965. Organized labor, which once viewed immigrants as threats to full employment, argues on behalf of an amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Well, one certainly could describe the change in labor’s attitudes toward immigration as “generous,” as Wolfe does, or one could suspect that labor’s about face may have had more to do recognizing immigrants as a fertile and growing field for new members. Wolfe himself makes this point when he discusses the opposition of inner-city politicians in Chicago to a voucher program that made it possible for 7100 inner-city families to move to the safer streets and better schools of the suburbs. As Wolfe points out, “they worried about the possible dilution of their electoral base.” There would seem to be no good reason to suppose that labor leaders are more “generous” than these politicians.

By far my biggest complaint with Wolfe, however, is that he (unlike Schuck) continues to indulge himself with a large (and dare I say “generous”?) soft spot for affirmative action. It is here that, at least in my opinion, Wolfe’s normally astute powers of analysis seem to elude him.

Public universities, since they are funded by all taxpayers within a state, are under an obligation to represent, in one way or another, those who finance their activities.

Where does Wolfe find the principle that public funds require racial proportionality? Does it control every nook and cranny of, say, public employment? I believe, as readers well know, that the principle of neutral non-discrimination is much more fundamental and much more deeply embedded in our history, culture, and law. If Wolfe thinks the competing principle of racial proportionality has displaced it, it is incumbent on him to provide an argument supporting that view, not merely an assertion. (Although in fairness, he doesn’t have to do so in a book review, even one where he’s disagreeing with the author under review on this point.)

Continuing:

And private universities have used their autonomy from government in ways so corrosive of admission by merit—especially by reserving places for legacies or athletes—that they have undercut any rationale for denying similar admissions preferences on the basis of skin color. Indeed, recent evidence that universities lower their admissions requirements for future donors makes it all but impossible for courts to rule against affirmative action: corrupt quotas have become so much a part of the retreat from merit in Ivy League institutions that to deny them to African Americans at this point would constitute an egregious example of a racially motivated double standard.

Here, alas, Wolfe sadly succumbs to the familiar (to DISCRIMINATIONS readers) Iniquitous Ubiquitous Non-Sequitur (IUNS) of arguing that discrimination based on race is no different from discrimination based on athletic ability or legacy status. To say that granting preferences for athletes or legacies “undercut[s] any rationale for denying similar admissions preferences on the basis of skin color” is, quite simply, to say that if any kind of discrimination is legitimate, then racial discrimination is legitimate. And this, also quite simply, is absurd. This position might make some sense if the opposition to racial preferences were based entirely on their violation of the merit principle, but it is not. It is based on the much more fundamental notion that discrimination on the basis of race is wrong in ways and for reasons that are not true of discrimination involving athletes, musicians, legacies, tobacco growers, whatever.

I find it immensely depressing that the civil rights movement; liberals in general; elite opinion centers in academia, foundations, and the media; and even observers as perceptive as Alan Wolfe have become so enamored of racial preferences that in order to justify them they are willing to dispense with the foundational American principle holding that discrimination on the basis of race and religion is in a class by itself, and fundamentally wrong in ways that discrimination on other bases is not.

Say What?