I don’t follow economic issues very closely, but from a distance I’d always thought Gene Sperling, President Clinton’s chief economic adviser, one of the more appealing members of Clinton’s circle. No longer. His essay today on Bloomberg arguing that “There is everything wrong and nothing right with Michigan’s Nov. 7 ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to ban affirmative action” is as overheated, and off base, as anything coming out of BAMN or One United Michigan or the mouths of Michigan women leaders predicting the demise of breast cancer research if MCRI passes.
Like most preferentialists, Sperling seems to have lost whatever interest he ever had in racial and ethnic discrimination. Now his concern is simply “to address racial and gender imbalances,” whether caused by discrimination or not, and in fact to do so by actually engaging in preferential treatment based on race.
He begins by asserting that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) “would impede our capacity to deal with projected skills gaps in our workforce.”
A bipartisan Aspen Institute report, led by David Ellwood, dean of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, found that the U.S. pool of workers aged 25-64, which grew 44 percent over the last 20 years, won’t expand in the next 20. Meanwhile, blacks, Hispanics and women — groups underrepresented in the areas of science and engineering — will make up a bigger proportion of our workforce.
To increase the pool of skilled workers in areas critical to our economy, we need an all-out national effort to boost the percentages of women and minorities who want degrees in science, engineering and math.
Really? On the contrary, I think what we may need is more scientists and engineers, not more women or Hispanic or black scientists and engineers. Any effort to recruit in limited gender, racial, and ethnic pools is not my idea of “an all-out national effort.” But in any event nothing in MCRI would limit any organization from trying to encourage anyone from becoming a scientist. It would bar schools, programs, scholarships, etc., that are restricted by race or gender, but that still strikes me as a Good Thing, not something to be lamented.
Soaring even higher from any grounding in fact, Sperling then asserts:
Based on the interpretation of measures similar to the MCRI that were passed in Washington state and in California, all efforts to encourage minorities and women to seek college and technical degrees would be banned in Michigan if they had any government involvement.
“All efforts to encourage?” What “interpretation” is that? I’m tempted to say that, like Kerry, Sperling is joking here.
But wait; there’s more humor where this came from.
For our nation’s businesses, competing in the global economy places a premium not only on diverse workforces, but on workers who can thrive in racially and ethnically diverse contexts. This point is critical because it underscores the fact that a diverse student body benefits both minority and white students by giving everyone the chance to form friendships with those from different geographic, ethnic and racial backgrounds.
So, some whites and Asians who, in the absence of race preferences, would be admitted to the University of Michigan and other schools deserve to be rejected because of their race so that other white and Asian students can “form friendships” with some minorities who wouldn’t have been accepted except for their race? As I have pointed out several times before, in the absence of racial preferences, those minority students would not be admitted when judged by the same standards as all other applicants would still be able to attend other schools — Michigan State, UM Dearborn, Kalamazoo State, etc., etc., etc. — and thus would still be able to receive whatever benefits “diversity” has to offer them.
Distributing benefits and burdens based on race that punishes some whites and Asians because of their race so that, arguably, other whites and Asians can bask in the glow of “diversity” would seem to be a classic example of exactly what Justice Powell wrote in his controlling Bakke opinion is not allowed (quoted earlier today, here):
Courts may be asked to validate burdens imposed upon individual members of a particular group in order to advance the group’s general interest. Nothing in the Constitution supports the notion that individuals may be asked to suffer otherwise impermissible burdens in order to enhance the societal standing of their ethnic groups.
Sperling tried, but fails, to come up with a list of the likely victims of the sky falling if MCRI passes. Here’s are a couple of examples:
Wayne State University in Detroit has developed a two-year program to increase the graduation rates of its Latino students by offering tutoring, counseling, and cultural-education programs. The University of Michigan hosts visits by local schools with high minority-student enrollment to encourage more to aspire to a college degree.
Wayne State could, of course, continue to offer counseling to its heart’s, or head’s, content. And Latino students would continue to be free to receive as much counseling as they want. Wayne State could even offer counseling in Spanish, if it wanted to. All it could not do is offer tutoring to Latinos that barred students who were Asian or white or black.
And I doubt that even the nutcases in BAMN have ever argued that, after MCRI, universities would be barred from hosting visits from schools with “high minority enrollments.” This is far beyond bad Kerry-like humor. The only thing that can explain this bizarre stretch is if Sperling has been inhaling — steadily, for weeks — samples of that substance his former boss said he only pretended to inhale.
