Discriminations

Barack Obama’s admission on Sunday that his own daughters “probably” shouldn’t receive any preference based on their race (discussed immediately below, here) continues to generate comment and controversy. For example, Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist who writes about race more often than not, strives mightily in his column today to construe the opaque Obama in such a way as to keep him on the race reservation, supporting preferences.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC's “This Week,” Obama waded into the central issue of the affirmative action debate: race vs. class. Perhaps typically, Obama's remarks were more Socratic than declarative. He didn't really answer the question, he rephrased it. Maybe the way he posed it, though, will lead to a discussion that's long overdue.

Actually, the discussion has been going on here for several years, but never mind. Robinson isn’t the only one who hasn’t noticed. DISCRIMINATION’s readers, however, are much more attentive. As one of them, Yale student Jian Li, pointed out in a comment on my preceding post (linked above), several months ago I said someone should ask Obama about his daughters. That post concluded:

The journalist Clarence Page has a column today with the terrific title, “Obama’s ‘Colorblind’ Double Bind.” Alas, the column itself doesn’t live up to the billing of its title. There’s no discussion at all of his double bind — “a situation in which a person is given conflicting cues, esp. by a parent, such that to obey one cue is to disobey the other.”

It will come when someone asks him whether he believes his daughters deserve preferential treatment because of the color of their (or his) skin.

As we’ve seen, someone (George Stephanopoulos of ABC News) finally asked him, and he said “probably” not. The Post’s Eugene Robinson tries mightily to rein Obama back in, engaging in some quite creative construal. Indeed, his efforts to refrain from criticizing Obama eerily parallel Obama’s efforts not to criticize the reigning Democratic orthodoxy on racial preferences.

Consider, for starters:

Stephanopoulos was driving at the question of whether race-based affirmative action programs are still needed. Another way to frame the issue is whether race or class is the more important factor in our society. Are minorities who are raised in middle-class or wealthy homes still held back by racism? Or should we now focus on socioeconomic status as the principal barrier keeping people from reaching their potential?

Obama's answer, basically, was yes. To both questions.

There’s that ubiquitous “frame” again. Whenever politicians and pundits want to occupy an unpopular position, they immediately attempt to “frame” the issue in a way that will disguise its true meaning. (For more on “framing,” see here, here, here, and here.) What is significant here, however, is the utter unpersuasiveness of Robinson’s attempted frame: “whether race or class is the more important factor in our society” is most assuredly not another, better way of asking “whether race-based programs are still needed.” One could — indeed, many do — think that class is more important but race-based programs are still needed, or, conversely, that race is more important but that race-based preferences are not needed.

In any event, Robinson’s muddle continued, although Obama “seemed to side with those who think class predominates,” he also

seemed to agree with those who point to the lingering effects of racism when he noted that “there are a lot of African American kids who are still struggling, that even those who are in the middle class may be first-generation as opposed to fifth- or sixth-generation college attendees, and that we all have an interest in bringing as many people together to help build this country.”

Even leaving aside all the seeming going on here, one has to ask, so what? Does the fact that “there are a lot of African American kids who are still struggling” justify giving preferences to all African Americans? Do all struggling people deserve preferential treatment, or only ones with appropriate hues? Obama seemed so say one thing; Robinson seems to say another.

Perhaps recognizing his readers’ likely confusion at this point, Robinson then moves forcefully to clear things up. After noting Obama’s seeming agreement with those who point to the “lingering effects of racism,” Robinson writes:

[t]hat observation points to circumstances that have to be taken into account. Diversity, in my view, is very much in the national interest. But diversity is a process, not a destination. We have to keep working at it. And since a college degree has become the great divider between those who make it in this society and those who don't, affirmative action in college admissions is one of the most powerful tools we have to increase diversity.

Diversity is a process, not a destination. Thus it can never be achieved. It is the mechanical rabbit to our constantly striving greyhounds. Diversity deans and affirmative action officers and multicultural consultants, take heart! You will be needed forever! There will be no sunset on your jobs, not in 25 years, not ever!

