This week Randy Cohen, the official ethicist of the New York Times, responds to the following inquiry:
I am a minority student who opposes affirmative action. Thus I decided not to reveal my color in my law-school application. It is extremely hard, however, to omit race from my personal statement: race has had a large impact on my decision to go to law school and on my experience volunteering in the community. What is the more ethical course — to disclose my race and be an honest hypocrite or omit mentioning it and feel dishonest? Anonymous, San Francisco
Cohen’s advice? Well she could, he says, follow the dictates of her conscience, eschew all mention of race, and get a good night’s sleep. But a much better course, he implies, is to reconsider her opposition to affirmative action.
One thing to consider is that many universities (most famously the University of Michigan) employ such programs not only to compensate groups that have been disadvantaged — that is, to level the playing field — but also to create a student body that will expose its members to a broad array of experiences, outlooks and ideas. There are, in other words, pedagogical rationales akin to those behind the quest for geographic diversity. And while you might think a school foolish for seeking regional variety, you would not feel hypocritical for revealing your hometown, or feel that you had not gained entry on your merits if you were one of a tiny number of West Coast applicants to a school in the Northeast.
I think Mr. Cohen may be assuming a bit too much about his unknown correspondent when he presumes to tell her (as will be clear in a moment, we know she’s a she) that she would not feel she had gained entry on her own merits if she received bonus points based on her residence. If she were a devoted meritocrat, she might well oppose geographical preferences as well as racial preferences.
More bothersome, however, is his condescending assumption that his advice seeker, whom he later identifies as “a senior at a prestigious Ivy League university,” could somehow have failed “to consider” the diversity-justification for racial preferences that he trots out and parades before her, and us. And why does he assume that there would be no basis for thinking she had not gained entry entirely on her own merits if she received a “diversity” preference but that such a concern would be justified if she received instead a compensation-for-past-discrimination preference?
How offensively absurd. But then, preferentialists frequently assume that the only way anyone could disagree with them is by having failed “to consider” what they, being smart and perceptive, have thought of.
Reminds me of an incident car shopping with a 28 year old friend. She told the salesman thet she wanted a dark green truck. They had none in stock. They brought in the closer, who suggested a grey one. Friend said, “No, I want a green one, I prefer green, the last 4 trucks I’ve had were green.”
To which the closer replied, “Maybe it’s time you changed…”
Leaving out, “easily manipulated silly little girl who thinks she knows what she wants.”
Cohen knows best what opinions his readers should have, they happen to match his stock in inventory.
Staghounds: The closer was following classic sales strategy in trying to sell a truck of another kind when they had none in stock of the type that the buyer desired. The silly little girl is the person putting a feminist spin on a perfectly ordinary sales practice. Jeez.