2008 Woodie Awards
Letter to the editor
Issue date: 5/20/05 Section: Opinions & Editorials
- Page 1 of 1
Affirmative action is one of those several institutions in American history that, for its fundamental assumption of inequality, future generations will look back on and, shaking their heads, wonder "what were they thinking?"
An argument for the institution goes that race is just one of many factors considered in an admissions decision, no different from being related to an alum or being from a geographically underrepresented area. That's fine, an alum's kid is more likely to bring money to the school, and where you're born affects your outlook on life.
But it is staggeringly racist to suggest that race itself somehow determines your outlook on life. Who will 'think more black,' the son of a black doctor in a Chicago suburb or an urban white? And assuming all white people attend exclusive schools in swanky areas is just as out of touch with reality as assuming all black affirmative action beneficiaries come from the ghetto. Perhaps it's this assumption that has translated the last 20 years of affirmative action into the splendid intellectual diversity realized on campus today. And as a reminder to anybody who hopes to contribute to this diverse intellectual community, be sure to watch for thrown pies and salad dressing.
Well perhaps, as Lee Bollinger noted on PBS with Bill Moyers on 6.20.03, if racial preferences in admissions are banned, "the truth is, that the enrollment, of African-Americans, Hispanic, Native-Americans, in our selective universities and colleges throughout the country, will drop dramatically. And we will have universities that look very much like they did in 1960." Huh? You'd be laughed off campus if you walked into an admissions office and suggested it was staffed by racists and segregationists: a college admissions office today is about the most p.c. place on Earth.
Bollinger would have us think that opponents of affirmative action really want "an entirely new course of Constitutional law that would forbid completely any consideration of race, ever" (same Moyers interview). Even allowing his claim (and disregarding that annoying little Brown v. Board of Education decision where Thurgood Marshall observed, "Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious, that a state bound to defend the equal protection of the law, must not invoke them in any public sphere"), the real issue here is that we're trying to figure out which groups to favor, and by implication which groups to penalize.
To combat inequities, we need to embrace college admissions, and indeed K-12 education, that confront all students with the same opportunities and expectations. In Milwaukee, under Jim Doyle's education department, only one in three black students will earn a diploma. What we need isn't a system that accommodates failure and then admits students to college who wouldn't otherwise make the cut, but that meets it head on and defeats it. We can no longer accept the amazingly racist proposition that one race simply can't compete on a level playing field with another, that one race can pass a test while another cannot. And we need to stop kidding ourselves that race per se is determinative of character, intellectual ability, or the content of anybody's heart.
Jon Horne
An argument for the institution goes that race is just one of many factors considered in an admissions decision, no different from being related to an alum or being from a geographically underrepresented area. That's fine, an alum's kid is more likely to bring money to the school, and where you're born affects your outlook on life.
But it is staggeringly racist to suggest that race itself somehow determines your outlook on life. Who will 'think more black,' the son of a black doctor in a Chicago suburb or an urban white? And assuming all white people attend exclusive schools in swanky areas is just as out of touch with reality as assuming all black affirmative action beneficiaries come from the ghetto. Perhaps it's this assumption that has translated the last 20 years of affirmative action into the splendid intellectual diversity realized on campus today. And as a reminder to anybody who hopes to contribute to this diverse intellectual community, be sure to watch for thrown pies and salad dressing.
Well perhaps, as Lee Bollinger noted on PBS with Bill Moyers on 6.20.03, if racial preferences in admissions are banned, "the truth is, that the enrollment, of African-Americans, Hispanic, Native-Americans, in our selective universities and colleges throughout the country, will drop dramatically. And we will have universities that look very much like they did in 1960." Huh? You'd be laughed off campus if you walked into an admissions office and suggested it was staffed by racists and segregationists: a college admissions office today is about the most p.c. place on Earth.
Bollinger would have us think that opponents of affirmative action really want "an entirely new course of Constitutional law that would forbid completely any consideration of race, ever" (same Moyers interview). Even allowing his claim (and disregarding that annoying little Brown v. Board of Education decision where Thurgood Marshall observed, "Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious, that a state bound to defend the equal protection of the law, must not invoke them in any public sphere"), the real issue here is that we're trying to figure out which groups to favor, and by implication which groups to penalize.
To combat inequities, we need to embrace college admissions, and indeed K-12 education, that confront all students with the same opportunities and expectations. In Milwaukee, under Jim Doyle's education department, only one in three black students will earn a diploma. What we need isn't a system that accommodates failure and then admits students to college who wouldn't otherwise make the cut, but that meets it head on and defeats it. We can no longer accept the amazingly racist proposition that one race simply can't compete on a level playing field with another, that one race can pass a test while another cannot. And we need to stop kidding ourselves that race per se is determinative of character, intellectual ability, or the content of anybody's heart.
Jon Horne