Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby
Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby
Introduction: On Being a Black Intellectual
The "Box" and Labels
To be a black intellectual in America is to live in a "box" with labels not of one's own making or choosing.
These boxes are formed by assumptions others make upon learning one's race.
Example 1: "Special Perspective": A white professor initially criticized the author's constitutional law work for lacking sensitivity to the black experience. Upon learning the author was black, he withdrew the criticism, assuming blackness provided immunity or a "special perspective" on racial matters.
Other Labels/Cautions for Black Intellectuals:
"CAUTION: BLACK LEFT-WING ACTIVIST, HANDLE WITH CARE OR BE ACCUSED OF RACISM."
If one criticizes the dominant civil rights paradigm: "CAUTION: BLACK NEOCONSERVATIVE, PROBABLY A NUT CASE."
Regarding scholarship: "CAREFUL: DISCUSS CIVIL RIGHTS LAW OR LAW AND RACE ONLY."
Regarding qualifications: "WARNING! AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BABY! DO NOT ASSUME THAT THIS INDIVIDUAL IS QUALIFIED!"
Correcting these misimpressions is difficult; one label is often replaced by another.
The Challenge of Honest Conversation
Societal insistence on simplifying complexity and categorizing people makes honest conversation about affirmative action difficult.
The author intends to attempt this honest conversation, and also an honest conversation about why it is difficult.
Experiencing "Benign" Racial Preferences
This book is driven by the author's experience as a black professional who has lived his adult life defined partly by "benign" racial preferences.
The beneficiary's side of the affirmative action saga needs to be told, as the growing black professional class is often spoken for, not to.
Historically, affirmative action in professions and government caused less interracial friction due to sector expansion (William Julius Wilson, a decade ago).
As of the 1990s, corporate and government sector growth has slowed or reversed.
The Republican Party plans to make racial preferences a major campaign issue; the Democratic Party's defense is uncertain.
Public enthusiasm for racial preferences benefiting people of color decreases farther from college campuses.
The professional sector is unlikely to be immune from an "affirmative action shakeout."
Two Related Stories
Part I: On Being an Affirmative Action Baby
Chronicles the author's experience as a black professional coming of age in the affirmative action era.
Professionals of color face extra scrutiny due to suspicion of benefiting from racial preferences.
Examines the ambivalence and frustration of being a beneficiary (or suspected beneficiary).
Sifts arguments for and against affirmative action in the professions.
Proposes a compromise to return racial preference systems to their "simpler, more defensible roots."
Part II: On Being a Black Dissenter
Chronicles deepening divisions within the black community over affirmative action.
Highlights the increasing isolation of "black dissenters" (professionals and intellectuals with views often opposed to the contemporary civil rights movement).
Explores the "pain and anguish" that lead black supporters of racial preference to attack dissenting black intellectuals.
Argues these battles must end due to the complexity of community problems and the increasing desire of black professionals to move past racial preferences.
Silencing debate limits solutions, ultimately harming millions of black people.
Part III: On Solidarity and Reconciliation
Advocates for a "reconciled solidarity" in the black community.
This solidarity should be based not on consensus on solutions, but on a shared desire to solve problems.
Author's Personal Narrative and "Affirmative Action Babies"
This is "only one person's story," not representing the entire race.
The author does not claim all black people share his advantages.
He suspects his story resonates with many black professionals who share the unique experience of being part of a professional world with substantial non-white presence for the first time.
"Affirmative Action Babies": The author embraces this term, intending a temporal identification of his generation (those who came of age in the civil rights era defined by preferences).
He does not intend it to comment on qualification, merit, intelligence, or how they achieved their positions.
He acknowledges he wouldn't have achieved what he has without a racial preference in professional school admission (specifically, Yale Law School).
He made the most of this privilege.
His generation was in high school around Martin Luther King, Jr.'s murder, when preferential policies began as a form of corrective justice.
They entered college near the dawn of affirmative action in admissions.
His law school class agonized through the first major crisis: the Supreme Court's partial rejection in the Bakke case.
He hopes current Yale Law School students of color are the last affirmative action generation, or the first "post-affirmative action generation," judged solely on their merits.
Affirmative Action's Drift and the Role of the Intellectual
Affirmative action has "slipped its moorings," transforming into a tool for representing "points of view" of excluded groups.
The new rhetoric argues people of color have a distinctive voice/vision that needs representation in boardrooms, bureaucracies, and campuses.
A logical, unfortunate corollary: if a person of color's perspective isn't "distinctive" (i.e., more like a "white" perspective), they are accused of not speaking in an "authentically black voice."
Defining an Intellectual: Not educational attainment or political stance, but a drive to learn, question, understand, and criticize as an end in itself.
Believes in criticism (not necessarily opposition).
An observer using rational faculties to distinguish wisdom from folly.
A skeptic, demanding the right to doubt.
As a black intellectual, the author aims to foster reconciliation and educational conversation for the future of black people.
He believes in finding common ground, being realistic and sensitive to all sides.
The (Likely) End of Racial Preferences
It is frank to acknowledge the likely end of most radial preferences, which were always justified as "transitional."
For beneficiaries, affirmative action has been a "decidedly mixed blessing."
Its end should be a "challenge and a chance," not disaster.
Affirmative action must not become a crutch.
Reject the claim that ending preferences would nullify the 1954 desegregation ruling.
Economic conditions improved steadily before affirmative action.
The author has faith in competitive capacity and does not anticipate an apocalypse.
Focus should be on constructive dialogue to solve problems of the "real and continuing victims of the nation's legacy of racist oppression" – millions of struggling black Americans for whom affirmative action in professions is "stunningly irrelevant."
Author's Political Stance
His position is not "inauthentically black" or evidence of "neoconservatism" (a pejorative term, discussed in Chapter 7).
His views on many matters are sufficiently left that neither conservative nor left movements would claim him, which he finds ideal for an intellectual.
His argument is "generated by reason but fired by love," concerned with the situation of black people in America, requiring open dialogue.
Professional and middle-class black individuals will likely endure.
Millions of other black people in violent inner cities may not.
Calls for an end to quarreling and a focus on talking to one another to solve problems.
Chapter 1: Racial Preferences? So What?
Author's Admission to Law School
The author states directly: "I got into law school because I am black."
He previously suppressed this truth, insisting he got in "the same way everybody else did."
As a professor at Yale Law School, he believes he wouldn't have had the chance to try if his skin weren't black.
Ambiguity for Black Professionals
Many black professionals of his generation maintain a "studied and, I think, purposeful ambiguity" regarding how they achieved their positions.
Some (fewer than pretended) would have made it into elite schools regardless.
Most have buried the issue, believing their accomplishments should stand on their own.
The "Qualification Question": Non-white professionals often react with "fury" to inquiries like, "Did you get into school or get hired because of a special program?"
This prickly sensitivity is a "principal cost of racial preferences."
Example: A senior airline executive's caustic response, "Some whites think I've made it because I'm black. Some blacks think I've made it only because I'm an Uncle Tom. The fact is, I've made it because I'm good."
Such denials are "predictable and sensible" given how society treats affirmative action benefits as a "badge of shame."
Often true in the professional world, as corporations rarely offer charity.
The "peculiar aspect" is that those who deny personal benefit simultaneously insist preferences be preserved and that society pretend no one benefits.
This balancing of fact and fiction leads to the "groundless cry that it is racist to suggest that some individual's professional accomplishments would be fewer but for affirmative action."
Case Study: Baker & McKenzie Interview (1989)
Baker & McKenzie, a large law firm, was banned from interviewing at the University of Chicago Law School and on probation at others due to a racially charged interview.
A partner allegedly asked a black third-year student how she felt about other lawyers calling her "nigger" or "black bitch" and made comments like "there aren't too many golf courses in the ghetto," also mentioning "foreigners" excluding "qualified" Americans.
The author, a black law professor, was "strangely reluctant to applaud" the school's swift action, finding the "circling the wagons" defense of minority students disturbing.
He does not defend the interviewer's "inexplicable and inexcusable" comments.
His suspicion: there would still have been outrage had the interviewer only asked the qualification question.
The Qualification Question in the Past
Over a decade prior, a prominent law firm interviewer asked this question of a non-white Yale student, leading to student protests and cries of "Racism! Ban them!"
With time, the author wonders if their anger was misplaced.
The question was "boorish" and likely "irrelevant" (interviewer had grade record/resume).
Anti-affirmative action bromide: "Do you really want to be treated by a doctor who got into medical school because of skin color?" The author's answer: the patient cares how the doctor got out, not in. The right question is "What was your medical school performance?"
Irrelevance and boorishness don't explain the rage, as many interviewers ask such questions.
Contemporary Reactions to the Qualification Question
Georgetown Law School (1991): Students demanded punishment for a classmate who argued in the school newspaper that affirmative action is unfair because students of color are admitted with grades/test scores that would reject white applicants.