Unless, of course, uppity citizens in more states decide to emulate California, Washington, and Michigan and take matters into their own hands.

UPDATE

The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum also attempts to deconstruct the inscrutable Obama, here.

Hmmm. [Obama on affirmative action] is pretty hard to deconstruct.... Presumably (a) it’s OK to reduce race-based affirmative action for well-off black kids and (b) it’s OK to increase class-based affirmative action for poor white kids....

In any case, the most Obama seems to be suggesting is that he’s OK with income-based affirmative action and — maybe — also OK with a modest reduction in race-based affirmative action for well-off blacks. Sometime in the indefinite future, that is. But it’s hard to tell. Obama doesn’t like being nailed down on specifics much, and this is a topic where nobody likes being nailed down anyway.

Again, the time when Obama’s daughters will be applying to college is considerably nearer than the “indefinite future.” But Drum, in attempting to clarify Obama, like Robinson succeeds only in sewing more confusion. If, for example, there is nothing wrong with race-based affirmative action, why reduce it, even modestly? If aiding the needy is to be the new standard, why only “reduce” racial preferences for rich blacks instead of just eliminating it?

And does Drum really thing it’s true that “nobody likes being nailed down” on affirmative action? He’s of course speaking of Democrats, but I haven’t noticed any reduction of their loud and unqualified support for racial preferences.

Drum concludes:

.... Switching to a system of class-based affirmative action, perhaps combined with very modest levels of race-based affirmative action, would probably accomplish about as much as we accomplish now, and do it with far less acrimony. It's certainly something worth injecting into the national conversation.

Obviously nothing is ever “injected” into “the national conversation” unless Democratic politicians do it. Forget all the conservatives who’ve been challenging racial preferences. Drum’s call for a new “injection” of discussion on this issue makes the 58% of Michigan voters (and the equally substantial majorities in California and Washington who clearly and soundly rejected racial preferences) into the new silent majority.

Part of the reason the Obama-generated comments about affirmative action are so muddled is that they conflate various kinds of financial aid and other economic assistance to poor people with preferences based on race. But don’t look to these pundits or their friends in politics to clear this up any time soon. Look instead to the citizens of the four or five states who may, if enough signatures are gathered and liberal roadblocks are overcome, be given the next opportunity to reject racial preferences at the ballot box.

UPDATE II [16 May]

Eugene Robinson went live on a Washington Post chat session yesterday to answer questions about his recent columns, most of which dealt with race, class, and affirmative action. The transcript is here.

It’s clear from Robinson’s responses, as from his columns, that he would tolerate affirmative action being expanded to include class but strongly opposes eliminating race preferences, even, it would seem, for the “advantaged.” Here is a typical exchange making that point:

Baltimore: I am a certified member of the Black 500 (affirmative action babies who went to the Ivies in the '70s and '80s) as is my spouse. Our children attend private schools. Though I would appreciate my kids having “a leg up” in admissions, I can't in good conscience say that they have been disadvantaged. Their experiences in the current American society are far different from my own at their age: certainly not the same barriers. But those barriers still exist for black children who lack the legacy of academic success. Affirmative Action still is needed and has benefitted society as a whole — perhaps it just needs to evolve?

Eugene Robinson: Maybe it is evolving. I know a goodly number of college admissions officers, and I'm quite sure that they would do more in terms of admission and financial aid for a disadvantaged minority student than they would for your kids. As the society becomes more unequal, affirmative action has to be about more than just race. But I don't think we're at the point where race can be ignored.

So, even rich, privileged blacks who are the children of rich, privileged parents deserve some preference, though not as much as poor, disadvantaged blacks.

Perhaps everyone’s Social Security card should be encoded with a new Diversity/Disadvantage Index ranking, with preferential treatment going, first, to the most disadvantaged among the “diverse,” then to the “diverse” no matter their disadvantage, then to the disadvantaged non-diverse....