The advocates of affirmative action sabotage principled
standards and call that justice. But is it just to create new
wrongs in place of old ones? Is it just to turn vital institutions
into centers of special-interest social engineering?
The price tag for affirmative action is a society of fresh
injustices and low standards. And the costs of affirmative action
are piling up — in, among other things, lawsuits, scandals,
institutional erosion, and new cycles of grievance.
But its defenders remain unfazed. If anything, they are eager to
ratchet up the pressure. Take University of California head Richard
Atkinson. He is going all out to oppose a racial privacy initiative
slated for California ballots that would end the practice of racial
categorization on state and local government forms. He is urging UC
Regents to oppose the initiative because its passage could
“adversely affect the university’s ability to carry out its core
mission.”
What does this say about the UC’s core mission? It suggests that
its mission is not academic but political, not intellectual
excellence but racial and social engineering.
Other universities have managed to pursue the core mission of
education without racial head-counting. But it is essential to the
University of California’s mission only because it has forsaken its
original mission for an ideological one. Atkinson knows that he is
not in the field of finding the best teachers and best students but
in the business of running racial numbers. He wants a university
that reflects his concept of racial fairness, even though this
leads to gross unfairness toward Asian minorities and a perversion
of the university’s academic mission harmful to all.
That damaging the quality of an institution for the sake of
social engineering undermines all racial groups is a conclusion
Atkinson’s egalitarian mind won’t permit. He will take fake
equality over real excellence.
It wouldn’t occur to him that his racial mindset disserves
citizens anymore than it occurs to New York Times editor
Howell Raines that his racial mindset disserves readers.
Did Raines say, “Let’s give Jayson Blair a few more chances for
the sake of our readers. They would prefer we meet our racial goals
than provide them with an honest newspaper?” No, if the public
trust determines decisions at a newspaper, then editors fret not
about racial quotas but about hiring and retaining qualified
journalists capable of serving the reader. Similarly, if the common
good determines decisions at a university, then regents say, “Let’s
find the best scholars and most promising students,” not “let’s
make sure we meet our racial diversity goals.”
Supposed guardians of the public good like Raines and Atkinson
have long forgotten it, pursuing instead personal political goals
they would call “liberal fairness.” But “liberal fairness” is just
the promotion of special interests at the expense of the common
good.
Is it good for society at large if the New York Times
becomes a jobs program for politically favored minorities? Is it
good for society if the UC system becomes a glorified high school
so that an equal percentage of underperforming students can be
represented? Liberals might say, “Yes, this is good. Lowering
standards and corrupting insititutions are sometimes necessary for
the sake of fairness.”
But this shows that the liberal concept of the good lacks any
real moral content. What affirmative action proponents consider
good for their subjects isn’t good, both because it can lead to a
corrupting pressure that results in corner-cutting and cheating,
but also because it implicates the beneficiary in an act of
injustice.
Affirmative action isn’t good for the soul. Not for those who
grant it, those who receive it, and not for the society too
confused or intimidated to stop it.
