Racism's Mad Men

This past Thursday, the Supreme Court struck down race quotas and affirmative action in college admissions. In doing so, it upset (sometimes spectacularly, sometimes hysterically) the usual suspects, but restored a Constitutionally-guaranteed ideal - that of equal treatment in America. The Court, in its 6-3 ideological-lines vote, appears to mirror public opinion, with 74% of Americans believing that race should not be a factor in college admissions (you can safely assume the 3 dissenting Justices align with the caterwaulers).

Affirmative action has long been cast as a remedy to inherent biases, both in universities and in the ELHI systems that prepare (or don't - hold that thought) students for college. That a university admissions board would still harbor any lingering biases against black and latino students is laughable nowadays, given the extraordinary efforts to tilt the tables in their favor. That "the system" is racist against black and brown students is still messaged, though perhaps a bit uncomfortably. Public education has been under progressive control for over half a century, yet it continues to underserve poor and minority students. The finger of blame has an obvious target.

I think the majority Justices have the right of it. Race discrimination is prima facie unconstitutional, but personal experience can certainly be treated as relevant, with Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion highlighting the latter.

And, indeed, if you're a college bigwig and your goal is a diverse campus, welcoming a spectrum of experiential diversity fulfills that goal. On the other hand, two students from essentially the same background (high-achieving parents, big liberal city life, prep school education, perfect SAT scores and 4.0 GPA, similar sports and extracurriculars) should not face (widely) disparate odds of admission simply because one is black and the other is Asian. The experiential diversity may not be zero there, but it's a whole lot closer to zero than that between either of them and a home-schooled white kid from Appalachia.

All this lies atop the modern conflict over race considerations. Setting aside the true racists, of which there are fewer with every passing generation, that conflict lies, in a deft bit of word-smithing, between "equality" and "equity." Equality is what it sounds like. Treat everyone equally, do the best you can not to be influenced by skin color, and elevate 'content of character' to primary status. Equity is meant to sound like equality, but it is the opposite. Equity is about coercion, about adjusting how one is treated - by others, by society, and by government - based on skin color, and subordinating or ignoring all the other components of an individual's personality and personhood. It reduces us to statistical points, and is about as unfair and unjust a system as any caste or nobility structure from history.

Some of our Best-and-Brightest tell us that we have to factor race into our dealings with each other, that it's so ingrained that ignoring it or not acting in an affirmative fashion is itself racist. They call this race essentialism, and its prominent advocates are feted and beatified by the rest of the intelligentsia.

I've long wondered what their end game is. Whether they envision an outcome of this "equity" drive, somewhere down the road, where our society will have achieved a "color-blindness." Where the coercion and essentialism can finally be set aside in favor of societal unity and equality.

I hate to accept that the answer is "never," that race essentialism is the end-state, but I find no evidence to the contrary.

Racism, i.e. discriminating against or considering negatively someone based on skin color, is anathema to our modern sensibilities and current-day morality (for more on morality, do check out my other blog, Free To Be Me). It also stands athwart the premise of equality. That premise is also an aspiration - it is the end-state we should want and strive toward. We can understand that it wasn't achieved en toto the day it was declared, but that doesn't negate its desirability or give us reason to reject it.

Yet, reject it is exactly what the race-essentialists demand we do. We are supposed to judge each other by skin color, and not just in a temporary "speed the process toward equality up" remediation. Not only judge, but act in a skin-color-conscious way.

They call it anti-racism, which is so Orwellian that I'd be inclined to think this whole thing is a work if it weren't obvious how serious they are.

We should call it what it is: Racism.

That these racists have perpetrated a long con upon us, that they've been working to redefine the word to suit their selfish, illiberal, and rent-seeking ends, that they've engaged in the equivalent of a Madison Avenue marketing company's rebranding of a variety of words should not fool us.

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A post-script on affirmative action.

Think about the kid who is far less prepared for Harvard than the rest of the admitted class. Think about his chances for success there. Think about the impact on his self-worth if he ranks at the bottom of his class, or flunks out. Think about what others will be inclined to think of him even if he does succeed and graduate, because he was given preference in admission. Does affirmative action do right by that kid?

Consider these observations by Clarence Thomas, on the stigma conveyed by affirmative action:

[W]e'll expend huge amounts of energy over affirmative action, but very little over what's really happening in the classroom for the bulk of these kids.

Many asked pointed questions, unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated.

Once it is assumed that everything you do achieve is because of your race, there is no way out.

In everything now that someone like me does, there's a backwash into your whole life is because of race.

It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.

His observations have been validated in California, of all places, where a 1996 ban on affirmative action put more kids in state schools rather than in the elites, and produced greater success and higher graduation rates for those kids.

Affirmative action is not only racist policy, it is detrimental to those it purports to help and corrosive to the notion of an inclusive, equal, and harmonious society. That it has been successfully sold, for decades, as the opposite is a massive marketing success. But, when the product itself is corrupt, no amount of marketing can sustain it forever.

Good on the Court to knock it down, and shame on the dissenters for wanting it perpetuated.