Your Humble Blogger has recently had yet another frustrating conversation about affirmative action. So I'll post what I have to say here, and you can tell me why it isn't persuasive...
My father went to Queens College and Columbia Law School in the fifties. At the time, neither was actually segregated, but I think we can safely assume that applicants with dark skin were viewed with some skepticism by the admissions boards. With some reason, as elementary and high schools were segregated across much of the country at that time, and most people of color received an inferior education, which did not prepare them for places like Queens and Columbia. Thus vicious and illegal discrimination at the earlier levels coupled with the relatively benign discrimination at those institutions to deny an African-American student an equal shot at admission. Right? Everybody knows that, right?
And now, most admissions boards are not racist, and differences in elementary and high schools are much more class-based than race-based (the obvious overlap makes that murky; plus residual racism mixes with the class struggle in a variety of ugly ways, but in general, rich people of color have opportunities denied to poor European-Americans). To many people, this means that the need for race-based preference has disappeared.
Here's the thing, though. When a group of people was denied equal opportunity to get into Queens College, another group of people benefited. Was my father one of those people? Who knows? I like to think that my father (a very smart man) would have got in over any competition, but then I'm his son. If things were fair, somebody's father would not have been accepted; for the sake of argument, let's say mine.
Now, if my dad hadn't gone to Queens (and later Columbia), he probably wouldn't have become a successful attorney, and I wouldn't have grown up in a nice house, with occasional vacations. It's even possible that he and my mother would not have been attracted to each other, had my father not been a professional; of course, it's unlikely they would even have met, but let's leave that aside. Further, his education helped him support my siblings and me as we grew up. When I applied to college, I had in my favor (a) some success at a reasonable high school in a reasonable neighborhood. I was well-read for a 17-year-old, I had exposure to culture in a variety of ways, and I had parents and siblings with bachelor's degrees. These are all advantages that I might well not have had, if things had been fair when my father applied to Queens.
And what about the fellow my age whose father was screwed out of a good education? What did his application look like? Even if he were smarter and more disciplined than I (he probably was), would he have even been sending college applications out? Maybe. Maybe to different places. Maybe to the schools I wanted to attend. Maybe, just possibly, the last decision for the admissions office came down to him or me; my application looked better in a lot of ways, but they gave the other guy some preference for his race.
So if I had been screwed by affirmative action, would it have been fair? No, of course not. But I would have had no beef; you win some and you lose some, and I have won plenty. Fairness, in the specifics, is not the point; in the big picture, I'm still on top.
Statistically, the best predictor if a kid is going to go to college degree is if the kid's parents went to college. That's not necessary, but it's true at present. As long as that's true, then the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, the unfair benefits of the fathers are visited on the sons, and the injustices endured by the fathers are visited on the sons. That's why, as a society, we must take action, affirmative action, to redress the wrongs.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
I’m not sure I follow you here. I see a general argument between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. Putting it in terms of fairness makes the contrast more stark for me: You can talk about rules being fair, but it doesn’t make sense to me to talk about outcomes being fair. Outcomes are just what happened…
Anyway, your comment that “fairness, in the specifics, is not the point” made me think that you were taking an equality-of-opportunity point of view; but talk about “redressing the wrongs” sounds like an equality-of-outcomes thing.
Also, it seems to me like redressing the wrongs is focusing on the specifics — trying to make the ledger balance, rather than on trying to change the system, to make race a non-factor. Isn’t the latter more big-picture?
I suppose that when I said that “fairness, in the specifics, is not the point” I was referring to specific events, not specific people. If I win the lottery, and then lose $50 at poker because somebody cheated, the cheating wasn’t fair, but if I complain that I got screwed in my life, I won’t get much sympathy.
To put it somewhat more in your terms, if equality of outcome is affected (not to say determined) by equality of opportunity, and that further opportunities are predicated on the outcome of the first opportunity, then in order to make the second opportunity somewhat equal, you have to take into account the outcome of the first.
Finally, yes, ultimately I would like to make race a non-factor in equality of opportunity (more or less, I could expand on this somewhat, but let’s move on). If, by changing the system to make race a non-factor, you mean a bunch of things we have so far failed to do, like make a public school system that treats children evenly with regard to class and parental education as well as race, then fine, I’m with you. Affirmative action in college admissions is based on the idea that we have failed to do that, and as long as we continue to fail, we need to continue with admissions preferences.
At least that’s how I see it.
Redintegro Iraq,
-V.
Not to speak for the esteemed V., but it seems to me that the thrust of his argument is that one generation’s outcomes are the primary factor in creating the next generation’s opportunities. Under such conditions, there is no simple, rules-based way to establish equality of opportunity, because even if “the rules” appear to provide equality of opportunity, a huge set of factors that “the rules” can’t directly touch (not unless we’re talking about radical redistribution of property, among other things), play a larger role than any factors “the rules” can touch in defining what a person’s opportunities are.
for every arrived group in the united states, there is a period in american history when that group was considered less than human. in some cases new laws had to be created to give those people official status as people, in other cases it had to be thoroughly examined and decided that they were really the kind of people that fit the legal “people” definition.
for many people now, who resemble the people who were thought not to be people, there are still people alive today who witnessed the day those people were given irrevocable status as full people. the later effects on those similar people of their people once, in living memory, not being people, is unpopular. understandably!
it is definitely public business not only to ensure that all full people are treated as full people but also to act as though similar people, who may or may not then have been thought to be people, had been full people even before it was decided they were.
recompense, in a sense, by giving today’s people yesterday’s people’s proper point of departure, per se.