The O’Connor Project: TAP Dancing To A Trillion Dollar Tune

William Raspberry’s column in the Washington Post today is a classic glass that is half full or half empty, depending on how you look at it. He discusses a proposal “to end racial discrimination without affirmative action” by Lisbeth Schorr in the current issue of The American Prospect.

When Raspberry is good he is very good indeed, as he is in the half-full part of today’s column. He reminds us that, way back when affirmative action was born, “[i]t was widely accepted that while racial preferences might be necessary for a time, they were a stopgap — a way of fast-tracking a critical mass of black Americans into the middle class.” And thus he admits to being shocked when his students at Duke, replying to his query as to whether they agreed with Sandra Day O’Connor’s prediction that preferences would not be necessary in 25 years, all announced that they thought preferences would need to last indefinitely.

Raspberry was not only surprised by this response, but he was also profoundly, and perceptively, troubled by it, since it indicates that

our young people may be internalizing a sense of inferiority. They respond by displacing the responsibility for their shortcomings to the white-dominated society. But the implication is that we are permanently damaged goods, in permanent need of special concessions.

Of course that implication was also present at the creation, but at least it was said at the time that the compromise in our fundamental principle of non-discrimination would be temporary and short-lived.

Raspberry is quite good, in short, on the disturbing and thoroughly predictable effects of institutionalized racial preference. But, perhaps even because he would like to get rid of preferences, he can be surprisingly gullible about other “solutions,” as he is here in the remaining, half-empty part of this column in which he has good things to say about Lisbeth Schorr’s TAP dance.

Her proposal, which she dubs “The O’Connor Project,” is intended to make racial preferences unnecessary in 25 years. “By assembling existing knowledge,” she claims, we could eliminate racial disparities “at the starting line and at four subsequent crucial points, each of them involving changes we already know how to make.” Here are her “concrete steps,” minus her brief descriptions of them:

1. Eliminating racial disparities in birth outcomes.

2. Eliminating racial disparities in school readiness.

3. Eliminating racial disparities in the opportunities offered by elementary, middle and high schools..

4. Eliminating racial disparities in the opportunities for adolescents to make a healthy transition into young adulthood.

5. Eliminating racial disparities in the opportunities that families have to provide their children a good start in life.

Piece of cake! Why didn’t I think of that? Two reasons, probably. One, the cost is a bit steep, even for someone like me who is not averse on principle to having government spend money to solve problems. Schorr estimates

that the O’Connor Project would cost somewhere between $110 billion and $125 billion a year. These estimates do not include the costs to universal health coverage for children, adolescents and pregnant women, which the nation seems gradually to be moving toward for reasons other than the elimination of racial disparities.

Ouch. But my second reservation may be more fundamental, at least for me: I have serious doubts that even spending all this money would work. That is, I’m less confident than Ms. Schorr that “we” really do know how to engineer such sweeping changes. For example, look at her description of part of what would be necessary to accomplish Number 2:

Because school readiness is more than a set of mechanical skills, the most effective ways to set children on a path to school success rely less on flash cards than on attention to emotional, social and health needs, and to the necessity of nurturing, supportive adults in settings that are language-rich and knowledge-centered. For families where parents are impaired by depression, substance abuse, personality disorders or domestic violence, programs must compensate by ensuring that all young children can grow up in environments that are safe, nurturing, stimulating and responsive.

Spending even the money she envisions, do “we” really have the ability to create “environments that are safe, nurturing, stimulating and responsive”? I doubt it. I also doubt whether even wisely spent money could eliminate all the disparities. It would be interesting to see Ms. Schorr’s explanations of why the racial achievement gap exists among higher as well as lower income groups.

If the accuracy of O’Connor’s prediction depends on the implementation of a program like this, in 25 years it will rank right up there with the famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline on the morning after the election of 1948.

Say What? (9)

  1. Sandy P. January 6, 2004 at 3:43 pm | | Reply

    Here comes a non-PC comment. If your heart can’t take it, stop reading now.

