… to end racial preferences when a Time political columnist, Joe Klein, starts asking, “Can We Improve On Affirmative Action?”
Some of what Klein writes is silliness dressed up a frank admission — “Affirmative action was never a very elegant solution to the problem of racial injustice” — and some of it is simply wrong:
Even the most passionate advocates of affirmative action agree that it’s a temporary fix, that writing racial distinctions into law is corrosive and illogical in a society that presumes racial equality.
Perhaps that’s true (though I doubt it) of “most passionate advocates of affirmative action” who frequent Georgetown cocktail parties, but it is most certainly not true of many (I believe most) passionate advocates in the country at large. The belief that racial preference is “a temporary fix,” in fact, all but disappeared when its rationale shifted from compensation of past injustice to ongoing promotion of “diversity.”
Nor is there the moral or political equivalence Klein sees between the “most passionate advocates of affirmative action,” as Klein describes them above, and:
the most passionate conservative advocates of “color blindness” [who] know that race prejudice still exists and needs to be rectified.
The parallel is built on a non-sequitur, since believing that race prejudice still exists and needs to be rectified (as, Klein is right, most opponents of racial preference do believe) does not require one to believe that practicing racial discrimination is the best, or even a legitimate, way of rectifying it.
Neverthless, I find Klein’s column enormously encouraging, not so much because of his proposed alternatives to racial preferences, which are conventional and unexceptionable, but because a conventional liberal writing in a conventionally liberal mainstream publications now recognizes that the curtain is finally being lowered on the long-running tragedy of racial preference.
UPDATE
Even Clarence Page is turning a new page:
… the Louisville and Seattle public school student assignment plans now before the court offer troubling examples of the overreaching “reverse discrimination” that affirmative action foes rail against. For those with long memories, the case of Joshua McDonald is particularly poignant. Joshua is a white Louisville student who was assigned to a kindergarten that was a 90-minute bus ride away, past a closer school that Jefferson County school officials said already had enough white students that year.
That’s painfully ironic. Linda Brown, a black third grader in Topeka, Kansas, was forced to take a long bus ride to school every day past a closer neighborhood school that did not admit blacks. The landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision bears her father’s name. Where have we Americans come, we must ask ourselves, when the decision to help black kids like Linda Brown who were turned away from schoolhouses in the name of segregation is used to turn Joshua McDonald away in the name of desegregation?
you said: “believing that race prejudice still exists and needs to be rectified (as, Klein is right, most opponents of racial preference do believe) does not require one to believe that practicing racial discrimination is the best, or even a legitimate, way of rectifying it.”
fair enough. but i’ve honestly never heard race preference opponents propose anything remotely resembling a prejudice-rectifier, other than saying that the black family needs to be “de-corrupted” (which, obviously, has nothing to do with rectifying race prejudice).
I’m not sure what it would take to persuade you that those of us who are against racial discrimination are not also against improving public education. Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, prominent critics of preferences, have a whole book on improving K-12 education (NO EXCUSES). But leave aside people like them and me, i.e., white critics, do you really suppose that black critics of preferences (Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Walter Williams, Project 21, etc., etc.) care nothing about improving the education most black kids get?
Finally, since we critics believe racially shuffling students is both offensive and has nothing to do with improving education, there is no reason to impose on us the requirement that we come up with a plan to fix what we didn’t break in order to legitimize our criticism of discrimination. It’s like saying no one is entitled to criticize child abuse unless they come up with a plan to improve the nation’s highways.
Chauncey writes:
>>>”but i’ve honestly never heard race preference opponents propose anything remotely resembling a prejudice-rectifier, other than saying that the black family needs to be “de-corrupted” (which, obviously, has nothing to do with rectifying race prejudice).”
Of course not. That’s not the purpose of the white male ascendancy movement.
If you ask the well-paid-by-pro-white-think-tank anti-affirmative action types like Charles Murray (pre-judge blacks because he claims they’re genetically inferior re intelligence) or D’nesh D’Souza (pre-judge blacks because he claims they’re socially inferior, bordering on pathological), you won’t find a prejudice “rectifier”, but something more akin to an ENDORSEMENT, IMHO.
Chauncey, you know, speaking of D’Souza, you know what one of his more famous “prejudice-rectifiers” is?
>>>”Yet the cardinal weakness of the broad-based colorblind rule is that, if applied even-handedly, it would require the government to outlaw minority companies from giving preferences to members of their own group. Peek into a Korean grocery store and what you often see, in the back, is other Korean workers. Similarly, black-owned businesses may seek out African-American employees. Should the government prohibit these obvious displays of minority ethnocentrism? Such interference makes no sense, particularly considering the fact that earlier generations of ethnic minorities such as Jews have advanced by helping their own people.
The limitations of the previous three policy options invite us to consider a fourth, which is based on the distinction, crucial to a liberal society, between the public and private sphere. This approach holds the government to a rigorous standard of colorblindness, while allowing private actors to be free to discriminate as they wish. In practice, this means uncompromising race neutrality in government hiring and promotion, criminal justice, and the drawing of voting districts. Yet individuals and companies would be allowed to discriminate in private transactions such as selecting a business partner or hiring for a job.
Am I calling for a repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Actually, yes. The law should be changed so that its nondiscrimination provisions apply only to the government.”
http://www.dineshdsouza.com/articles/raceandstate.html
REPEALING the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
Hello?
You see the game plan, right, Chauncey? Their war against minority progress is fought through gradual increments and skirmishes–an anti-civil rights judge appointment here, an affirmative-action ban there. With the population demographic shift, they are working feverishly to build as many firewalls as possible to supress minority political and social power. Hard line, reactionary white conservatives are already on board for the most part, but they’re not the majority. They successfully get many white moderates to climb aboard by using telegenic white “victims” like Jennifer Gratz, and
an ingenious & IMHO, insidious strategy of parading professional black conservatives in the media, with book tours, college lectures, hate radio and Fox News appearances to do the think-tank benefactors’ black-bash bidding.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1449
http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=173
Hey, even John McWhorter doesn’t deny who butters his bread:
>>>”I am “supported by” the Manhattan Institute just as a middle manager is “supported by” the company she works for. That is, the Manhattan Institute is not my “patron,” they are my employer. They sign my paycheck, just as UC Berkeley used to. The Manhattan Institute is where I go to work. I have a card that buzzes me past the building’s front desk. It’s my job.”
http://www.nysun.com/article/39642?page_no=2
I like what I’ve been reading from your posts, Chauncey. Strap yourself, in however. Discriminations can be a bumpy ride if you’re sitting on our side of the bus.
http://www.thecobraslair.com/images/SEPARATE-BUT-EQUAL-NAT.gif
–Cobra