The Need For and Justice of
Affirmative Action
The Supreme Court is about to take
up the hot-button topic of Affirmative
Action in college admissions. The issue
is whether racial preferences are constitutional.
Overlooking the
obvious fact that racial preferences were eminently constitutional when it came
to designating slaves for two hundred years, and then another hundred years of
depriving colored people and women of rights they were guaranteed under the
law, the real issue is whether a society that profited so handsomely from the
discrimination against others has any obligation to provide a remedy.
Are the American blacks alive
today handicapped by the discrimination of the past? The answer is clearly, yes. No one would
seriously maintain that the United States is an equal opportunity society. Most
of the successful people today are successful because their ancestors were
successful. Let’s look at the Bush family.
President George H.W. Bush’s father was a United States Senator, his son
was also president of the United States
and now another son is a leading contender. Al Gore
is the son of a Senator as well. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is the son
of Governor Mario Cuomo of New York.
Governor Jerry Brown of California is the son of Governor Pat Brown of
California. This shows that family connections and history count. Many powerful people today are benefiting
from advantages acquired when black people were prohibited from voting, getting
an education, living wherever they wanted, and unable to work in certain jobs.
The fact that Barack Obama is president of the United States is a miracle,
given the obstacles faced by black people in American history.
The Importance of Education
Being
educated is an essential asset in success
in life. If education was unimportant, then it wouldn’t have been
illegal to teach slaves to read. Keeping
people down by keeping them ignorant is a centuries
old tactic. As late as 1950, Mississippi
spent only $.31 on black students for every dollar it spent on white students. If
that’s not a handicap, what is?
But blacks in the United
States, even in Mississippi, were treated far better than natives under the
French, British and Belgian colonial regimes. The University at Lovanium in the Congo did
not start admitting Africans until 1954, four years after the University of
Missouri. As a result, when the Congo
became independent in 1960, there were only twenty-two native graduates in all
by the end of the 1959-1960 academic year, the last
before independence, when the population was 15,000,000. That means one college
graduate for every 1,250,000 people. No wonder the nation could not govern
itself and descended into civil war. In the United States in 1960, 7% of the
population over the age of 25 had college degrees. Even in 1940, 2% of the women in the United
States were college graduates. Ho Chi
Minh, in his pamphlet, The Case Against French Colonization, complains that there were
only twelve high schools for natives in Vietnam compared with fifteen hundred
outlets for forced alcohol and opium sales.
So, education is important and denying people equal
education condemns them to an inferior condition of life.
Cultural Bias in College Curricula
But what about Judge Scalia’s question
of whether or not minority students would be better off in less competitive
settings because they have to struggle in the elite schools just to keep
up? Naturally, people who have been
discriminated against for generations have a harder time competing with people
whose ancestors have been college graduates for generations. The answer to Judge
Scalia is that naturally people are better at studying subjects in which they
are interested, which usually means subjects that are germane to their lives.
As mentioned above, there
were very, very few native college graduates in Europe’s colonies when they
achieved independence more than fifty years ago. But in the intervening half-century that has changed. There have been two generations where former
colonial subjects have gone to school and on to higher education. There are now
the children and grandchildren of former colonial subjects who have higher
degrees and doctorates, many from universities in the West. These scholars are doing research and
studying subjects that are interesting to them and relevant to their
lives. Not surprisingly, they are
interested in studying the history of their ancestors, not English Royalty.
Even in the United States,
there is voluminous research on the realities of slavery. The
Half Has Never Been Told, Slavery and the
Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist is a good example. Rich white people are not interested in
exposing the hypocrisy of American history or trumpeting the contribution
involuntary servitude made to current prosperity. For that, students and teachers of different
backgrounds are required.
The Benefits for the Majority
Diversity
in student body and faculty lead to diversity in curriculum. Even if the minority
students are not as “good” academically as the students with more privileged
pedigrees, having a diverse curriculum and perspectives benefits society as a
whole. Ignorance is the major
threat to the survival of the United States and the human race. Having a
diverse gene pool, skill set and information base is a
strength, not a weakness. The disasters of the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghan
wars were the result of decision-makers with a lot of theories and no facts.
Facts, that is the essential philosophy for the nuclear and
cybernetic age. In a diverse world, as a global power, the United States needs
a comprehensive information base to avoid stumbling into destructive military
conflicts. Diverse knowledge and
comprehensive perspectives requires research into all areas. The curriculum of western universities are too heavily weighted
toward western subjects. While no one
advocates abandoning the roots of western civilization, there are several other
civilizations that require investigation also.
And the vast majority of the world’s people are living under non-western
civilizations. Skewing the higher
education student body toward a single type of student is a threat to the
survival of the United States. The
nation can not afford to stumble into any more military conflicts out of ignorance
of foreign cultures and values.
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