News and Editorials

Affirmative Action: Where's the line? 

John Bunzel presents a reasonable position: that all-or-nothing arguments about race consciousness miss the point. Sometimes it's foolhardy to proceed without being aware of it; at others it's outright offensive to be rigidly so.  

But he's off base on 2 points:

1. Race and gender aren't "handicaps". Society presents continuing challenges to women and minorities (not just racial groups). The wording difference is significant. "Handicap" elicits pity (often unwanted), while "challenge" suggests obstacles that can be overcome by good people - a broadly accepted American value.
2. The "hypothesis" that diversity makes better college environments does not rest on grades alone - that's misleading. Diverse opinion, experience, and cultural history is of immeasurable value at the heart of universities. Grades cannot measure this, but changes in social acceptance, commerce and institutions over time DO show Affirmative Action's impact.

 If you must use grades to benchmark, you could measure the change in apparent academic performance for minority students, who have been traditionally hampered by social factors. If they performed lower in high school (notoriously subject to the effects of de facto segregation and unequal school resources), how do they perform by the end of college when placed in better circumstances? Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests this improvement does occur for these less privileged students. Let's discuss the hard evidence of that, if you must be convinced of Affirmative Action's academic value.

Otherwise, let's not reduce this discussion to a simplistic comparison of numbers - grades, quotas, or population statistics.

Bart A. Charlow, President
Silicon Valley Conference for Community and Justice
February 2003