Universities: Considered proposals to deem questioning non-white classmates' qualifications "racial harassment." (Author notes Chapter 8 discusses campus regulation of racial harassment).
The author argues: "we can't change either the truths or the myths about racial preferences by punishing those who speak them."
Terrible Psychological Pressure: The clamor for protection reveals the immense psychological burden racial preferences place on beneficiaries.
It seems programs aren't supposed to have beneficiaries, or at least no one is allowed to suggest they do.
This is "ridiculous."
Conceding the Fact of Beneficiaries
If one supports racial preferences in admissions, one must believe they make a difference, meaning some students wouldn't be admitted without them.
This is not racist or normative; it is "simply a fact."
Conceding this fact would clear much "emotional underbrush."
"For once it is conceded that the programs have beneficiaries, it follows that some of us who are professionals and are not white must be among them."
Supporters must stop pretending otherwise.
They should be willing to say, "Yes, I got into law school because of racial preferences. So what?" and be ready to list their accomplishments.
Costly Concession: This admission brings "all the baggage of the bitter rhetorical battle over the relationship between preferences and merit."
Bristling at the question suggests a "deep-seated fear that the dichotomy might be real."
If admitting preferences make a difference feels bad, proponents might be more comfortable fighting against them.
Author's Personal Story: Harvard vs. Yale
He reiterates his starting point: "I got into a top law school because I am black."
He is unashamed and can prove it.
As a Stanford senior in the mid-1970s, he applied to several law schools. Yale accepted him early; Harvard "dawdled" and then rejected him.
Days later, two Harvard officials and a professor called to apologize. They were "frank": he was initially rejected because they "assumed from your record that you were white."
Upon discovering his skin color ("additional information that should have been counted in your favor"), Harvard now urged him to attend, even waiving a deposit he might have made elsewhere.
Insulted by the "Miracle": "Stephen Carter, the white male, was not good enough for the Harvard Law School; Stephen Carter, the black male, not only was good enough but rated agonized telephone calls urging him to attend."
They assumed a color unknown record was white: "How else could he have achieved what he did in college?"
His academic record was "too good for a black Stanford University undergraduate, but not good enough for a white Harvard law student."
Because he was black, Harvard was "happy to scrape me from what it apparently considered somewhere nearer the bottom of the barrel."
He does not single out Harvard; he believes a white student with his record wouldn't have been admitted to any leading law school.
The insult was being so forcefully reminded that he was good enough only because he was black.
He admits he "should not have been insulted at all" because "that is what racial preferences are for—racial preference."
He chose Yale instead, though he has no reason to believe Yale's criteria were different, given Yale's greater selectivity.
He concludes: "I may embrace this truth as a matter of simple justice or rail against it as one of life's great evils, but being a member of the affirmative action generation means that the one thing I cannot do is deny it. I will say it again: I got into law school because I am black. So what?"
Addressing the "So What?" Question: The Fairness Story
Common objection: "someone more deserving than I—someone white—may have been turned away."
The author doubts such a mythical white student would have performed better in law school than he did.
He notes many "affirmative action babies" at Yale Law School of his time had "fine academic performances" and "stellar careers."
Critique of the "Fairness Story": The author finds this argument unconvincing.
Costs of affirmative action are like costs of taxation: "People are routinely taxed for services they do not receive that are deemed by their government necessary to right social wrongs they did not commit."
Examples: S&L bailouts, disaster assistance after hurricanes.
Affirmative action programs are "redistributive in nature," transferring resources from market allocation for social policy reasons.
Opposition is fueled by the "American dream" instinct against substantial wealth redistribution (belief anyone can make it, and failure is due to sloth, lack of talent, or bad luck, not "sinister plottings").
Seymour Martin Lipset: stable democracy requires an economically secure middle class resisting radical economic reforms. Affirmative action is one such reform.
Attributing white American opposition to racism or racial resentment is sometimes valid, but preferences are different because the favored/disfavored groups are identified by race (and sometimes sex).
Race as a "Different" Category
The author doesn't favor a color-blind society (discusses in Chapter 9).
Race is different for "obvious historical reasons": the risks of powerful institutions categorizing by immutable characteristics.
Further Fairness Argument: The "sins for which the programs purportedly offer compensation are not sins of the current generation."
Proponents' Counter-Argument: Current generation of white males deserves to bear costs.
Quotes from proponents: "White males have had exclusive access to certain information, education, experience, and contacts through which they have gained unfair advantage." "We have to say to whites, 'Listen, you have benefited in countless ways from racism…'"
Analogy: Nation's top universities practiced affirmative action for centuries with " percent white males." (Author notes this analogy is accepted by both sides).
Implication: If white males benefited from a "vast and all-encompassing program of affirmative action," current programs undo its "pernicious effects." White males thus "deserve the disfavored treatment."
Risk in this rhetoric: Making race the determining factor for the disfavored group encourages "social irredentism" (Thomas Sowell), where all members of the dominant group bear the "mantle of oppressor."
Affirmative action becomes a "punishment for the sin of being born the wrong color and the wrong sex."
Author's footnote: This construct calls for sacrifices not from white males as a group, but from the most disadvantaged subgroups of white males, those who gained the least from racism.
Historical Irony and Shift in Rhetoric
The personalization of affirmative action (white males as villains) diluted the 1960s/early 1970s black left's message that problems were systemic, not individual.
In those days, race struggle was linked to class struggle; racial justice impossible under capitalism.
Sophisticated nationalists saw affirmative action as part of the problem, siphoning off "the best and brightest young black men and women into the white-dominated system of higher education," co-opting potential leaders (Robert Allen, Anne Kelley).
Shift in Protest Language: Affirmative action's success is a reason for this change. It's hard to criticize a system that brings you in "at its own expense."
Education preferences move people of color into productive roles in capitalist society.
Modern proponents are "liberal reformers, not radical revolutionaries."
With communism's collapse, there's no desire to "burn everything down and start over."
Today's advocates mainly want to "share in the pie," not redistribute it.
Why the "So What?" is Difficult to Utter
Students of color are in professional schools for the same reasons as white students: good education and jobs.
Since many assume affirmative action beneficiaries are "bound for failure, or at least for inferiority," people of color resist being labeled as such.
Better to say, "How dare you?" than "So what?"
The Yale Political Union Incident (1978)
Fall 1978 (author's third year in law school), after the Bakke decision.
"Air was thick with swirling critiques of racial preferences… 'You don't belong here.'"
Black students felt the academic world was trying to get rid of them.
They "struck back," calling critics racist and the qualification question racist.
The Yale Political Union scheduled a debate: "The Future of Affirmative Action."
Black students, usually divided, were "suddenly united" in protest.
They picketed, chanting "We are not debatable! We are not debatable!"
They were invited in, the author spoke, arguing it was easy for white people to call for color-blind admissions knowing costs wouldn't fall on them.
He avoided "racism" but let the implication hang.
They marched out triumphantly, feeling they had turned back the clock to an era of campus radicalism.
Aftermath: "Absolutely nothing had changed." Bakke was still the law. The "uneasy tension of dual existence" and outrage remained.
The Political Union debate likely proceeded.
Reflections on the Incident
The participants of that demonstration went on to successful careers: elite law firm partners, investment bankers, public interest lawyers, State Department officials, professors, prosecutors, corporate legal department members.
They became "walking advertisements… for the bright side of affirmative action."
Their doubts "seem vague and insubstantial" from this vantage point.
Past Doubts: At the time, the doubts and anger were "painfully real."
The author clarifies he is "as irritated as anybody else by the frequent suggestion that there lurks inside each black professional a confused and uncertain ego."
However, as long as racial preferences exist, one thing "cannot be proved": which people of color would have succeeded without them.
The "You're here on merit" reassurance: This is not a compliment.
It perpetuates the "merit to preference" opposition.
It places judgment of their quality in the hands of white colleagues, whose "arrogant 'assurances' serve as eloquent reminders of how fragile a trophy is our hard-won professional status."
The author admits their youthful attempt to stifle debate was "misdirected," driven by pain over Bakke and the nation's mood.
They cried, "We have fought hard to get here, and we will not be pushed back!"
They were unwilling to imagine life without preferences, or being challenged to meet standards without them.
They wanted "capitulation," not discussion.
They saw the Supreme Court as having given them the "back of its hand" and "forces of reaction closing in."
Author's Current Teaching Perspective
As a law professor, he tries to convince students (of all colors) that the "forces of reaction are not closing in."
Perhaps the backlash is a sign that preferences (in their "current expansive form") have "run their course."
Or, perhaps they should return to their roots: providing opportunities for people of color to get advanced training to prove themselves.
Students tend to disagree, believing "bad guys are out there… and they are winning." They feel standards are designed to exclude them.
Contemporary Justification of Preferences: Racial preferences are seen as a tool to force "white males who run the place" to acknowledge their perspective is only one way of looking at the world.