Finally comes the hoary, offensive argument that all discrimination is fungible:
ot surprisingly, under the MCRI, universities would still be able to award preferences for linebackers, legacies, children of big donors, and those from remote states. In the name of civil rights, the only steps that a college couldn’t take to increase diversity would be the type designed to improve racial understanding, to ensure a diverse learning environment, and to address underrepresentation in critical sectors of our workforce.
Well, yes. “In the name of civil rights,” all a college could not do to increase diversity is engage in racial discrimination. And you have a problem with that?
I’ve never understood why people who purport to deplore discrimination would want to argue that discriminating on the basis of race is no different from preferring a tight end to an oboe player.
I would say, in closing, that this article does provide at least one valuable service. It could persuade some doubters to vote Republican in 2008 if for no other reason than to keep Sperling out of a responsible job in a new administration.
Football players and oboe players are selected on the basis of talent and merit, so they are not “preferences” like legacy and VIP selections. They are preferences, in the strictest sense, just as it is a preference to select higher SAT scores or higher GPAs. But they do not violate the principles of merit, so I hate it every time opponents lump in athletics and music to legacy and VIP (and race).
I oppose legacy and VIP preferences because they are offensive to the principle of merit (BTW, did you see Stossel’s privilege in America, last night?), among other things (they are also doubly-offensive in that legacy and VIP preferences violate principles of fairness).
Ironically, when he assails geographic preferences, he assails the truest alternative to race and gender preferences, one that fits into all three of our values: an expanded notions of merit (to include the merit found in overcoming disadvantage, which we could measure with socio-economic and geographic measures), fairness (since we are helping all disadvantaged persons without regard to race), and our principle of equality (since we are doing it without regard to race.
We CAN have our cake and eat it too (the ETS suppression story is perhaps the most shocking argument that we can) – by voting yes on Proposal 2. Universities would have you believe we can’t.
Football players and oboe players are selected on the basis of talent and merit, so they are not “preferences” like legacy and VIP selections.
Athletes are given preferences if, because of their athletic ability, they are admitted with lower grades, etc., than other students.
As I’ve written many times, I rather like merit, but I don’t regard rewarding it as a principle. That is, universities and others, in my view, are perfectly free not to admit exclusively on merit, just as most kinds of discrimination are legal. There are only a few kinds of discrimination — race, ethnicity, religion, etc.– that are off limits.
John,
I’m not a fan of college athletics myself, but I think your response misses Chetly’s point. One wouldn’t say that someone is “given preferences” if, because of his high test scores, he is admitted with lower grades than other students. He is being admitted because of his accomplishments (albeit non-classroom ones). The athlete’s accomplishments may be non-classroom — they may be entirely non-academic — but they are personal accomplishments. That’s the principle which distinguishes them from AA admissions or legacy admissions, who are given preferences because of who their ancestors are.
Now, you’re right that there’s a further difference between athletics/music/legacy and race/religion, and only the latter are legally/constitutionally/historically offensive.
David, Chet – This is not really a disagreement, or rather I don’t disagree with what either of you have said. My point is only that lowering the admissions bar everyone else has to jump in order to admit an athlete or a musician can reasonably be described as an admissions preference. Athlete/musician preferences, like race preferences, are at variance with a pure “merit” standard (although as I’ve said, I myself am not really devoted to that and so am not terribly offended by this variance).
David, you insist on another distinction — that athletes and musicians have accomplshed something personally in a way that cannot be said about those admitted under race of legacy preferences (note, however, an earlier postt of mine discussing the fact that legacy grades/scores are sometimes higher on average than those of non-legacies). That of course is true, but the distinction does not strike me as very significant — rather like saying that admitting a good dancer into a middle school program for the academically gifted is not a “preference” because she is, after all, talented. Insisting on that distinction would also force you to object to describing programs that lowered the bar based on geography or class as involving any kind of preferences since being born here rather than there or poor rather than rich involves no personal accomplishment.
But to get back to the main point: in my view preferences for athletes or legacies or residents of faraway places or poor people all are at variance with a pure merit principle; all may be either good or bad ideas; but none violates a constitutional principle.
There is a nice parallel between racially-based admission preference (admission because of the student’s ancestors), and legacy-based admission preference (admission because of the student’s ancestors). The elimination of legacy admissions, while probably a good idea, will have a consequence. No longer will daddy be inclined to give generously to Princeton in the hope that his not-so-bright son will get a better chance of being admitted to Old Nassau.