Affirmative Action

Tartarin,

You may have hit on a particularly insidious element of the AA debate, particularly as it relates to African Americans. That is the nexus between the generally poor quality of the public education to which African Americans have access, and the perceived continuing need for affirmative action to aid them in gaining access to higher education.

To some degree African Americans are the particular victims of an educational establishment that vigorously defends its monopolistic access to government funds; resists with equal vigor any attempt to objectively measure its effectiveness and create the accountability generally needed to make anything work well; and which is increasingly unable to live up to historical standards of effectiveness. This establishment has also taken pains to avoid holding the parents of African American (or any other) students responsible for their part in the success or failure of their children's academic performance. All these factors, plus the various social pathologies associated with poverty and racism, combine to deprive African American students of some of the needed hard lessons of self-development and, perhaps worse, communicate low expectations for their personal achievements. The result is a perpetuation of a pervasive social pathology which requires affirmative action and the attendant quotas (in some form) at the gateways to higher education and employment as critically needed remedies. An inevitable casualty of all this is that deserved recognition of the the individual achievements of African Americans can be lost in the perception that it was only the result of favoritism. In short we have a self-perpetuating process which provides precisely the wrong feedback signals to the people and institutions involved.

You have already described the hard work and determination of Mexican Americans you have met. The process you have described and your own reactions to it are, of course, basic parts of the assimilation of the hordes of German, Irish, Polish, Jewish, Italian and other immigrants who flooded this country during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The process involved the assimilation of both the immigrants themselves and of the old-timers who were finally (if sometimes grudgingly) persuaded of the merits of the new arrivals. Institutional racism and Jim Crow denied that process to African Americans. Both are gone now. At some point this process or a new equivalent must be allowed to operate. If not, then we will eventually have institutionalized affirmative action, quotas, and resentment for all.

You won't argue need, then. Scrat?

Quick response to your thoughtful post, George, and that is just to add that in the past there has of course been horrendous discrimination against Mexican Americans and migrant workers, of course. Institutional racism and its kin have, I guess, always been the eye of the needle for citizenship except that by now we (we assimilated, we oldtimers) should know better!

Tart - For the moment I'll assume you haven't seen my comments, so I will restate my position:

IF the federal government should be involved in an affirmative action program or programs, they should be based on economic need, not something as arbitrary as skin color or ethnicity. If a given black person has in fact been disadvantaged due to the legacy of slavery in the US, he or she will--by definition--be found among those in economic need, and would be helped by such a program, whilst not treating people differently based on ethnicity, which I believe we both agree is wrong.

Tartarin,

If there are any lessons from history the first is that we never learn from the lessons of history.

Learning from history...yeah, we're lousy at that. In education as well. There is a wonderful chapter on education in Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, and one of the startling revelations (very thoroughly documented) is that there is NO PERIOD where the educational system was thought to be doing a good job - it's 'decline' and 'emergency' as far as the eye can see.

George

You've bought into a notion regarding education that becomes less and less convincing when one moves from an external view of it to the practice of it. How one measures quality in education, even what one ought to be measuring, does not conform well to the industrial model (# of widgets built to X tolerance out the door per annum, etc). This is no small discussion and I don't really want to get into it here (we are a family of educators and I get weary of the matter). But I will point out to you that the sources of this particular view of how schools ought to operate are most commonly out of the business community, and not the educational community. We have a think tank locally (Fraser Institute) who does grading of schools based on some set of measures they have developed. Every year they churn their report out and every year some principal or supervisor writes them a letter beginning with "You numb-skulls...". The folks involved at the Fraser Institue, by far most of them, have never been anywhere near a school since they graduated or left to begin an exciting career selling used autos.

There are a number of common metaphors folks use to think with when conceiving schools - there's the garden metaphor (just given the right nutrients, the kids will blossom) and another is the industrial metaphor (get them in on time, get them working hard, get their heads filled, measure the filling). But if you think about your own children, and how you go about encouraging them to live as full and complete a life as possible, then one gets a better notion of the task education has to achieve.

But if we do, we catch hell from the "believers." I was thinking this morning about LBJ/Tonkin, Nixon/Watergate, Reagan/Iran/Contra, having been a demonstrator in all three matters at the time -- we turned out to have been right. Now Bush....

Some of us do learn something from history, but not everything, and are seldom able to convince others in time to deal with the problems of the present!

QED

After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident, do you wonder about history?