Questioning lowering standards is still labeled racism.
People of color voicing similar doubts are called "turncoats."
Academic standards are viewed as a "white male invention aimed at maintaining a eurocentric hegemony."
Numbers and Strategies
The debate continues to be characterized by a "devotion to numbers."
Proportions of black people in professions are low: law teaching (3.7% in "majority-run" schools), medical school faculties (1.9%), university faculties (4%), lawyers/judges (2.3%), physicians (3.3%), financial managers (4.3%), authors (0.4%).
While agreeing on the desirability of raising these numbers, strategies still divide people.
Arguing against racism as the sole explanation for data is often dismissed as "naiveté."
The author's preference for returning to affirmative action's roots is rejected by some who believe his generation (obsessed with proving itself in the white man's world) missed the point.
Instead of training people to meet existing standards, some now insist on affirmative action that "rewrites the standards for excellence."
Chapter 2: The Representatives of the People
Resurgence of Racial Stereotypes
In "race-obsessed America," racial stereotypes are back in fashion, but now often promoted by "friends" of people of color.
The new generation of black professionals, instead of smashing stereotypes, is "mired in the rhetoric of the 1960s."
They face expectations that being black means holding a certain set of views.
Gary Franks and the New York Times
Gary Franks, a wealthy black conservative Republican, ran for Congress in Connecticut.
The New York Times, endorsing his white opponent, argued Franks would "be a misfit in the Congressional Black Caucus."
This implies Franks's blackness creates an obligation to hold specific views.
Had he aligned with the Caucus, he would have been a more attractive candidate to the Times.
The author views this as an "appalling effort to straitjacket members of particular groups into adopting a uniform position on a political litmus test."
This is not uncommon; skin color is now a proxy for values, causes, and presumed ways of thinking.
Representative Fortney "Pete" Stark and Louis Sullivan
Representative Stark (white) attacked Louis Sullivan (black), then Secretary of Health and Human Services, calling him "a disgrace to his race" over Bush administration health policies impacting black Americans.
Sullivan responded, "I don't live on Pete Stark's plantation."
Conservative Republicans ironically demanded an apology for the racial epithet.
Stark apologized, but his impulse highlights the idea that black people in authority have a "special responsibility" to articulate "presumed views of other people who are black" – to think, act, and speak "the black way."
Previously, such sentiments might be considered racist; now, they are seen as showing "commitment to equality."
Ubiquity of the "Representation" Rhetoric
Governments, universities, and corporate boards now ensure "minority representation" on committees.
Specialized executive search firms find candidates who will "speak in the proper voice."
Studies by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) claimed news programs "overrepresent" white male perspectives and "underrepresent" women and people of color.
The author notes survey data often shows people of color's views are similar to or to the right of white males on many controversial policy issues.
Derrick Bell (Harvard law professor) took unpaid leave in protest of Harvard's failure to give tenure to a black woman, arguing for hiring people of color "willing by preference to embrace rather than reject the unique political and cultural perspectives of those this society places in subordinate status."
Underlying Theory: Non-white people have a distinct viewpoint that must be represented.
This makes Stark's error "considerably more understandable" (though no less outrageous).
Viewpoint, Outlook, Perspective = Racial Stereotypes
Society is at a point where public and private institutions are encouraged to make policy based on stereotypes about how white and black people supposedly think.
This path is tied to affirmative action's problems, seeking a "new and less vulnerable guise." Stark's expectation of Sullivan is a "sad but logical end" of affirmative action's recent trajectory.
Black People as "Representatives of their People"
Successful black people are assumed/expected to represent the race, not just as role models or by proving worth, but by: "bringing excluded voices into the corridors of power, thereby articulating the interests of a constituency."
This differs from "solidarity" (successful blacks inspiring less fortunate ones).
The opportunities of the civil rights movement are diluted by stereotyping black professionals to hold "particular, and predictable, set of political positions" - to be "black people of the right kind."
This stereotypes both the black professionals burdened by it and the "less fortunate" (making them a "faceless monolith" with a single "viewpoint").
Implication: People of color who don't hold this "special viewpoint" (whatever it is) are not the "right people to fill these representational slots." (Derrick Bell: "the ends of diversity are not served by people who look black and think white.")
The argument is "seamless": black people with "wrong" views bring "nothing new to the table," expressing opinions white males can express, hence not "bona fide representatives."
Evolution of Affirmative Action Ideals
In the author's student days, the case for preferences was clearer: to address the "odious legacy of racist oppression" by bringing highly motivated young people who would benefit from advanced training.
They would graduate and be "their own people," their obligation to ethnicity discharged.
Now, affirmative action ideals are "conflated with the proposition that there is a black way to be"—beneficiaries are expected to be "black the right way."
Viewpoint Diversity
This new conception is called "viewpoint diversity," aiming to diversify a professional world seen as representing white male viewpoints.
Members of the new generation of black professionals are "widely expected, even encouraged, to speak on behalf of and in the voice of all the other people of color who are less fortunate than they."
The "Wrong Voice": If representatives press "wrong views," they are not doing their job or providing "good representation."
This explains why some black activists reserve their "most stinging rebukes not for white racists but for prominent black people who are not… representing the race as they should."
Case Study: John Conyers and William Lucas
Rep. John Conyers (black) reprimanded William Lucas (black, Republican candidate for Michigan governor).
Conyers: "biologically he is black, but he is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King or the civil rights movement."
Lucas was not a "proper representative."
Discomfort with Eccentricity
Such eccentricity is uncomfortable because the idea that black people fit neatly into boxes with predictable, different views from whites has become "an article of faith" among diversity advocates.
While association with diverse people is beneficial, if non-white views are the same as white views, the case for using race as a proxy for viewpoint diversity collapses.
Federal Communications Commission and Broadcast Diversity
The search for people of color, envisioned as including particular views, has no logical (or illogical) stopping point.
Derrick Bell's point about hiring people willing to embrace specific perspectives applies.
FCC Regulations: Over a decade ago, the FCC adopted rules to enhance "broadcast diversity" by granting preferences to "minority" bidders for broadcast properties.
How does minority ownership enhance diversity? The assumption is that white and non-white owners will make different programming decisions.
One might assume minority owners face the same economic imperatives (pleasing audience, attracting advertisers, making money), but this is apparently wrong.
Legislation: Introduced to make it illegal for advertisers to favor white-owned over minority-owned broadcast properties (the author questions its intent).
Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission (1990): The Supreme Court ruled the government can make policy based on the assumption that racial diversity in ownership is a good proxy for programming diversity, thus presupposing different ways black and white people think.
Majority reasoning: Rules justified to "promote programming diversity" as an "important governmental objective." Found an "empirical nexus between minority ownership and broadcasting diversity."
The new owners will be "representatives of the people!"
Dissenters' caution: "the Constitution provides that the Government may not allocate benefits and burdens among individuals based on the assumption that race or ethnicity determines how they act or think."
The author believes the result (constitutionality of rules) was right, but questions if the rules are a good idea.
Government Imprimatur on Racial Generalizations: This creates immense pressure to conform.
Majority squirmed, denying "impermissible stereotyping," claiming it rested on "predictive judgment about the overall result of minority entry into broadcasting" and wasn't a "rigid assumption in every case."
The author argues this still implies different programming decisions by most white and black owners, thus resting on a "racial stereotype."
In the age of affirmative action as representation, this stereotyping is not "impermissible"; it's common.
What Difference Does Stereotyping Make?
FCC rules might lead to greater viewpoint diversity.
In a race-obsessed world, why not use "a few good" positive stereotypes?
The rhetoric of representation seems benign, assuming non-white people have unique views.
This new emphasis is seen as a "useful arrow in the quiver of racial justice" when playing on guilt is less effective.
Category Mistake: Race is Not Culture
Unless "biology implies ideology," using race as a proxy for views is a "category mistake."
American culture has interwoven subcultures, and diversity exalts particular ones.
But race is not the same as culture; there's no way to predict a black person's cultural stance (Anthony Appiah).
Modern diversity movement treats this distinction as "irrelevant and even irrational."
The "experience of oppression" is assumed to be so widespread that race (color) immediately reveals "subtle differences" of culture, treated as a political sensibility.
Danger to Equality: Encouraging the state to use racial differences as proxies for other differences is potentially dangerous.
Rhetorical arrows can turn back.
Abandoning the vision of affirmative action as providing training for competence, and treating it as a battle to bring excluded viewpoints into powerful institutions, risks "opening a box that might have given even Pandora some pause."
The use of racial stereotypes, once begun, is not "easily cabined," with "horrors already… leaking out."
Ironies and Consequences of "Right Sort of Black Person"
If black people thinking like whites can't represent their people, then white people clearly can't.
This leads to stereotypes of who is forbidden to represent.
Case Study: Jack Greenberg at Harvard Law School (early 1980s)
Greenberg, white and long-time head of NAACP Legal Defense Fund, was hired to teach law and race.
