A big part of the reason we can’t agree on appropriate remedies for racial discrimination is that we can’t agree on what needs to be remedied. Even worse, one person’s cure is to someone else simply another manifestation of the disease: employing racial preferences to fix a perceived problem of “underrepresentation” strikes many (including me) as nothing more than a continuation of discrimination, while neutral, colorblind non-discrimination strikes others as a continuation of racism. Is affirmative action fighting fire with fire, or burning down the village in order to save it?
We’ll never agree on a cure until we agree on the disease.
UPDATE [13 March]
Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about. In this post above, I criticize Dean Frank Wu of the Wayne State University law school for joining the crowd of those who misrepresent the Michigan Civil Rights Intitiative.
I did not quote there, but it is relevant to do so here, his statement that MCRI
is written to appear harmless and resemble a corporate nondiscrimination policy, that is not the case.
It was crafted exactly for the purpose of giving you that impression, but what it will also do is end programs designed to eliminate racial disparities.
I don’t think a proposal that is clearly written to ban all preferences based on race, gender, or national origin either is or is meant to appear “harmless,” but leave that aside. Dean Wu’s assertion assumes what the drafters and supporters of MCRI do not — that the disease in need or curing is not discrimination but “disparities,” whether they are caused by discrimination or not.
