"Affirmative action" Backlash

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“Affirmative action” Backlash

The following is from Thomas Sowell. Is Reality Optional? pp. 161 - 162.

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“Affirmative action” Backlash

"USUALLY I HAVE TO PULL TEETH to get my students to speak up in discussion sections, but I had no trouble at all in my American Government class last quarter on the day we discussed the Bakke decision. The anger in the room was quite palpable as each white (and Asian) student in each of my three sections chimed in to denounce affirmative action."

This letter from a woman who teaches at a well-known university points to a problem that is boiling at many colleges and universities, as well as in other American institutions—not to mention various other countries around the world. Black and Hispanic students in this lady's class defended affirmative action—except for one of the black students, who was academically outstanding and who said that affirmative action would stigmatize him as someone who came in "through the back door," even though he was in fact making it on his ability.

One of the reasons why it is hard to discuss many controversial issues sensibly is that people often do not bother to define what they are talking about. "Affirmative action" has meant many things in different times and places. In the beginning, it often meant simply a special effort to make sure that everybody received the same treatment, regardless of race, religion, or national origin. That is not what it usually means today.

Another early meaning for "affirmative action" was that special efforts needed to be made for disadvantaged groups, to bring knowledge of opportunities to them and to develop more skills among them, so that they could take advantage of these opportunities. Polls have shown that most Americans support such things, even though most Americans (including blacks and women) oppose preferential hiring.

Over the years, "affirmative action" has largely come to mean preferential policies—whether in employment, college admission, or elsewhere. This is what has polarized people, not only in the United States but also in India, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and other countries.

These countries differ widely, as do the groups receiving the preferences. That makes it all the more remarkable that they share many similarities. The most common similarity is that preferences produce polarization. Where these preferential policies have gone on longer—in India and Sri Lanka, for example—the polarization has reached the stage of mob violence, bloodshed in the streets, and many innocent lives lost, often in hideous atrocities.

Are we in America heading in that direction? It is hard to know whether a growing number of ugly racial incidents adds up to a trend. Maybe we won't know until it is too late.

For a number of years now, many colleges have had racial harassment, confrontations and violence of a sort that they never had a generation ago, This is not a "vestige" of past racism, but a new backlash.

These incidents are not nearly as common on conservative campuses or in conservative areas such as the South. Indeed, liberal Massachusetts alone has more of these incidents than all the Southern states put together. Avant-garde institutions across the country—Berkeley, University of Massachusetts, Smith, Dartmouth—are where some of the ugliest racial polarization can be found.

A Ku Klux Klan leader was quoted recently as saying that affirmative action is one of his most effective talking points when recruiting whites for his racist organization. This and other such organizations are springing up in places far removed from their old stomping grounds and among educated people who would have had nothing to do with KKK, neo-Nazi, and other such movements before.

This does not mean that the college kids who oppose preferential treatment are about to put on white robes and start burning crosses. It does mean that we had better start to realize what is happening before things reach that point. Unfortunately, too many colleges across the country have simply tried to clamp the lid on tighter, so that expressing anger on such racial issues will be punished.

That is treating the symptom rather than the disease. But few colleges—or other institutions—are going to ask whether their own policies have contributed to the anger that has been building up.

Some see opposition to affirmative action as simply opposition to minority groups getting ahead by taking places that would otherwise go to whites. But, on some leading college campuses, Asians take far more places than blacks and Hispanics put together—and the Asians get praised for it. As an old song said: "It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it."

There are many ways to help groups that need help. Preferential policies tend to produce a minimum of help and a maximum of backlash. Someone should do a study of a low-income ghetto or barrio to find out how many people there—if any—have actually benefitted from affirmative action.

Around the world, preferential policies tend to help the elite in the name of the masses. It is a great way for a professor, a lawyer, or a businessman to get special deals. But it does little or nothing for the truly disadvantaged individual—except make him more of a target for the backlash from the larger society.

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13 May 2024