An Unusually Wacky Defense Of Affirmative Action

I usually see less difference than others do between bizarre, wacky defenses of affirmative action and arguments that are widely considered sensible even if not persuasive, serious, thoughtful. But Affirmative Action for the Racist in All of Us, posted on the Huffington Post yesterday, pushes the envelope so far that even I can now see some daylight between it and typical pro-preference positions.

In it Tanya Hernandez, a law professor at Fordham, argues that affirmative action is necessary to counteract the implicit biases of university admissions officers and prevent from discriminating against blacks. Really. I’m not making this up.

The pervasive existence of implicit bias in society and its manifestation in the educational setting, strongly suggests that the selection of students can be similarly affected by unexamined stereotypes and implicit biases. Bluntly stated university Admission Offices are not immune from the operation of implicit bias.

But we are not slaves to our implicit associations. The social science research indicates that biases can be overridden with concerted effort….

Affirmative action programs provide admission officers the needed space for acknowledging and addressing implicit bias. Having a race-conscious admissions policy encourages decision makers to consider the accomplishments and potential of students that their unexamined implicit bias might have otherwise overlooked. When institutionally activated, egalitarian goals undermine and inhibit stereotyping.

See, I wasn’t joking. She really does argue that that admissions officers — probably the most pro-preference cohort of citizens anywhere — need affirmative action to keep them from acting like bigots.

But wait; there’s more. Affirmative action would not be needed if the academic qualifications of blacks as a group weren’t significantly lower than those of Asians and whites. But, you see (you do see, don’t you?), those lower qualifications are themselves produced by the implicit bias of K-12 teachers (black and white, since “Blacks also show a preference for Whites”). Studies of school teachers, she writes, “indicate that teachers generally hold differential expectations of students from different ethnic origins, and that implicit prejudiced attitudes were responsible for these differential expectations as well as the ethnic achievement gap in their classrooms” [emphasis added].

Affirmative action, society’s duct tape. There’s nothing it can’t fix….

Say What?