Student boycott, arguing the course should be taught by a "minority professor" who could "identify and empathize" with "Third World communities."
The author argues this makes a "villain, and perhaps an impossibility as well, of anyone who troubles to study a culture well enough to understand it."
Case Study: Danny Santiago (Daniel Lewis James)
Author of Famous All over Town (award-winning novel about a Chicano neighborhood), revealed to be Daniel Lewis James (white screenwriter).
Critics attacked his "imposture" rather than the novel's substance or accuracy.
Alvin Pouissant: James's subterfuge "gave the book an authenticity it did not have."
Implication: A white person cannot understand the non-white experience.
Hypothetical: If a white author were adopted and raised by Mexican-American parents in a barrio, would he be entitled to write in that voice?
Case Study: "Indian Art" in New Mexico
Law restricts selling "Indian art" to enrolled members of BIA-registered tribes.
John Redtail Freesoul (one-quarter Indian, official pipemaker of Cheyenne-Arapahoe) was denied the right to sell his work as Indian art because he wasn't accepted by a tribe.
The author recognizes this as a "triumph for the idea that white people cannot share or express the distinctive culture that racial oppression has spawned."
Greenberg and Freesoul were seen as "offering wares that were not his to sell. He was not a bona fide representative of the people."
Diversity Movement as a Shield for Affirmative Action
The call for "diversity of underrepresented voices" aims to evade typical arguments against affirmative action:
Unfairness: Rejected because diversity advocates are just helping institutions do a better job by including broader viewpoints than the "white male" perspective.
Stigma: Rejected because those hired for diversity are embracing "the perspective of the oppressed."
Underqualification: Rejected because the "fresh perspective this generation can offer is a qualification in itself." (Columbia Law Review: "diversity is part of quality.")
This diversity approach "solves all the problems that have plagued programs of racial preference"—unless one is troubled by racial stereotypes or challenges the notion that people of color predictably differ in analysis.
Too Neat, Too Snug: The author suspects this approach was designed to escape these problems.
Like Richard Rodriguez (who tried to opt out of affirmative action benefits), the diversity movement tries to avoid the "brutal difficulty" that preferences hire people of color who might be seen as less excellent than some rejected whites.
"No one who is not white can opt out; in our color-conscious, preference-bound society, there is no escape from the affirmative action thicket."
Chapter 3: The Best Black
The Author's Early Experiences with the "Best Black" Syndrome
Affirmative action has "always" been with him, meaning he always faced the assumption that black people cannot compete intellectually with white people.
Ithaca High School (1970s): Attended a high-achieving public school with many National Merit Scholars.
He was a "fac-brat" (child of a Cornell University faculty member), competing fiercely with white Cornell kids for grades and test scores.
He even retook the Math Level II achievement test to raise a to (unaware tests were supposedly biased against him).
He yearned to be called "brilliant."
Unnerving Indications: Others saw him as "that black kid who hung out with the Cornell kids."
A Harvard College recruiter included him among the brightest students because he was black.
A teacher told him he'd get into Stanford because he was black and smart (skin color always preceding other observations).
National Merit Scholarship vs. National Achievement Scholarship: He scored third highest in his school on the NMSQT, expecting a National Merit Scholarship.
Instead, he won a National Achievement Scholarship (for "outstanding Negro students").
Initially insulted, feeling his "best fac-brat" status slipping, as he wanted the scholarship for "best students," not just "best black students."
He later learned he could accept both, but still didn't get the National Merit Scholarship.
As a -year-old, he worried such programs reinforced the idea that smart students of color weren't as capable as smart white students, only allowed to compete among themselves.
The "Best Black" Syndrome Defined
"Measured by a different yardstick: first black, only black, best black."
This is linked to "demeaning tokenism" that often accompanies racial preferences: tolerating someone because "she's the best black" (to fill the "black slot"), not the "best-qualified candidate."
This "dichotomy between 'best' and 'best black' is not merely something manufactured by racists."
It's reinforced by advocates of certain affirmative action forms every time:
Employers are urged to ignore test scores (even good predictors) and hire from separate lists (best whites, best blacks).
State pension plans are pressed to invest with "minority-controlled" money management firms, even if "white" firms have better track records.
Students demand universities hire a preset number of minority faculty.
These actions implicitly say, "There are black folks out there. Go and find the best of them." This reinforces the best black syndrome.
Perpetuation of Stereotypes by Civil Rights Friends
Successful black professionals have disproved the idea that "best black minds are not as good as the best white ones," but the stereotype persists even among civil rights supporters.
White professors, without intending insult, argue for hiring professors of color who don't meet "usual appointment standards."
Example: A prominent law professor (diversity proponent) sent a list for Yale faculty: best people, then so-so people, then "leading 'minorities and women'" who didn't qualify for "so-so." This implicitly invited choosing "between diversity and quality."
Ira Glasser: "No responsible advocate of affirmative action opposes merit… or argues… that standards should be reduced." The author questions this, noting the "slippery" language of standards.
"Unqualified" vs. "Less Qualified": A civil rights litigator argued employers don't need to hire the best person, just someone "good enough." So, it's fine to hire a black applicant "less qualified" than white ones, as long as they can do the job. This reinforces the "best black" vs. "best" distinction.
Even insisting on appreciation for black culture (music, literature) can reinforce this, making "best of our music" distinct from "best music." (Stanley Crouch's argument that white critics accept mediocrity from black artists).
Contradiction for Beneficiaries
"We are told over and over that we are among the best black people in our professions."
This is flattering but also an "unsubtle insult," as they yearn to be called "simply the best—no qualifiers needed!"
They must accept that being seen as "the best blacks is part of what has led us to where we are"; for some colleagues, they will "never be anything else."
Benefits of the "Best Black" Syndrome
Though unsettling, it offers benefits, beyond racial preferences.
High School Example: As the only black student in honors courses, his intellect was perceived as "particularly sharp," feeding his ego. He realized later that this perception was influenced by the rarity of a black student being an equal among whites.
College Example: Good grades made black students "stand out." Professors treated him as an "odd and fascinating species," assuming an "exceptionally bright" black person was needed to be an equal.
Law School Example: Professors noticed him for intelligence and interest, but his status as a bright black student made a "special impression." This was the best black syndrome again.
Skepticism of "Harder Time" Complaint: The author is skeptical of the complaint that black people of intellectual talent have a harder time proving worth due to racism.
His experience suggests the opposite: "like a flower blooming in winter, intellect is more readily noticed where it is not expected to be found."
A black investment banker: "Our mistakes are amplified, but so are our successes."
"Astonishment" at black achievements (especially intellectual) suggests a "widespread expectation that our achievements will be few."
This astonishment is insulting.
The need to prove professional worth "over and over again has not receded."
Historical Roots of the "Best Black" Box
Affirmative action didn't create this box.
Historically, white has been treated as normal, and color as an "aberration."
Black people have always been targets of racist assumptions, especially of being "stupid, primitive."
Every black intellectual attainment has been met with suspicion.
Example: Post-Civil War black colleges offering classical education met with mockery, implying black students were only capable of rote learning ("Is yo' done yo' Greek yet?"). The author fears this import remains.
Author's Tenure at Yale Law School: He was voted tenure, then a reporter called to say it was news because he was the first black to earn tenure.
He protested it was "luck of the draw" and not why he was promoted.
The newspaper ran a banner headline, portraying his promotion as "simple justice" for being a black professor, not for scholarship.
He had "finally arrived… as one of the best blacks."
He muted his protest, wanting to be judged by his scholarship (constitutional law, intellectual property, law and religion), not his race.
He enjoyed the surprise of people who liked his work before knowing he was black. (He wonders if a white author with a similar error would elicit a different tone of apology).
"That gushing is part of the peculiar relationship between black intellectuals and the white ones who seem loath to criticize us for fear of being branded racists—which is itself a mark of racism of a sort."
The young man assumed a high-quality article author had to be white.
"The Best Black Syndrome! It had… stood up and bitten me!"
Investment Banker Example: Friend X arrived to straighten a problem, but the client, having been told a supervisor was coming, asked, "But where is Mr. X?" implying his black friend could not possibly be the awaited problem solver.
Afro-American Studies Departments and the Double Standard
Critics worry these departments reinforce the best black syndrome, allowing professors to be dismissed as "simply the best blacks," not meeting general academic standards.
The author agrees this is a risk but says it's not an argument against the discipline or hiring black faculty.
It's a reminder that many whites involved in affirmative action think of a "Category A for the smart folks, and Category B for the best blacks."
Reinforces parents' advice: "we really do have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good."
The Path to Excellence
Those trapped by the best black syndrome "cannot afford, ever, to let our standards slip."
Too many "doubters" are waiting. "The only way to keep them off the stage is to make our own performances so good that there is no reasonable possibility of calling them into question."
