“Talking Points” For Affirmative Action

Terry Neal writes the “Talking Points” column for the Washington Post. Add him to the list of WaPo writers who editorialize in favor of affirmative action.

In his column yesterday he begins with a fair if not terribly powerful Gotcha! against the White House on “diversity.” After noting that Bush can lay claim to a better “diversity” record in appointments than Clinton, Neal quotes White House adviser Dan Bartlett claiming that the president’s strong diversity record is

a strong governing management trait that has been under-reported…. There has been an effort by the president to reach out and ensure that his staff and his team reflect the diversity of our country,” said Bartlett.

Bush bragged this summer at a conference sponsored in Washington by UNITY: Journalists of Color that “if you look at my administration, it’s diverse, and I’m proud of that.”

Next comes the Gotcha!:

Bush’s and Bartlett’s comments sound startlingly close to an endorsement of affirmative action. Reach out and reflect the diversity of our country. . . . Huh? Since when has that been a conservative goal?

Fair enough, even though there is less sting here than Neal hopes since conservatives have always been less than pleased with White House pronouncements — and in Grutter, legal position — on diversity. Indeed, Neal even quotes someone from Ward Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute acknowledging that “[a]s soon as we have a goal of diversity [as currently defined, I would add], we are judging people by skin color or heritage.”

Neal goes seriously off track, however, when he, first, claims to read the mind of the Bush Administration (those of you asking “What mind?” can just keep it to yourselves) and, second, when he makes his own editorial pronouncements on the meaning of affirmative action. Thus, on the Bush administration’s thoughts, he writes that ” it is clear that the president considers race as one — not the only one, but one — qualification for consideration in his top-level appointments.”

Really? “Clear”? So, Colin Powell was picked for Secretary of State and Condi Rice for National Security Advisor, and now Secretary of State, in part because they’re black? Maybe not even in part, insofar as Neal implies they wouldn’t have been picked if they weren’t black.

Digging the hole deeper, he continues:

Many corporations have reached similar conclusions and practice similar forms of affirmative action. Race and gender are factors in hiring because, in part, it is good business, many corporate executives (including many Republican top executives) believe.

Some would scoff at this, but there are a lot of people who don’t know what affirmative action is and demonize it by calling it a quota system, which it is not. Many people (including the one writing this column) find the idea of quotas offensive. More important, the Supreme Court has ruled them illegal.

Typically, workplace affirmative action is defined as the effort to find and consider qualified minority and women applicants for jobs. For instance, the NFL has a policy that a minority must be interviewed for each open head coaching position. Not hired, but interviewed.

Count me among the scoffers who, according to Neal, “don’t know what affirmative action is.” Although AA certainly does not have to be a quota system, and I at least do not “demonize” it across the board, Neal fails to recognize that often it is a quota system.

I wish Neal would answer the question that I’ve asked here many times, such as here:

I’ve written here a number of times that I don’t understand why people who support racial preferences claim they oppose quotas, since I can’t figure out what’s wrong with quotas that isn’t also true of racial preferences

If Neal really believes that affirmative action “is defined as the effort to find and consider qualified minority and women applicants for jobs” and that, as in the NFL, it involves only a chance to be considered, what, pray tell, does he make of the regime of racial preferences in college admissions? Did he oppose the 20 point racial bonus that was outlawed at the University of Michigan? For that matter, did he oppose what everyone else seems to have recognized as quota hiring by various government agencies (a couple of which were discussed, for example, here and here)? If he did oppose these measures, could he point other defenders of affirmative action who criticized them?