I don’t know whether to be embarrassed, chagrined, frustrated, or just amused. I’ve been trying to expose the moral, legal, philosophical, political, and just plain common sense flaws of racial preferences on this blog for nearly 10 years (!), but every now and then a supporter of racial preference comes along who unwittingly makes my paltry efforts pale into puny insignificance. The Chronicle of Higher Education printed a perfect example a couple of days ago, a letter from a Stanford graduate students under the heading “A Diversity Proposal to Spur Discussion.”
David Dixon, the author, writes:
Chronicle readers should know that in order to check the box for American Indian or Alaskan Native on U.S. Census forms, not only must a person have official documentation, but he or she also must “maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment.” So Native people must be involved or volunteering in their tribes to legally claim they are part of those tribes. I believe Indian Nations ben efit from this qualification, yet no such stipulation is levied on other groups.
In order to spur a healthy discussion, I ask: What if universities required all minorities to demonstrate that they were serving in their racial communities before they received special consideration for admissions and scholarships? I believe this policy would encourage more volunteerism and have manifold positive effects in American society.
I’m not sure whether the link to this letter requires a Chronicle subscription, but in case it does let me assure readers who can’t follow it that I did not make this up. This letter, dated March 13, really did appear.
Spurred, I do have some discussion to offer. Let’s start with “racial communities.” First, do they really exist? Is there a Hispanic “racial community,” or are there “racial communities” of Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc.? Are Asian Americans all members of one “racial community,” or might Chinese, Japanese, etc., be members of different communities?
Moving on, who decides who is a member and whether someone’s service was sufficient to deserve the “special consideration” that universities would bestow on the deserving (but only the deserving) members? Mr. Dixon identifies himself as “an active member of the Choctaw Nation,” and so he can presumably present the required “official documentation” of his “tribal affiliation or community attachment.” In order to implement Mr. Dixon’s proposal, wouldn’t blacks, Hispanics (Mexicans, Cubans, Peruvians, etc.?), Asians (Chinese, Japanese, etc.?) have to have their own authentication-providing membership committees?
And wouldn’t those same official racial authentication committees also have to decide the nature and amount of “community attachment” necessary to earn official recognition? Can’t you just see Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al. sitting as tribal elders deciding who qualifies for officially sanctioned membership in the black “racial community”?
Or maybe instead university admissions offices would bring in race and ethnic monitors and make this determination for themselves. In any event, Mr. Dixon’s proposal not only acknowledges but enshrines the point made by “diversity” critics for years — that being regarded by the diversicrats as black, for example, requires much more than being black.
One clear effect of requiring documented evidence of service in one’s “racial community” would be limiting “special consideration” of race and ethnicity to those who believed they deserved “special consideration” because of their race or ethnicity. I would say this is both absurd and offenseive, but what is really absurd and offensive is that Mr. Dixon’s outlandish proposal is actually not that different from what we are doing now.
UPDATE
See “Diversity As Tribalism II” for a friendly and thoughtful reply from Mr. Dixon and my additional comments.