It's unfair to demand so much, but "what has life to do with fairness?" (Paul Klee: "one must adapt oneself to the contents of the paintbox.") This is especially true for upwardly mobile professionals of color.
Law School Resolution (1970s): He blurted to a classmate his ambition: to achieve, shatter stereotypes, make white doubters "think twice about our supposed intellectual inferiority."
Seeking a Teaching Position (1981): With excellent credentials (law firm practice, good grades, Yale Law Journal, Supreme Court clerkship), he expected to easily land a job.
But he was told: "any school would be happy to have a black professor with my credentials."
He collected offers but it was "soured" by the knowledge his qualifications "probably looked more impressive on the résumé of someone black."
Critique of Affirmative Action by Glenn Loury
Loury noted Harvard Law School had black professors who were Supreme Court clerks, arguing it's unfair they be dismissed as affirmative action appointments when clearly qualified.
The author agrees it's unfair and they are qualified, but notes there are "dozens of similarly qualified candidates" yearly.
It's impossible to know if they would have risen to the top if faculties weren't seeking highly qualified people of color.
This is also true for many black people in political, economic, and educational institutions.
Distinction in Hiring
Critics of affirmative action should concede a distinction:
Hiring to fill a "black slot" (using race to sort if candidates are equally qualified) is wrong.
Using race to select from equally qualified candidates from a pool of people who are all excellent is different.
Employers will claim the second even when doing the first, but the second is possible.
If the second method is used, critics cannot legitimately claim "lack of qualification."
The author is unsure if "analytical antennae" are sensitive enough to detect this difference.
Aggressive advocacy of affirmative action (like viewpoint diversity) leaves him with a "bleak and hopeless sense that all people of color… will be dismissed, always, as nothing more than the best blacks."
Two Convictions: 1) Affirmative action won't alter this perception. 2) White Americans won't change it just because it's unjust.
Solution: Change must come from black people: a commitment to "battle for excellence," to exceed any standard, to become a "vanguard of black professionals who are simply too good to ignore."
Author's Personal Motivation
He relishes reactions of those who like his work before knowing he's black; he feels he's proving them wrong.
He acknowledges his pleasure is "childish," but it's a relief to know the work is liked for itself, "not the-unexpected-quality-of-the-work-given-the-naturally-inferior-intellects-of-those-with-darker-skins."
Social science confirms observer's evaluation of work is influenced by author's race.
He finds people who liked his work before knowing his race don't like it less afterward.
When readers know he's black, he accepts prejudices are nothing new.
John Hope Franklin: black academics struggled for white scholars to take their work seriously. The struggle continues.
He expects many white scholars will judge his work by a different standard (higher, lower, or different criteria).
He tries to follow generations of black parents' advice: make his work better than white scholars of similar background.
He's willing to concede the unfairness of different standards but doesn't lose sleep over it.
A journalist friend suggested that if black people have to work twice as hard for the same success, that's what they should do, making it a "defining characteristic" (e.g., "Oh, you know those black people, they always work twice as hard as everybody else").
If you can't escape it, "make the most of it."
Beyond Preferences: The Star System
His desire to succeed without preferences is not a rejection of society's racism as a historical barrier.
It's an insistence on showing black people are capable of intellectual achievement on the same terms as anyone else.
In a less racist society, black intellectual achievements would be "a matter of course"; in this society, they are ignored or applauded, never routine.
Benefits of Astonishment: "Entrée to what I call the 'star system.'"
Early in careers, a few individuals are marked as having potential for "special success, even greatness."
They are watched closely; most not marked early will never "star."
This system involves private conference rooms where money and hiring/promotion decisions are made.
Exclusion from the Star System: Difficult for people of color to enter, not due to lack of ability, but social dynamics.
It rewards "familiarity, comfort, and perseverence."
Begins on campus by getting to know professors, which is intimidating for many students, especially those of color already uneasy about their classroom status.
Exclusion is costly, making it hard to be taken seriously by selective firms/institutions.
Salutary Side Effect of "Best Black" Syndrome: Intellectual attainment by students of color is sometimes seen as "genuine brilliance" (since little is expected).
"(None of the merely ordinarily smart need apply!)."
This helps them "get through the door of the star system." (Author: "'Who is this character?' my professors seemed to want to know.")
The star system then gained him entry into academia. He believes he made the rest of the journey on his own, though he acknowledges hearing the term "best black" used by colleagues in faculty hiring discussions.
He is a beneficiary but not a fan of either. Both should be abandoned; the star system is "exclusionary and incoherent"; the "best black" syndrome is "demeaning and oppressive."
The Glass Ceiling and Racism
The "glass ceiling" (reluctance to promote people of color to top management) is likely a function of the star system.
Trouble impressing professors translates to trouble impressing employers.
Difficulty finding mentors slows advancement.
Some black participants in the star system exist (Colin Powell, William Coleman) because they are "twice as good."
But many people of color who are "merely as good as or slightly better than white people who are inside the star system will find themselves outside."
Beyond the Star System: Present-day racism (overt and covert) also contributes to the dearth of non-whites in top professional positions.
However, contemporary discrimination doesn't explain all observed differences due to group complexity, cultural differences, and the nation's "odious history of racial oppression."
Critique of Star System: It is a "corrupt and biased means for circumventing the meritocratic ideal" because it rewards friendship and comfort over merit.
The corruption should not be attributed to the meritocratic ideal itself.
Affirmative Action as a Solution - Alternatives
Affirmative action is not the right answer.
Black Conservatives' View: Removing artificial barriers to market entry is the proper goal.
Walter Williams' example: New York City limits on taxi-cab drivers leads to few black drivers. Abolishing limits would increase black drivers (assuming they want to drive cabs).
Other Defensible Strategies:
Employers concerned about diversity should ensure candidate searches yield names of qualified people of color.
Centuries of exclusion mean black professionals shouldn't be excluded through inadvertence.
Mari Matsuda: intellectuals should read books by members of unfamiliar groups. This deliberate "searching" will bring excellent overlooked people to light.
Distinction: Search vs. Hire: The search is to find "the blacks among the best, not the best among the blacks."
An obligation to search doesn't guarantee improved statistics.
Author's Argument: People of color don't need "special treatment" or to be "the best blacks." Their goal is to prove they can compete with anyone, challenging the "pool problem" (dearth of qualified non-white candidates) as a myth.
A "level playing field" is sufficient; insisting on more insults black intellectual capacities.
Risks of Insisting on More: Employers might hire for reasons other than "best available candidate" (pleasing customers, old friends, keeping peace, keeping workforce white, getting the best black).
Such employees may not perform as well. This is a "web in which we as a people should want to be entangled."
Critique of Racial Preferences (Summary)
Not the most constructive method for overcoming barriers.
Often implemented insultingly.
Can carry considerable costs.
Barriers (like the star system) exist and should be attacked directly.
Difficulty of Eliminating Star System: Many white defenders of the star system are paradoxically strong advocates for hiring "second-rate" black people.
They offer: "We have one corrupt system for helping out our friends, and we'll be happy to let you have one for getting the numbers right."
This "obduracy" makes preferences attractive, but people of color "must resist the urge to join the race to the bottom."
Isaac Kramnick (Cornell): even if schools hire some "second-rate" black professors, it would "take till eternity for the number of second-rate blacks… to match the number of second-rate whites." The author acknowledges the point but states it's not a vision of justice.
Racial stereotyping means inadequacies of second-rate white professionals are not attributed to whites as a whole, but inadequacies of black professionals are attributed to blacks as a whole.
Hiring second-rate black professionals is "detrimental to the effort to break down barriers."
Solution: Professionals of color should embrace the opportunity to demonstrate value by "making our goal excellence rather than adequacy."
John Hope Franklin's advice: by maintaining highest scholarship standards, one not only becomes worthy but sets an example for those manipulating the system.
The goal is to "exceed the achievements of those who manipulate the system to their advantage."
Meritocratic Ideal: Not all institutions are equally tainted by the star system. Some hiring processes are rational.
If racial preferences are grafted onto merit-based systems, preferring individuals based on race will likely lead to lower performance.
"Racial preferences that make no difference are unimportant."
Preferences are founded on the proposition that achievements would be fewer without them.
Explanations for inability to compete (institutional racism, inferior education, prejudice, etc.) assume people of color "cannot at present compete on the same playing field with people who are white." The author rejects this belief and wishes he'd had the chance to prove it to the National Merit Scholarship people.
Chapter 4: Racial Justice on the Cheap
Exclusion of Black People from Affirmative Action Benefits
Income stratification in the black community has sharply increased, while softening in the white community. Middle-class black people are better off, lower-class black people are worse off.
Occupational convergence between black and white workers at the high end is growing faster for black people.
Affirmative action programs in elite educational institutions are increasingly dominated by children of the middle class.
Affirmative action is not a solution to increasing income inequality in Black America.
The Paradox of Affirmative Action Defense
Critics of affirmative action are confusingly told they don't appreciate the disadvantage of the most deprived black people, yet the programs do these deprived individuals "little good."
