Speaking at Tufts University, sponsored by the School of Arts, Sciences and Engineering’s Office of Diversity Education and Development, Georgetown law professor Charles R. Lawrence III defined affirmative action for those of us who have trouble getting a grip on its meaning.
On a shallow level, he said that it is a way for the elite to justify their previous wrongdoings; on a deeper level, he said that it is a means to systematically restructure the institutes that foster prejudice. This second meaning, he said, provides the real justification for affirmative action.
At the same time, he said that affirmative action cannot be “neutral and colorblind” as long as general college admissions are not unbiased.
Lawrence was not quoted as explaining exactly how affirmative action could “justify … previous wrongdoings,” or be thought to do so. Presumably he thinks that future generations of Lawrences, Lawrences IV, V, VI, etc., will also themselves deserve to be the beneficiaries of this restructuring affirmative action.
Moving on to the deeper, “real justification for affirmative action,” it would appear that if we accept Lawrence’s definition then any institution that wanted to practice affirmative action would be admitting that it was an institution that “foster[s] prejudice” and needs to be systematically restructured.
But what, I wonder, would become of this definition/justification if social science evidence demonstrated that racial preferences, i.e., affirmative action that is neither “neutral” nor “colorblind,” produced much more “prejudice” than colorblind equal treatment?
If it “fosters prejudice” and needs to be “sytematically restructured” then why don’t all the officials resign immediately? :-)