John Gibson, former president of Alabama A & M, has a letter in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Affirmative Action: Let’s Not Screw It Up,” stating that he is “amazed at the passionate outcries against affirmative action,” citing this article in particular (an article I discussed here.)
According to Gibson,
it is ridiculous to ask questions such as “What is the benefit of diverse student bodies?” What about asking: “What was the benefit of segregated student bodies?” I certainly saw no benefit in segregation, and neither did the courts. Or what about this: “How many complaints do you have about the diversity of athletic teams and the tremendous amounts of money generated by these teams?” Right, none so far!
I am a baby boomer who remembers the Jim Crow South. I participated in marches with Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Ala. I was a plaintiff in the desegregation lawsuit in Alabama that found the state still had a de jure system of segregation (Knight v. James). Affirmative action has engendered vast aspirations and achievement goals for future generations—why this recrudescence of 1950s attitudes? We just elected a black president of the United States.
I don’t understand Gibson’s sports question — does he believe, say, professional basketball is “diverse,” or is he simply saying that he has no complaints about the fact that it isn’t? — but I do understand his clear implication that those who oppose engineered “diversity” affirmatively support “segregated student bodies.”
I too remember what Jim Crow Alabama was like, but I also remember that segregation was brought down by the moral force of the argument that it is wrong to deprive anyone of rights because of race, something Gibson seems to have forgotten. Somehow, amazingly, the belief that people should be treated without regard to race has become the “recrudescence of 1950s attitudes.” Left unexplained is how the “black president of the United States” could have possibly been elected by voters who must partake of that “recrudescence,” since according to all polls — and votes in California, Washington, Michigan, and Nebraska — they overwhelmingly oppose preferential treatment based on race.
ADDENDUM
No doubt a few of the criticisms of affirmative action that “amazed” Gibson in the Chronicle of Higher Education article he cited came from Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, who was quoted there. Roger submitted the following comment to the Chronicle, but since it has yet to appear there he gave his permission for me to post it here:
Professor Gibson’s generalized claim of historical discrimination as a justification for racial preferences is, to begin with, a legal nonstarter, since the Supreme Court has long rejected it. And the Court was right to, since skin color is a poor and unnecessary proxy for individual disadvantage (plus, how does it justify, for example, giving Latinos a preferences over Asians?).
In any event, the dubious benefit claimed by Professor Gibson of the use of racial preferences must be weighed against its myriad costs: It is personally unfair, passes over better qualified students, and sets a disturbing legal, political, and moral precedent in allowing racial discrimination; it creates resentment; it stigmatizes the so-called beneficiaries in the eyes of their classmates, teachers, and themselves, as well as future employers, clients, and patients; it fosters a victim mindset, removes the incentive for academic excellence, and encourages separatism; it compromises the academic mission of the university and lowers the overall academic quality of the student body; it creates pressure to discriminate in grading and graduation; it breeds hypocrisy within the school; it encourages a scofflaw attitude among college officials; it mismatches students and institutions, guaranteeing failure for many of the former; it papers over the real social problem of why so many African Americans and Latinos are academically uncompetitive; and it gets states and schools involved in unsavory activities like deciding which racial and ethnic minorities will be favored and which ones not, and how much blood is needed to establish group membership.
Adding up all these costs, it’s clear that using affirmative action is what’s really screwed up.