"Affirmative action, to borrow from W. E. B. DuBois, has been haunted by the ghost of an untrue dream."
Justifying preferences as justice or compensation masks the truth: benefits for business and professional careers fall to "those least in need of them."
This is not necessarily the fault of affirmative action, as socioeconomic forces are complex.
Society prefers "racial justice cheap"; it adopts the civil rights agenda of racial preferences (invisible costs) but rejects the agenda requiring money to help the "worst off" (true inheritors of oppression).
The author is puzzled by the vehemence in defending programs that fail their promise and the logic of insisting "the situation of all black people is the same."
This puzzlement led to his first doubts about affirmative action's propriety for middle-class individuals like himself.
Personal Experience: "You Are Disadvantaged" (1977)
First year at Yale Law School, a black student (two years ahead) insists: "You are disadvantaged… Racism has marked you. It has held you back, as it has held all of us back."
The speaker means to reassure the author.
The author, however, reflects on his upbringing: college-educated parents (father an educator, former lawyer; mother an aide to Julian Bond). Middle-class ancestry on both sides.
He refrains from stating this to avoid playing into the "racist stereotype… of the child of the black professional who is better off than many disadvantaged white kids."
The friend insists, "Every black person is marked by racism." The author wants to believe this conviction, as it's an "era of willed convictions." His "annoying tendency to take free intellectual inquiry seriously" provoked the conversation.
The author knows he's been marked by racism but isn't sure it's "as profound and defining" as his friend insists. He worries he wouldn't have been admitted to Yale Law School if white.
He can't visualize himself as a victim of "societal oppression" and worries he unfairly deprived someone else.
The friend, growing impatient, calls his thinking "intellectual self-indulgence," repeating, "Racism is systemic. It touches us all."
The author secretly questions this "talismanic incantation."
Is taking the LSAT (believed to be racist) the same as being murdered by the Klan?
There are "truly disadvantaged" black people who are genuine victims of societal neglect (William Julius Wilson's phrase), struggling lives he can scarcely imagine.
If special admission programs compensate for disadvantage, surely these "truly neglected" are more deserving.
Comparing his experience to theirs "seems to drain the word racism of all its power."
He doesn't ask further due to the "minefield of racial politics" and wanting to be "politically correct."
He nods along, pretending to agree: "Yes, racism has touched me. Yes, I am disadvantaged. Yes, I belong."
His friend is relieved he abandoned his "moment of apostasy," saving "another soul for the movement."
The Author's "Marks" of Racism
He "lied" and "did not repent" his unwillingness to accept "serious disadvantage" from systemic racism.
He does accept that racism has touched and shaped him.
Incidents Recalled:
Sixth grade, racially integrated Boy Scout patrol: white kids allegedly rigged straw-drawing to exclude him and other non-white scouts from staying in the patrol.
Around , on a city bus in Washington D.C. (post-Montgomery boycott), an elderly white man elbowed him, pointing to the back where he "should be sitting."
Junior high school (mostly white): a white kid called his hair a "Brillo pad," another warned the first to stop lest he pull a knife. The nickname "Brillo" stuck for three years, even among newly bused black students.
A white friend punned on a drugstore name, calling it "Nigger's."
High school in Ithaca: a white guidance counselor, unable to reconcile his skin color with his record, placed him a year ahead in math but two levels below the highest section.
College: young white men in Palo Alto threw an egg and a racial epithet at him.
Atlanta suburb: young white men threw a soft-drink bottle and epithet.
Yale Law School (second year): a professor told him he was "the best black student he had ever taught," implying no higher honor.
"Relatively Minor" Experiences: He has never been denied promotion, job, education, shelter, or food. Never beaten, arrested unjustly, or treated with contempt by an unbelieving system. Never overwhelmed by hopelessness or despair turned to drugs/crime.
His experience of "worst forms of privation is entirely vicarious."
These incidents "marked" him, but it's folly to pretend he's been "damaged in the way the society so often damages through indifference."
These marks haven't hindered his progress; rather, they fueled a "burning desire to smash their racist faces in—but only metaphorically."
He connects to Malcolm X's joke about a black man with a Ph.D. still being called a nigger, but his response was never "why bother?" It was "overachievement" to show the white world he could do better.
He admits he can't do everything better. But it's an "attitude."
These encounters fueled a "burning need for achievement in a white world that once wanted no part of me." The scars are permanent but "not the scars of disadvantage."
Challenging the "Hardship" Narrative
Fashionable for black critics of affirmative action to point out difficulties overcome without a "leg up." He cannot do this as he hasn't suffered as others.
He could spin tales to make his life sound harder (Harlem home, National Guard during 1968 riots).
But in Harlem, his father was a lawyer in a stable, middle-class community.
During DC riots, his family lived in Cleveland Park (clean, quiet, predominantly white; Bush, Mondale, McCarthy neighbors). The National Guard protected white lives/property, roadblock's purpose was to keep black people out.
Some friends attribute his affirmative action writings to his privileged background ("silver spoon"). This criticism "helps to make my point."
Programs were to compensate for present effects of past discrimination, but he saw no such effects in his life, feeling "ashamed."
His family was middle-class, "well above the poverty line" (as were most two-parent black families, contrary to media focus on urban street crime).
The "Same Boat" Fallacy
Why the insistence from civil rights advocates that "all black people are… in the same boat, and that the boat itself is on its way to the bottom?"
Explanation: "The most disadvantaged black people are not in a position to benefit from preferential admission."
No rational institution wastes resources or selects those unlikely to succeed.
If a college has a special program for disadvantaged students, it will select the most disadvantaged students most likely to succeed.
This creates a dilemma for elite schools under diversity pressure: the "truly disadvantaged" are unlikely to succeed in college. Solution:
"make race a proxy for disadvantage and then, ignoring other aspects of their background, admit as students those among the nonwhite applicants who seem most likely to succeed."
"That way, there is less risk. Everyone is happy."
Institutional Racism as Justification
"Everyone is happy" as long as all students of color are seen as disadvantaged by racism.
This approach was the only way to justify racial preferences in the mid-1970s, supported by the theory of institutional racism (Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power).
Individual racism: Overt, identifiable acts (e.g., church bombing), condemned by society.
Institutional racism: Less overt, subtle, less identifiable by specific individuals. Originates in "established and respected forces in the society." Society "does nothing meaningful about it." "Systemic," "touches us all."
The line between purposeful suppression and indifference blurs when black demands for change are strong.
The author credits this theory for unpacking the pretense that racism is only specific individual acts. He notes contemporary neoconservative efforts to defend anti-discrimination law based only on wrongs to particular individuals.
US history includes "racist oppression"—systematic subjugation of black people as a group—leaving a "frightful legacy."
Many current problems have roots in historical racism.
Preventing individual discrimination is insufficient; "much more is needed" (e.g., Great Society's War on Poverty).
Critique of Neoconservative Solutions
Neoconservative critics are right that building a world where individual initiative and talent are decisive is needed.
But Gilder and Murray's idea of an "unfettered market" removing barriers without government aid is "unpersuasive." "Racial justice isn't cheap."
Necessary Programs (Expensive):
Vast improvements in medical care for poor children (inner city infant mortality rates higher than Third World).
If problem is parental behavior, society must invest in educating parents.
Educational improvements, especially preschool. Better preschool directly leads to better later achievement (especially math) and stable/safe school environments (cost money).
Most important determinant of educational achievement is family socioeconomic circumstance. This points to improving social infrastructure of inner-city communities as a "bare necessity."
All these are consistent with institutional racism but are not civil rights programs and target the "worst off"—people affirmative action programs won't help much.
This "brief litany" seems naive in the "can't-do 1990s" compared to the "can-do 1960s and 1970s."
But it illustrates "just how good a bargain on racial justice America is getting if programs of affirmative action are all that is required."
Proposed Return to Affirmative Action's Roots
The author is not an "unabashed fan" of affirmative action. If preserved, it should return to its roots.
Not ideological roots (compensating truly disadvantaged for oppression), but metaphorical roots: "once-dynamic image of the programs as means for promoting progress by ensuring opportunities that might not otherwise exist for people of color to show what they can do."
Justification for Racial Consciousness in Admissions
He feels he should oppose all racial preferences but he doesn't.
He is drawn to non-white applicant folders, giving them "an extra bit of scrutiny," looking for reasons to recommend "Yes."
He's not trying to get numbers right or believing standards are racist. He wants others to have the same "leg up" he had.
Mistaken Emphasis of Modern Diversity Movement: It often presses toward circumventing or eradicating standards, rather than training people to meet them.
The traditional understanding of affirmative action helped a "critical mass" gain training to meet standards.
The more time spent arguing standards are "culturally inappropriate," the more people think "we are afraid of trying to meet them."
Author's View: Given training and a chance, black people "need fear no standards."