Blatham,

Another eloquent post. Logically composed, well written, several pleasing turns of phrase -- persuasive and pleasant to read, even if I don't agree with it all. Clearly something educated you rather well. What was it?



Good metaphor, even if a bit biased against the "industrial" approach. I am a product of Jesuit primary and high schools, the Naval Academy, and Cal Tech. All were intensely competitive and filled with schemes for measuring "the filling" and the rate with which I was processing it. Interestingly all treated the two processes as separate, distinct, and equally necessary. The underlying point was that understanding without learning was meaningless; and that learning is a necessary precursor to understanding, which often comes later. (I can even recall the Jesuits explaining, " Of course you don't understand - you're too young. Learn it now, you will understand it later". - Experience taught me they were often right in this.)

Very interesting observation concerning the historical trajectory of public views about the effectiveness of public education -- "... no period in which the educational system was thought to be doing a good job...". Very believable. However, I do worry about the increasingly bureaucratic nature of the educational establishment. I strongly believe that there is something wrong with a bureaucracy which demands more money and autonomy as the only solution to every problem, and I have ample experience with the tendency of bureaucracies towards self preservation above all other values.

You are giving me ever more reasons to read Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life". Eventually I will, though the title annoys me and the idea of accepting your recommendation on this of all issues gets to me even more ! Try and make it easier for me. Agree with me on something !

I agree that you may one day read this book.

Blatham for UN rep!

I guess I asked for that. However it's not enough !

Nice to be reminded of the Hofstadter book, which I hadn't thought about in a while, though I think we had a little discussion about it in Abuzz? Why is our educational model in this country so different from the British and European ones? And (in my opinion) so inferior? Is it because we're providing corporate fodder?

I'm a bit pressed for time here, but...

george

The jesuits often provide a very good education, and it shows with you. They are likely one day to recall you on the matter of ad hominem, but it should be a quick patch what with the assistance I've been providing.

There are a lot of voices shouting down at schools, all with valid (though often narrowly conceived) views on what it is schools ought to be doing. The arts communities have a set of ideas, and the business communities have a set of ideas, and people in the physical sciences, or computing, or anthropology, etc.

Additionally, with most homes having both parents out earning enough to afford our modern levels of consumption, and with modern life greatly segregating age groups (in a way that wasn't so in older rural communities) schools are now expected to provide a lot of the socialization goals which families themselves used to manage (and I'll just note here that in thinking about schools and education, one ought to clearly differentiate 'education' and 'socialization', they are different in very interesting ways). Totally aside from actually achieving any of these demands, just sorting out which are priority is difficult.

You, george, have come through your post secondary education and then you went into the technical sphere. That is a particular area of education which has different ends and different demands and different criteria for 'success' than, say, law school.

But damn...I don't want to get into this...so that's all

Blatham,

I agree with you about the perceived need and growing requirements for socialization in addition to education in our schools. However, I happen to believe the path to socialization is through education: the attempt to bypass it leads to poor education and poor socialization.

I have studied many things and have learned there is far less difference among the logical structures and even imagery of science, the professions and the arts than is generally thought. Takes a while to get there, but as the roads go on, they converge.

The Jesuits would have praised the quality and clarity of your prose, the deft use of irony and imagery, and the flashes of wonderful wit. However, you would have flunked ad hominem cold.

These are very interesting subjects, and if one day you become interested in discussing them, please let me know.

Jesuit. Boots. Hot tub... Hmmm

We were, um, talking about affirmative action:

The Litmus Test On Racial Diversity
by Joe Conason

Conservatives deride racial diversity and detest affirmative action, as attested by their sputtering outrage at the Supreme Court's Michigan decisions. And conservatives despise "litmus tests" for court nominees, as they protest whenever liberals venture to apply them. These unbending principles can never, ever be abandoned?-except, of course, when upholding them becomes politically inconvenient.

Indeed, as the Republican right anticipates the potential High Court vacancy that could be contested this summer, those principled activists are preparing to deploy their own perverse version of diversity, as well as their own strict litmus test. What they will demand from the White House is a black or Latino candidate who can be depended upon to rule against affirmative action in any form.

The misuse of racial politics for cynical court-packing is an old story, dating back to 1991, when the previous President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the top bench. Everyone understood that Mr. Thomas, a figure of no great distinction, had been hand-picked due to a happy coincidence of skin color and political coloration. Although he had benefited from affirmative action throughout his career, Mr. Thomas had since displayed his eagerness to deprive others of the means by which he had advanced.

