As I discussed here, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a terrific piece two days ago by Kevin Ferris. Today, perhaps in a misguided attempt to be balanced, it ran an atrocious one by George Curry on the “Continuing relevance of affirmative action.”
Before I discuss Curry’s article, however, I can’t resist telling you more than you want to know about “currying favor.” (If I had an editor, he would make me cut this as too snarky and not really relevant. But I don’t. If you insist on reading edited articles, go get a newspaper.) Here’s how the dictionary built into the Apple operating system, based on the Oxford New American Dictionary, explains the term:
curry favor ingratiate oneself with someone through obsequious behavior: a wimpish attempt to curry favor with the new bosses. [ORIGIN: alteration of Middle English curry favel, from the name ( Favel or Fauvel) of a chestnut horse in a 14th-cent. French romance who became a symbol of cunning and duplicity; hence ‘to rub down Favel’ meant to use the cunning that he personified.]
It would be going too far to say that Curry’s column exudes “cunning and duplicity,” but not much too far. Curry, who over a decade ago edited a collection of articles on The Affirmative Action Debate, should know better than what he writes here.
Curry criticizes both Obama’s and Clinton’s comments on affirmative action in the recent Philadelphia debate, charging against both of them that they were in such “a rush to show how concerned they are about poor whites, they failed to accurately define the issue.”
The accurate definition, according to Curry, taken from an old and now no doubt discarded U.S. Civil Rights Commission definition, is
any measure … which permits the consideration of race, national origin, sex and disability, along with other criteria, and which is adopted to provide opportunities to a class of qualified individuals who have either historically or actually been denied those opportunities, and to prevent the reoccurrence of discrimination in the future.
In other words, whites, Asians, etc., need not apply, no matter what “hardship” they have endured or overcome. He acknowledges that
the needs of impoverished whites should be addressed. However, they are not covered by affirmative action and could be helped by antipoverty measures. The presidential debate provided further proof that most of the confusion over affirmative action is because it is too often mis-defined.
It is Curry, however, who has egregiously “mis-defined” affirmative action. In agreeing that quotas are illegal, he quotes President Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 on affirmative action, but if he had actually read it, or remembered it from when he read it long ago, he could never have written that poor (or other) whites or Asians “are not covered by affirmative action,” at least as it was originally understood and sold. I’ve quoted it too many times to cite, but will do so again now, from its Section 202 discussing the obligations of federal contractors:
(1) The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin…. [Emphasis added]
What part of “any employee or applicant” does Curry not understand.?
Curry did not refer to President Kennedy’s earlier Executive Order 10925, but if he had he would have found that it embodied the same, now abandoned principle.
WHEREAS discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin is contrary to the Constitutional principles and policies of the United States; and
WHEREAS it is the plain and positive obligation of the United States Government to promote and ensure equal opportunity for all qualified persons, without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin, employed or seeking employment with the Federal Government and on government contracts; and
WHEREAS it is the policy of the executive branch of the Government to encourage by positive measures equal opportunity for all qualified persons within the Government….
Again, what part of “all” does Curry not understand?
He is surely right that affirmative action has come, for most people, to be synonymous with preferential treatment based on race, but that is because the original meaning has been butchered by those, like Curry, who have “mis-defined” it.
Finally, Curry doesn’t know whether to justify affirmative action primarily as a remedy for past discrimination or a prophylactic against discrimination in the future. So he does both. He quoted, recall, a definition that justified affirmative action in part because it is necessary “to prevent the reoccurrence of discrimination in the future,” and he also asserted:
If people were discriminated against based on their race or sex, then it stands to reason that remedies should be race- and sex-sensitive.
First, discrimination against some in the present is a) still discrimination, and b) is unrelated to possible discrimination against others in the future. Individuals who have been discriminated against have available remedies that do not require affirmative action. What Curry et. al. want is not a remedy for individuals who have suffered discrimination but rather a group entitlement extending unendingly into the future.
Discrimination is and should be addressed by enforcing anti-discrimination laws, not by practicing preventive discrimination.