    Nothing will change until the black culture changes and they start valuing education. It’s ok to speak proper English. It doesn’t make you a traitor to your race.

  2. Curtis Crawford January 7, 2004 at 1:03 am | | Reply

    The O’Connor Project is a proposal to end the need for racial preference in college admissions by providing racially equal opportunity in five kinds of circumstances during an individual’s first 18 years. “Equal opportunity” here means the absence of racial disadvantage. Black, Hispanic and Amerindian youngsters would weigh as much at birth as Whites, and be no more likely to have a teenage mother. As preschoolers, their care would be as loving and wise as Whites receive; as students their primary and secondary schools would be just as good. As adolescents, the available activities would be equally favorable to their development; throughout, equal financial and other resources would be available to their parents.

    As described, the Project doesn’t require that every person’s opportunity in these five circumstances be equal. It allows some circumstances—some schools, some parents’ resources, etc.—to be more advantageous than others. But the average advantage and its distribution must be racially equal. The proportions of better schools or richer parents must not differ by racial group.

    The definition of “equal opportunity” in the 1964 Civil Rights Act is primarily the absence of different treatment based on race in specific areas of life. This is a difficult, but a desirable and feasible social goal. But “equal opportunity” defined as the removal of individual or group disadvantages, in the main circumstances of growing up, is not feasible. That is fortunate, since its achievement or approximation would be incompatible with human liberty and human excellence.

  3. Sandy P. January 7, 2004 at 1:42 am | | Reply

    –…”Black, Hispanic and Amerindian youngsters would weigh as much at birth as Whites, and be no more likely to have a teenage mother. As preschoolers, their care would be as loving and wise as Whites receive;–”

    How do you get a parent to care more? It’s not the preschool, it’s the parents.

    And what happened w/the 1986-2000ish KC MO experiment? Why did it fail?

  4. Dave Huber January 7, 2004 at 7:56 am | | Reply

    Indeed, Sandy. Check out the CATO org’s analysis of the Kansas City “experiment” here.

    TAP also has an article about closing the black-white test gap here.

  5. Dave Huber January 7, 2004 at 7:58 am | | Reply

    Oops…looks like the URLs don’t work. Here they are as text: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html

    and

    http://www.prospect.org/print/V9/40/jencks-c.html

  6. Sandy P. January 7, 2004 at 11:30 am | | Reply

    Thanks, Dave.

  7. Laura January 10, 2004 at 4:19 pm | | Reply

    Fewer black children will be born to teen mothers when fewer black teens become pregnant. That will mean less sexual activity, or more sexual responsibility. Who’s got a magic wand?

  8. Rebecca January 11, 2004 at 7:31 pm | | Reply

    Indeed. The entire culture needs to be looked at and revised, in many cases. But those who suggest that are called “classist” and “racists”, ignoring the benefits of certain types of lifestyles. Indeed, it seems to be “racist” anymore to suggest that blacks might be partially responsible for their current condition. After all, the Civil Rights movement began almost 50 years ago, and in some respects their situation is worse. But it is not the “dominant culture’s” fault.

  9. Chetly Zarko January 11, 2004 at 11:47 pm | | Reply

    Racial preferences are literally a lower standard for a whole group. People quite often only rise to the level of expectation, for very sound psychological reasons. We have devalued an entire segment of society; and now, not only has O’Connor allowed that, she has proscribed that we no longer need to or actually even are allowed to measure that devaluation. With non-numerical preferences; we are worse off because we can’t even know how pervasive the lowering of standards is becoming (or whether we are doing better or worse, in 25 years). Worse, we’ve already created a dependent political constituency that doesn’t want to give up the benefit; and has more vested interest in fighting for it than those who don’t get the benefit fighting against it.

    Race preferences will never go away if we accept them. Indeed, they’ll get harder and harder to withdraw. Like a drug, the best thing to do is stop them now. California has been off for 8 years, and we’re starting to see a significant rebound in diversity measurements. Only by doing this now can we succeed in making America better place (which, I’ll admit most preference supporters also want).

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