At the time, columnist George Will confessed: "Trashing the truth is now so natural in Washington that there were only worldly smirks and shrugs when George Bush began the Thomas saga by saying two things he and everyone else knows are untrue?-that Thomas is the person best-qualified for the Supreme Court, and that his race was irrelevant to his selection."

What the Thomas saga proved is how easily expedience trumps principle. More recently, the Republicans have repeated the Thomas ploy by promoting Hispanic nominees for district and appellate court seats?-and abruptly screaming "racism" whenever anyone questions their qualifications or positions. By nominating Miguel Estrada to the federal bench, for instance, the Republicans meant to intimidate Democrats and attract Hispanic voters.

Such calculations once spurred predictions that President Bush would name his friend and counsel Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court someday. But as the author of the administration's "moderate" brief in the Michigan cases, Mr. Gonzales has suddenly become the scapegoat for conservative fury over the outcome of those decisions.

As right-wing legal activist Clint Bolick explained to The New York Times after the Michigan decisions were announced, "Conservatives will want to make sure that anyone appointed to court in this administration is a strong and sure opponent of racial preferences." According to The Times, Mr. Bolick noted that "many do not believe that Mr. Gonzales fits that description"?-which is another way of saying that Mr. Gonzales cannot pass the right's litmus test.

(Instead, the right is currently boosting Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American conservative from California.)

When Bill Clinton was President, he acknowledged the difficult balancing inherent in any effort to undo the effects of past discrimination at the expense of current generations. His approach?-"mend it, don't end it"?-resembled the court's Michigan decision in rejecting numerical formulas while preserving the goals of diversity and minority advancement.

It's easy enough for the denizens of right-wing think tanks and subsidized magazines to denounce diversity as a liberal "sacred cow." After all, nobody cares whether the American Enterprise Institute or The Weekly Standard remain lily-white. But as the Supreme Court must have noticed in reaching the Michigan decisions, significant American institutions from the Fortune 500 to the U.S. armed forces need to look like America at all levels?-and have benefited from their dedication to that ideal. The court's majority could not ignore that "compelling interest" in deciding the Michigan cases.

The problem that Mr. Bolick and his conservative comrades consistently fail to acknowledge is the persistence of racism in American life. If their dismay about the application of ethnic criteria by universities and other institutions is sincere?-and not merely an appeal to divisive emotions?-they ought to be devising other, better means to eradicate inequality. Yet their feeble gestures in that direction, notably school vouchers and enterprise zones, are consciously designed to achieve other conservative goals, such as busting teachers' unions or cutting corporate taxes.

Meanwhile, the right's demand that merit must always rule is actually quite selective, and not only in the case of Justice Thomas. There is no right-wing movement against geographical preferences, or alumni legacies, or athletic scholarships, or favoritism toward wealthy donors. Only blacks, Latinos and Native Americans must be excluded, it seems, on the basis of their test scores.

In her majority opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor laid down a challenge to the nation, and especially to her fellow conservatives. A quarter-century from today, she hopes that affirmative action will no longer be needed to realize "the dream of one nation, indivisible." That would require a commitment to equality?-and to providing the necessary resources?-that this President and Congress cannot even imagine.

http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=7563

Tartar, This one sentence says it all; "The problem that Mr. Bolick and his conservative comrades consistently fail to acknowledge is the persistence of racism in American life." Will they ever acknowledge it? Ofcoarse not! c.i.

Let me ask you, CI: Do you think the president (and many of his party) really want a first-rate educational system for all? In principle, I mean?

Tartarin and CI

I'll leap in, if I may. There are two factors which I think suggest they (some portion of those in that party) don't really want first rate education for everyone.

A first rate education will produce young people who are not only knowledgeable, but who question assumptions and received wisdoms. We already know that many in that party don't want evolution taught in schools, nor sex ed, etc. Thus it is probably more accurate to assume what they would like is something more akin to indoctrination. They might wish for first rate technical training or lots of business grads, but that's really based on a consideration that students are resources for the state - specifically, resources which will continue existing systems and social arrangements rather than upset them.

Secondly, I doubt very much that folks who are proud to be very wealthy would be happy if their own children were placed on an equal footing with all others. Expensive prep schools, connections via alma mater socieities, etc will be utilized to ensure that social hierarchies are maintained. 'Wealth' is of course a relative term. In some cultures, if you own two cows you are the rich guy in town. Folks who need to feel that they occupy some elevated social status aren't going to be happy with equality regardless of how it might come about. Inequality is what they really wish.