He wants to return special admission programs to "more innocent roots"—tools for providing training and chance for students who might not otherwise have it.
Universities aren't fulfilling missions if they don't look hard for motivated students (of color and not) who are not "sure things" but show potential to benefit.
This means taking risks, which universities should do.
Not for quotas, looking good, silencing activists, or bringing in "distinctive voices."
But because pursuing knowledge is a serious enterprise, to be undertaken joyfully, even with risk of failure.
Multiple Student Groups: Schools admit "sure things" based on paper qualifications (highest hopes for academic attainment).
Others are admitted due to preferences: "legacy" (children of alumni), athlete, geography, music, and race.
The Damage of Double Standards
All beneficiaries of preferences (not just racial) would be excluded by paper record alone. Stereotypes exist for 'dumb jocks' and 'stupid legacies'.
But racial stereotypes are qualitatively different: they reinforce an already existing stereotype about race.
If the success rate of students of color at elite colleges is lower than white students, it will be noticed and remembered, reinforcing the stereotype.
Reducing Risk: Eliminate racial preferences (perhaps possible as competitive capacity of people of color improves).
Immediate Solution: Students admitted via affirmative action must work with an energy that leaves competitors and detractors "gasping in admiration." Make the cadre of professionals "too good to ignore."
Limitations of Opportunity-Based Affirmative Action
It must abandon the pretense of compensating for "present educational disadvantage."
It won't erase effects of struggling through inner-city public schools.
Admitting students severely damaged academically is "a recipe for failure."
At best, it can take students of color with the "greatest potential" and place them in elite environments for testing and training.
Educational Disadvantage: Evidence shows it's one of many problems limiting college attendance/completion for students of color.
Despite rising test scores, higher high school graduation, and affirmative action, black college attendance is down since 1976.
In 1976: % of black youth (18-24) enrolled (nearly half of HS graduates); % of white youth ( % of HS graduates).
In 1986: Black youth enrollment dropped to % (% of HS graduates); white percentages barely changed.
Causes of Decline: Drug culture, criminal justice system involvement, appeal of military careers (these are beyond educational institutions' control).
Drug/crime arguments insufficient to explain rising HS graduation rates.
Principal Difficulty: High cost of exclusive universities makes alternative career choices attractive.
Preferential Financial Assistance (more logical/efficient than preferential admission):
A debate erupted when the US Department of Education initially denied federal funds to schools offering race-based financial aid (later modified to allow non-federal funds).
Defended as color-blind, but created a dilemma for colleges wanting minority recruitment and high standards.
A genuine believer in market solutions should allow bidding for "scarce resources" like first-rate students of color.
If colleges can't use preferential admission or bidding, "minority recruitment" becomes mere lip service.
The Affirmative Action Pyramid: Narrowing Preference
Goal: opportunity (chance at advanced training for highly motivated people of color not otherwise available).
Benefit of preference carries responsibility not to waste opportunity.
"What matters most is what happens after the preference."
Role of preference narrows as one moves upward.
Slight preference justified in college admission (for opportunity, not numbers or viewpoints).
Slighter preference for professional school admission, though defensible, is less important and harder to defend.
Job Market Entry: Preferences evaporate for professionals.
Candidate has years of high-level training; relying on paper record as barometer of professional possibilities is no longer "silly" or "demeaning."
Time to "stand or fall on what one has actually achieved."
Beyond initial entry, climbing the ladder: arguments run the other way; "time for preference has gone." "Talent and preparation, rather than skin color, must tell."
Fairness of Standards vs. Meeting Standards
Distinguish ability to meet standards from fairness of standards.
Standards must be scrutinized for fairness/neutrality, not assumed just because they exist.
J.R. Pole: American character justifies social/economic lines as fair/natural, even as they shift.
Connection between race attitudes and design of intellect-measuring lines (Stephen J. Gould).
Committed Professional's View: This argument can become moot. Professions are defined by standards, and most professionals are too busy proving themselves to quibble over fairness.
Academic tenure standards are under assault for racial bias, but outside academia, black professionals seek the "thrill of 'They did their worst, and I beat them at their own game'" over "I forced them to change their standards."
This is about gaining "The Edge." It has nothing to do with fairness or cultural identity.
Standardized Testing and Racial Disparities
A "great and frightening complexity": black candidates' median scores lag white candidates' on nearly all standardized tests (aptitude, achievement, admission, employment).
Gap is narrowing but persists. Black people will run behind until scores are raised.
America emphasizes testing more than any other country.
Misuse/Misunderstanding of Tests: Crutch for sorting, measuring innate aptitude rather than learned skills. Some think tests reveal racial differences in genetic inheritance.
Civil Rights Advocates' Solution: Get rid of tests due to "cultural bias" (tests measure traits some backgrounds are less likely to possess).
Author's Stance: The useful question is "whether measuring them is useful to the tester," not if traits are culture-specific.
If a test is a poor predictor AND racially exclusionary, remove it. The reason is poor prediction, not racial exclusion.
Derrick Bell: This helps everyone, increasing likelihood selected individuals "will fulfill the needs of the position."
This is "job-relatedness," what courts require in discrimination cases.
The Trouble: Overprediction: Many tests where black scores lag overpredict the performance of black people (actual performance slightly worse on average).
National Research Council Study (General Aptitude Test Battery - GATB):
Using same formula for white/black candidates "would not give predictions that were biased against black applicants." It's "somewhat more likely to overpredict than to underpredict."
Problem: Report suggests "bias against blacks in the primary criterion measure… supervisor ratings" (supervisors were usually white).
The author notes empirical work doesn't clearly support supervisor bias.
Author's Alternative Hypotheses: Perhaps supervisor bias is small, or doesn't exist, or even works the other way (white supervisors astonished by outstanding black performance rate them higher due to stereotypes).
Precipice of Paradox: If neither quantitative (tests) nor subjective (supervisor ratings) measures are legitimate for black employees, how can their performance be evaluated at all?
This doesn't strike a blow for equality; it argues against evaluating black employees effectively.
Campus Problem: Extreme diversity rhetoric suggests mainstream (Eurocentric white male) professors are not qualified to evaluate work of scholars of color bringing "voices of the oppressed."
This is "self-defeating." Who should evaluate them? How can black scholars tell if their work is good?
Limiting discourse to only black scholars is proposed, but then white scholars could do the same.
The author: "those of us who are not white are moving into academia to change that process, not justify it."
Long-Term Solution: Beating the Tests
Gaining "The Edge" means beating the tests, which the author is confident black people will do.
Ideally, phaseout of affirmative action should be accompanied by "vigorous attention to the elements in the education of blacks that lead to those test scores… that are at present a substantial barrier to black achievement" (Nathan Glazer).
Goal: Create a cadre of black professionals "too good to ignore," refuting racist stereotypes.
If affirmative action opens doors at college/professional school, embrace it "unembarrassed."
Then, the job is to maximize those opportunities and insist on being treated like anyone else.
This allows confidently answering the qualification question: "Sure, I got into law school because I'm black—so what?"
The Alternative ("Less Happy Path"):
Pretend the "untrue dream" of affirmative action is reality.
Continue pretense that all black people are competitively damaged by racism, and this damage is undone by school placement.
Continue arguing for two standards of achievement (white and black).
Continue fighting for blackness as a proxy for culture, and culture as a proxy for political opinions (integrating America becomes hearing "authentic voices").
This implies a right/wrong way to represent, betraying birthright if one has "wrong views."
If this path is taken, "we are not, after all, the beneficiaries of affirmative action: we are its victims."
Chapter 5: Silencing Dissent
Holiday Desserts and Student Dialogue
The author and his wife host holiday dinners for black Yale Law School students to unwind, chat, and debate.
They feel a "deep emotional connection" and see future black/white leaders.
They don't always agree with student views (nor each other), but value dialectical interchange for advancing human knowledge.
As a law student, he defended his right to criticize others' views.
Sometimes students express "silly" (e.g., most arrested black people are innocent) or "disturbing" (e.g., disciplining white students for offensive remarks) ideas.
These don't make black students different from other students or adults.
A university is an appropriate place to debate outrageous ideas.
He fears a "weakly conceived ideology" may cloud their analytical faculties.
He tells colleagues who worry about "dangerous" ideas not to worry, as students' minds are growing and testing theses.
A Dangerous Moment: Silencing Dissent in the Black Community
The black community's "always-fragile unity" is shattered after MLK Jr.'s assassination.
Progress made, but problems (drugs, education) seem insurmountable.
Few new ideas, old ones (like widespread racial preferences) seem increasingly irrelevant but are defended with "desperation that often turns to virulence."
He worries about messages sent to future leaders.
"Righteous fury" from current black leaders directed at dissenters from the traditional civil rights agenda (especially black dissenters, and when the agenda involves preferences) is concerning.
Shibboleth: Racially conscious affirmative action has become a "shibboleth"—a convenient test to separate friends from enemies.
