Russell K. Nieli - Wounds That Will Not Heal: Affirmative Action and Our Continuing Racial Divide
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Racial preference policies first came on the national scene as a response to black poverty and alienation in America as dramatically revealed in the destructive urban riots of the late 1960s. From the start, however, preference policies were controversial and were greeted by many, including many who had fought the good fight against segregation and Jim Crow to further a color-blind justice, with a sense of outrage and deep betrayal. In the more than forty years that preference policies have been with us little has changed in terms of public opinion, as polls indicate that a majority of Americans continue to oppose such policies, often with great intensity.In Wounds That Will Not Heal political theorist Russell K. Nieli surveys some of the more important social science research on racial preference policies over the past two decades, much of which, he shows, undermines the central claims of preference policy supporters. The mere fact that preference policies have to be referred to through an elaborate system of euphemisms and code words affirmative action, diversity, goals and timetables, race sensitive admissions tells us something, Nieli argues, about their widespread unpopularity, their tendency to reinforce negative stereotypes about their intended beneficiaries, and their incompatibility with core principles of American justice. Nieli concludes with an impassioned plea to refocus our public attention on the truly disadvantaged African American population in our nations urban centersthe people for whom affirmative action policies were initially instituted but whose interests, Nieli charges, were soon forgotten as the fruits of the policies were hijacked by members of the black and Hispanic middle class. Few will be able to read this book without at least questioning the wisdom of our current race-based preference regime, which Nieli analyses with a penetrating gaze and an eye for cant that will leave few unmoved.
Russell K. Nieli: author's other books
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Mehrsa Baradaran
Arthur C. Nelson
Daniel Martinez HoSang
Stephanie M. Wildman
Michael Tonry
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Table of Contents
To the memory of Mohandas K. Gandhi and
Martin Luther King, Jr., who spoke to
our common humanity and taught us
the dignity and worth of all
Gods children regardless
of race or class.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who spoke to
our common humanity and taught us
the dignity and worth of all
Gods children regardless
of race or class.
Not only has the politics of rights spread to increasing numbers of groups in American society since the 1960s, it has also expanded its goal. The relatively narrow goal of equalizing opportunity by eliminating discriminatory barriers developed toward the far broader goal of affirmative actiongovernment policies or programs that seek to address past injustices against specified groups by making special efforts to provide members of these groups with access to educational and employment opportunities. An affirmative action policy tends to involve two novel approaches: (1) positive or benign discrimination in which race or some other status is actually taken into account as a positive rather than negative factor; and (2) compensatory action to favor members of the disadvantaged groups who themselves may never have been the victims of discrimination.
BENJAMIN GINSBERG ET AL., WE THE PEOPLE:
AN INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN POLITICS,
SEVENTH ESSENTIALS EDITION (NEW YORK:
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, 2009), PP. 12830.
AN INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN POLITICS,
SEVENTH ESSENTIALS EDITION (NEW YORK:
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, 2009), PP. 12830.
INTRODUCTION
Racial preferences in the U.S. first arose in response to the widespread rioting in the urban black ghettos of America during the late 1960s. As a result of these urban upheavals, concerned elites in the federal bureaucracy and federal courts, as well as in the top universities and law schools, concluded that much more had to be done to deal with the pressing problem of black poverty and alienation in America than could be achieved through the prevailing ideal of color-blind justice, which had done so much to inspire the 1950s and 1960s era civil rights movement.1
From the very beginning, however, racial preference policy was anathema to large segments of the American public, including many of those who had fought the good fight to end segregation and racial oppression in the Jim Crow South. For them, racial preferences were a shameful betrayal of the highest ideals of the civil rights movement, and of Justice Harlans magisterial pronouncement in the Plessy case that our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. And today, more than four decades after their introduction, preferentialist policies continue to be a source of loathing and offense to their many critics, despite the notable shift in their supporters preferred justifications from compensatory justice and pressing social needs to the sweeter sounding note of diversity.
In Wounds That Will Not Heal, I address the continuing controversy over racial preference policies in America, particularly those in university admissions and in employment. Reworking a series of essays compiled over a period of more than three decades, I offer a no-holds-barred critique of race-based employment and university admissions policies, whose consequences for the social harmony and well-being of America, I believe, are almost wholly negative. Until they are removed, racial preferences, I contend, will continue to gnaw at the interethnic norm of reciprocity and fairness, which is the very linchpin holding together racially and ethnicly diverse societies like the United States.
The fact that their supporters must continue to refer to racial preferences through an elaborate double-speak of euphemisms and code wordsaffirmative action, diversity, goals and timetables, race-sensitive admissionsshould tell us something. The need to speak in such euphemisms and code words indirectly acknowledges the fact that preferences based on race run counter to deeply ingrained ideals of justice and fair play in America and require verbal dodges and prettifying obfuscations to be defended before the general public.
In his insightful study, The Ironies of Affirmative Action, political scientist John David Skrentny makes the telling point that toward the end of both world wars bills were introduced in Congress granting preferences in government employment to those who had recently served in the military. Without euphemisms or verbal dodges they were simply called veterans preference bills. And they passed overwhelmingly.
Although one can dispute the wisdom of granting job preferences to veterans, even to those who have taken time out of their personal careers to serve their country in time of war (wise voices argue compellingly that there are more appropriate ways to reward veterans than through means compromising the worthy principle of merit-based selection),2 it is clear that for many Americans granting job preferences for the right reasons breaches no generalized principle of justice. This is why job preferences for veterans can be called by their proper namepreferences. But simply being a member of an underrepresented racial or ethnic minority group is not seen by most people in America as one of these right reasonshence the need for deceit and deception by their defenders when racial preferences are publicly discussed. Does anyone have the slightest doubt about the legislative fate or the level of public support for an honestly labeled Underrepresented Minorities Preference Bill? For a Racial Quota Employment Bill? A Minorities First Act?
But advocates for racial preferences have other reasons for employing deceit and deception in the packaging of their wares than the perceived unfairness of such preferences and their lack of public support. Social philosopher Michael Walzer explained this all very well long ago in his book Spheres ofJustice. In our culture, Walzer wrote, careers are supposed to be open to talents; and people chosen for an office will want to be assured that they were chosen because they really do possess, to a greater degree than other candidates, the talents that the search committee thinks necessary to the office. The other candidates will want to be assured that their talents were seriously considered. And all the rest of us will want to know that both assurances are true. Thats why reserved offices [i.e., racial preferences and racial quotas in jobs and university admissions] in the United States today have been the subject not only of controversy but also of deception. Self-esteem and self-respect, mutual confidence and trust, are at stake as well as social and economic status.3
Does anyone really want to be told, Congratulations, Ms. Jones, youre our newest affirmative action hire!? Or presented with an equivalent announcement of acceptance to a prestigious college? The answer, of course, is no, and because no one wants to be told such things, no one is. And so a hiatus develops between what is actually going onwhich must be hidden, suppressed, distorted, or deniedand open public discussion. Self-esteem and self-respect are on the line, as Walzer says, as well as the overall group image of those targeted for the preferences both in their own minds and in the minds of those in the nonbeneficiary categories. Despite the elaborate concealment and deception, however, most people come to understand pretty well exactly what is going on with all the harmful consequences that follow. One could hardly create a more devilish system than our current policies of racial preferences for reinforcing in the minds of all parties concerned the belief that blacks and other beneficiaries of affirmative action are intellectually inferior to whites and Asians.
Economist and social critic Thomas Sowell, a long-time preference opponent, explains the matter this way in his book
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