Some affirmative action proponents, however, are worried that introducing this kind of nuance to the debate will hurt the larger cause (hat-tip: Russo):
The Supreme Court has...said that universities could consider race as they worked to diversify their campuses. Proponents of such programs point out that blacks continue to face discrimination regardless of class or income. Some fear that Mr. Obama’s focus on the socioeconomic status of his daughters — as opposed to the diversity of experience and perspective they might bring to predominantly white campuses — may help conservatives in their battle to eliminate race from university admissions and government hiring.
This just shows the how screwed-up the affirmative action debate has become. I'm in favor of racial preferences in college admissions as long as the goal is to help minority students who come from substandard K-12 schools and have to live with legacy of historical racism along with discrimination that still exists today. But somehow affirmative action has gotten turned around so that the primary justification is now that it's good for white people. This is partially the legacy of Sandra Day O'Connor's somewhat tortured logic in the Michigan case, and partially because diversity has been diluted into a kind of all-purpose social good that's handy for any rhetorical occasion. It's also a way to be pro-affirmative action without being intellectually honest about the hard tradeoffs that position entails, and leads to absurd conclusions like the idea that some other Senator's daughter would learn more from hanging out with Senator Obama's daughters at Princeton than she would from a white first-generation college student from a low-income family.
Elsewhere in the article there's also this:
Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School and an adviser on black issues to Mr. Obama...and civil rights lawyers like Mr. Payton say Mr. Obama’s daughters should not be barred from affirmative action programs because they may well encounter racial discrimination, unlike their white peers. Studies suggest that employers often favor white job seekers over black applicants, even when their educational backgrounds and work experiences are nearly identical. Mr. Obama’s “daughters are not going to be judged in a colorblind way throughout their lives,” Mr. Ogletree said.
I'm pretty sure that the single biggest thing affecting the way people judge Barack Obama's children throughout their lives will be the fact that their dad was a world-famous Senator and possibly the President of the United States of America, not their race, gender, or anything else. And while this is somewhat of an extreme example, many students at the relatively small number of elite colleges where affirmative action is an issue have social capital that dwarfs that of ordinary students.
Affirmative action is meant to help students who were, say, raised by a single parent who struggled to earn enough to put food on the table, students of promising intellect who bounced around from different schools in their younger years. Students, in other words, like Senator Obama himself (the article suggests that Obama "chose not to mention his race in his application to Harvard Law School to avoid benefiting from affirmative action," although this is unconfirmed.) But once it works, it shouldn't become an intergenerational inheritance, particularly when there are far more worthy lower-income students out there than elite institutions currently choose to serve.
7 comments:
As I recall, the original intent of affirmative action was to enhance recruiting of minorities who would otherwise have been less likely to apply to certain institutions. It was not supposed to give them preferences in getting in. That is, institutions were supposed to take deliberate positive steps ("affirmative action") to expand their pool of minority applicants, under the presumption that otherwise qualified people were being overlooked. Of course, that's not what it has become, as it is much easier for an institution to use quotas or points to increase the results, but under that original definition, it would be meaningless to speak of affirmative action helping children of privilege - they would presumably be applying in any case...
Affirmative action is often phrased in terms of "all other things being equal." So comparing a poor single-parent-raised white kid to a wealthy two-educated parent-raised black kid makes for an easy choice in who benefits. When you compare Obama's kids to McCain's kids or a poor white kid to a poor black or hispanic kid, then affirmitive action would favor those of color to remedy past injustices that have resulted in fewer opportunities for people of color. That said, this is still a horribly segregated country. I still think white kids have a lot to learn even from upper-class minority kids: even today most white kids have not spent significant time with peers of color and are still curious about basic things like touching their hair. Maybe experiencing diversity in college will lead to more diverse neighborhoods, churches, bowling leagues, etc.
Our site takes a generally supportive view on affirmative action. But Senator McCain's reflexive hostility does have its defenders. Thanks for adding your analysis to the blogging universe.
Although I've been a longtime liberal on most issues, I've never supported affirmative action for college admissions.
From my experience, the students who benefit from affirmative action policies are generally middle class African American and Hispanic students, who have experienced little hardship or discrimination.
Does a white person get the same educational enrichment from attending school with another white person who acts black, or is the benefit dependent on actual darkness of skin? What about albino's, do they provide adequate educational enrichment? As a white person, should I be worried if a school provides limit diversity, say only Hispanic and African-Americans, and doesn't include Inuit and Aborigines?
The point being, that the argument that affirmative action is needed to benefit whites is ridiculous and could lead down a slippery slope of treating minorities as accessories for white students.
Affirmative action should be based on issues such as income, unique experiences, hardships, etc...
I've also always thought it was weird that affirmative action assists 'Hispanics' - broadly defined to be anyone with at least one parent from a Spanish-speaking country.
Why Spanish? Why not French? Or Portuguese? Or Mandarin Chinese? There's no reason that someone with cultural roots in Argentina is more 'diverse' than a student with cultural roots in Thailand. Oops - wrong language - not diverse!
Of course, I assume the policy is in place because politicians equate "Hispanic" with lower income immigrants from Mexico and other countries. But in my experience, as I noted above, it's not these students (e.g., son of a migrant worker) who are reaping the affirmative action benefits in college admissions.
I understand the concept of Affirmative Action but I don't always agree with it. I'm beginning to think that diversity should be based on the individual rather then a particular race or even social class. A person should be accepted into college based on their accomplishments and I applaud Obama (if it is correct) that he did not mention his race on his application.
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