In my opinion one of the most insightful observers of the American scene during the 20th century was Eric Hoffer, called “the longshoreman philosopher”. Mister, we could use a man like him again. I recommend reading his books, especially The True Believer. It goes a long way to explaining the very things we’re seeing around us now.
One of Mr. Hoffer’s most famous sayings was “What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.” I don’t know whether affirmative action is now a racket, a cult, or a corporation (probably some of all three) but I doubt that John McWhorter will make many Democratic friends by pointing it out as he does in his recent piece in the New York Times. Here’s the meat of his column:
It’s not that I’m opposed utterly to affirmative action in the university context, admitting some students under different grade and test score standards than other students. I just think affirmative action should address economic disadvantage, not race or gender.
When affirmative action was put into practice around a half-century ago, with legalized segregation so recent, it was reasonable to think of being Black as a shorthand for being disadvantaged, whatever a Black person’s socioeconomic status was. In 1960, around half of Black people were poor. It was unheard-of for big corporations to have Black C.E.O.s; major universities, by and large, didn’t think of Black Americans as professor material; and even though we were only seven years from Thurgood Marshall’s appointment to the Supreme Court, the idea of a Black president seemed like folly.
But things changed: The Black middle class grew considerably, and affirmative action is among the reasons. I think a mature America is now in a position to extend the moral sophistication of affirmative action to disadvantaged people of all races or ethnicities, especially since, as a whole, Black America would still benefit substantially.
I think there are good arguments that race-based affirmative action as presently administered is immoral. Consider this:
And I will never forget a line from a guidebook that Black students at Harvard wrote two decades ago: “We are not here to provide diversity training for Kate and Timmy.†Yep — and if we salute the enterprising undergrads who wrote that, we must question the general thrust of the sundry amicus briefs that will be offered in the Harvard and U.N.C. cases, about how kids of color are vital to a campus because of their diversity, echoing the statement of Harvard’s president, just this week, that “Considering race as one factor among many in admissions decisions produces a more diverse student body which strengthens the learning environment for all.â€
That is definitionally immoral. It treats persons as means rather than ends.
To whatever extent race-based affirmative action provides a competitive edge to upper-middle class black kids over their upper-middle class white peers, it is immoral, e.g.:
I don’t want that admissions officer to consider that, perhaps here and there, someone, somewhere, underestimated them because both of their parents aren’t white. In the 2020s, that will have happened so seldom to them, as upper-middle-class persons living amid America’s most racially enlightened Blue American white people, that I’m quite sure it will not imprint them existentially any more than it did me, coming of age in the 1970s and 1980s.
and it institutionalizes victimization—it becomes a strategy for gaining undeserved advantage.
Additionally, the dirty secret of race-based affirmative action is how many of its beneficiaries are Caribbean or sub-Saharan blacks. To whatever degree those individuals are owed any form of redress it is by the Spanish, the English, and the French not by Americans. We have problems of our own. Nonetheless many of the most notable beneficiaries of race-based affirmative action fit that model to the detriment of African-Americans the descendants of slaves. Why detriment? Because those more recent immigrants are taking slots which otherwise might be awarded to those much more needy and deserving. I believe that’s immoral.
Finally, there is a certain amount of empirical evidence that affirmative action sets up ill-prepared students to fail, incurring large debts along the way. That, too, is immoral.
While I think there’s merit to Dr. McWhorter’s idea of amending our present race-based affirmative action to, in his words, “to extend the moral sophistication of affirmative action to disadvantaged people of all races or ethnicities”, it wouldn’t address my final point above and I don’t think it would address the particular problems of inner city black kids who’ve been sold multiple bills of goods not just on the need for everyone to attend college but on the evils of “acting white”. I don’t know of any painless ready answer to either of those issues.
Affirmative action (Nixon’s creation) may or may not be immoral (I think not.), but it is a perq for the black middle and upper classes, and for them it has worked. Think of it as the Fourth Rail of American politics. It is not going away as long as there are blacks in America. It also is a feel-good for lefty Whites, which further cements it in place.
The great fraud is that none of the civil rights legislation, affirmative action, black elected officials, none of the so-called progress in race relations has benefited the black underclass one iota. They are more isolated from American society today than in 1960. The black middle and upper classes have escaped the ghetto and left the underclass behind.
The black underclass has legitimate beefs, but it is also the main threat to the US. It resides in the centers of almost all our major cities, and it bestrides the physical nodes of information and communications, transportation, energy distribution systems, and political hierarchies.
The incoming Asians and Hispanics have no sympathy for and no use for blacks. They regard the black underclass as an insufferable nuisance. Hispanics ethnically cleanse black from their traditional neighborhoods whenever they can.
Things will only get worse, for everyone if the bomb blows.
The day after the CRA was passed it was probably immoral to not have Affirmative action. Now I think it should be economic based. There is some risk with that. There are those studies showing that when you send in job applications and everything is identical except on groups has conventional names and the other has black names the black group is less likely to be offered an interview.
Steve
Just pass another law saying applications with black sounding names get the nod.
Everyone will catch on and name their children accordingly.
Racists.
There are those in this country who try so hard to meet that ephemeral metric called “fairness.†They use it for any number of categories – race, gender, taxation etc. However, it seems the more they alter the criteria to achieve fairness, it becomes more a “virtual signaling†gesture, rather than an unbiased, objective way to attain it. In fact, fairness which used to be coupled with “equality†is now entwined with a newly minted, progressively-sanctioned term of “equity.†This once again changes the yardstick measuring “fairness,†using arbitrary, socially engineered tactics to achieve what is increasingly a politically motivated outcome.
Race-based affirmative action might have been useful initially to give a boost to a group held down by long term prejudicial abuses. But, like most remedies, a healthy sun-setting to such assists should be applied. Similar to rooting a plant in water, until roots appear, the next step is planting it in the ground to fully flourish on it’s own vitality. Minority groups deserve the same individuation blessing, so they can thrive and prosper on their own merits, not on racially determined quotas decided and given by government edict.