What’s Fair?

I have complained here a number of times (most recently earlier today) about

“the transformation of ‘civil rights’ from its traditional concern with individual rights to the newer belief in group rights….” It should come as no surprise that at the core of the debate over the proper meaning of “civil rights” is a disagreement over what fairness requires.

At the heart of the traditional notion of civil rights is the belief that fairness requires judging all individuals by the same standards, without regard to race, creed, or color. The newer, “diversity”-based notion of civil rights, by contrast, requires “taking race into account” to ensure that all groups receive rewards in direct proportion to their numbers. (Unless, as we shall see, minority groups are rewarded out of proportion to their numbers.)

This conflict over the meaning of fairness can be seen quite clearly in debates over college admissions. Recently, for example, a group of black alumni and others called UCLA’s admissions practices “racist and discriminatory.”

The alliance, consisting of African-American religious leaders, alumni, civic and student leaders demanded reform of UCLA’s undergraduate admissions policies charging that they overemphasize academic performance and overlook the significant challenges that adversely affect many students of color.

The activists demanded a complete overhaul of admissions procedures to bring about “immediate and demonstrative actions to increase African-American admissions and enrollment. We are calling on UCLA to adopt a more holistic approach that would put applicant’s achievements and performance in a fair context.”

The accusation was not that black applicants were not judged by the same standard as all other applicants but that the standard itself, stressing “academic performance” too highly, was unfair to blacks.

This, of course, is not a new charge or a new debate. A year and a half ago the Daily Bruin reported numbers that were used to support similar accusations:

The percentage of black applicants who were accepted [for the freshman class entering in 2005] – 15.2 percent – was far below the overall acceptance rate, which is 27.1 percent for fall 2005, according to the survey.

The accusation, then as well as now, is that it is “racist and discriminatory” for blacks as a group to be admitted at a lower rate than whites or Asians.

Do not mistake this charge, however, for a principled belief that all groups should be admitted at the same rate. The same Daily Bruin article, for example, referring to a survey published by The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, also noted with obvious praise, not criticism, the following:

According to the survey, one of the schools with the highest black acceptance rates is the University of Virginia, which accepted 58 percent of the black students who applied, compared to an overall acceptance rate of 37.1 percent.

The survey cites the University of Virginia’s aggressive use of affirmative action as the primary reason for the higher numbers.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology … has a 31.5 black acceptance rate compared to an overall average of 14.3.

I assume no one believes that all applicants to UVa and MIT were judged by the same standard. To believe that one would have to believe that the average qualifications of blacks who applied to MIT were over twice as high as the non-black applicants and that the pool of black UVa applicants was similarly much better qualifed than the pool of non-black applicants. (Of course, if that were the case it is unlikely that the SAT scores of entering black first years at UVa would be 200 points lower than the class average, as is the case.)

UVa and MIT, in short, are praised for their generous use of “affirmative action,” i.e., double (or more) standards, while UCLA is condemned for applying the same standards to all applicants.

It seems pretty clear that “civil rights” advocates believe it is unfair for blacks, as a group, to be admitted at a lower rate than whites or Asians, but they have no complaint if they are admitted at a higher rate. There is no notion of equal treatment, and certainly no generally applicable of fairness, at work here.

When the old American Federation of Labor leader Samuel Gompers was asked what labor wanted, he famously replied, “More!” That is now the new principle of the civil rights movement.