The phrase "We are not debatable!" (from the Yale Political Union incident) exemplifies this.
On campuses, "diversity" is also a shibboleth. Dissenters from the idea that diversity means liberating specific voices "sacrifices his or her birthright."
As an intellectual trying to escape preconceptions, he finds "loyalty tests particularly distressing."
Origin of "Shibboleth": Book of Judges, chapter 12. Ephraimites identified by inability to pronounce "Shibboleth" correctly, then slain.
Metaphor for a test determining genuine group membership (requiring precise pronunciation; outsiders are destroyed).
Affirmative Action as Shibboleth: There's a correct way (simple justice, minimum owed, sine qua non of progress) and an incorrect way (unfair, illicit, dehumanizing, counterproductive, unnecessary) to talk about preferences.
A black person telling the "wrong tale" is a "traitor and an outsider."
"Traitors are much worse than adversaries"; nations hate "the betrayer from within" most.
In the black community, dissent labeled treason often faces "ostracism, expulsion, official death. We purge them."
The Nature of Purges
Purges are not pretty; they are ruthless warnings against dissent.
They deny the right to think, punishing disagreement with established views.
Intellectuals are often the first to go (Bakunin: "on the first day… treasure; on the second day, he should be shot").
Intellectuals are free thinkers, critics, adversaries of folly, accepting nothing as beyond dispute.
Though associated with Soviet states or Third World, purges exist in the West (e.g., federal bureaucracy leadership changes).
"Disdainful treatment of intellectuals who dare to challenge fashionable academic orthodoxy" is a disheartening Western purge.
"Isolation of intellectual dissenters who happen to be black" is a "tragic example."
Dissent in Black Community: Often stifled due to emphasis on solidarity and not revealing internal disagreements to the world.
The undesirability of extensive racial preferences is a proposition on which dissent is least tolerated. "That is our shibboleth, and black dissenters who instead say sibboleth are treated as outsiders."
Black Dissenters as "Celebrities"
Easy to find due to a "peculiar form of affirmative action": awarding celebrity status to "the conservative thinker who happens to be black" by public policy influencers.
Walter Williams Example (early 1980s): A black economist who claimed most soup kitchen lines had people saving coins for "wine, dope, or cigarettes" without data.
Vilified by black leaders.
Glenn Loury (another black economist, later vilified himself) criticized Williams and the media, arguing they made Williams a star because his views, though "inane," came from an "interesting' racial group."
Loury called this "affirmative action to press coverage of conservative economists."
Media make celebrities of black people who disagree with other black people.
Policy makers and intellectuals also accept skin color adds legitimacy, especially when propounding potentially controversial ideas (e.g., needing black supporters to deflect racism charges).
Names of black dissenting scholars (Loury, Sowell, Steele) are familiar to American intellectuals, unlike principal black/white academicians underlying civil rights agenda.
The Misnomer: "Black Conservative"
The label is applied to dissenters as an insult, assuming intellectual independence can be defeated by reduction to an insult.
The word "conservative" is seen as "unwholesome" by many black activists, understandable given conservatism's historical opposition to civil rights.
Author's Argument: In electoral politics, "liberal" is the dirty word; "conservative" applies more accurately to mainstream civil rights organizations clinging to preferences despite evidence.
Randall Kennedy (Harvard law professor) called himself "radical" for wanting to eliminate color-line in scholarship evaluation.
The idea of evaluating scholars of color without regard to color is "very radical" in academia; considering color is "very old-fashioned—that is to say, conservative."
Importance of Free Criticism
Black leadership's views don't need to align with others.
A black leadership to the left of the country provides "important service" through "sensitive, thoughtful criticism."
Mistake to think consensus means questioning is a crime or dissent is treason.
Black intellectuals questioning racial preferences thrust themselves into controversies and face criticism.
But influential black figures have crossed the line from "pointed rebuttal" to "personal attack," using terms white dissenters wouldn't face.
Case Studies of Personal Attacks and Silencing
Shelby Steele: English professor, The Content of Our Character (1990) argues black people focus too much on racism, missing opportunities. Racism is receding, investment in affirmative action bolsters a stereotype of inability to make progress "on our own."
Author believes Steele is too optimistic but thoughtful.
Amiri Baraka: Called Steele a "basket case," lacking societal knowledge, "totally shaped by reaction," with "regressive" ideas.
John Lewis (Rep. D-GA, civil rights veteran): Steele is in an "ivory tower," blaming the victim.
Thomas Sowell: Economist, longtime critic of preferences, subjected to "blaming the victim" charge. Protests this is a category mistake, evading "whether this is a matter of blame in the first place."
Considered "so dangerous" some civil rights leaders threatened to boycott a meeting with President Bush if Sowell was invited.
Carl Rowan (journalist): Compared Sowell to Vidkun Quisling (Nazi collaborator), saying Sowell does "as much damage to the Norwegians as Sowell is doing to the most helpless of black Americans."
Benjamin Hooks (NAACP head): Called Glenn Loury's views "treasonous."
Martin Kilson (Harvard): Accused "neoconservative analysts like Glenn Loury" of serving "their own Reaganite public policy purposes."
Clarence Pendleton (Civil Rights Commission head): Posters announcing his Yale Law School address defaced with "Oreo" and "Uncle Tom" (referring to his opposition to preferences). (Author notes debate over whether these are epithets).
Randall Kennedy (Harvard law professor): Argued against accepting on faith the claim by some non-white scholars that people of color write with a "distinctive voice" or "special credibility." Called for evidence.
Response: A "whispering campaign" to discredit him, arguing his work would "set back the cause of progress."
Critics felt he should know better than to express views racists could use. His blackness means he must limit what he says.
Julius Lester: Mainstream black leftist in the 1960s, accused of anti-Semitism. Later converted to Judaism, criticized icons (Jesse Jackson).
Colleagues in Afro-American Studies Department at UMass Amherst disliked his views, criticized/mocked/banished him despite tenure after his memoir Lovesong.
Lester had written in Lovesong that James Baldwin's (a great literary figure) class remarks were anti-Semitic, though Baldwin didn't realize it. This was the "last straw" for colleagues.
They issued a statement calling his comments "capricious, irresponsible and damaging," demanding he leave. He moved to Judaic and Near Eastern Studies.
Colleagues publicly lambasted him as "self-serving and devious," engaging in "adolescent exhibitionism," having a "vicious attitude towards blacks and black organizations," and making "stereotypical attacks on the black community."
Lester believed his colleagues' motivations were anti-Semitic.
Others (except Pendleton, Steele) met Lester's treatment with silence.
The Marketplace of Ideas and its Rough Edges
Are these just names being called in an open marketplace of ideas? Freedom is unpredictable.
Stanley Crouch: "true freedom means you are free to tell me to go to hell and I am free not to go."
First Amendment framers didn't require good manners.
Robust debate is sometimes unruly and bruises feelings.
Requirements for Black Dissenter: "Reasonably thick skin."
Ethnic communities (feeling isolated/threatened) often demand solidarity, muting criticism within. Many groups do this.
Dissenters (often scholars) naturally upset people.
"Private Dissenters": Many black professionals privately hold dissenting views but remain silent due to unwillingness to face personal attacks or loyalty slurs.
Critics say the price for dissent is one's birthright: "if you take the wrong position, you are thinking white; and if you think white, then you're not really black."
Author: An intellectual must refuse to pay this price or acknowledge anyone's authority to set it.
Inequality of Battle
The vitriol isn't one-sided; some dissenters (Loury, Sowell, Steele) use harsh words for opponents.
But the battle is unequal: dissenters lack a black power base to intimidate.
Unlikely Loury/Sowell would accuse critics of "looking black and talking white."
Reconciliation Efforts: Debates between conservatives and mainstream figures, invitations to African-American summit (though many dissenters refused due to Louis Farrakhan's presence).
National Urban League invited Loury to address its convention.
Ungentle Truth: Black intellectuals dissenting from orthodoxy are often silenced by ad hominem criticism from black leaders and intellectuals.
Attacks are harsher than those against white opponents.
Driven by anger and worry over consequences of dissent.
Belief dissenters are "terribly damaging" to "civil rights agenda under siege."
Source of anger: less the positions, more the skin color.
Premise: Black dissenters are dangerous because racists will use their views against the black community.
Author's Counter: This point is not entirely groundless.
Well-meaning white intellectuals/policymakers seek black supporters for controversial policies to deflect racism charges.
Example: President Bush mentioning Colin Powell and Michael Williams (both black) to defend policies against racism charges.
This implicitly endorses the idea of a uniquely valuable black perspective.
However, a few black supporters don't alter opinions much.
It's "bizarre to insist that criticism… by black people is more dangerous than… by people who are white" in the US power dynamic.
The idea of white "fence-sitters" being swayed by black unanimity and turning racist if dissent emerges is an "implausible portrait."
If no black dissenters, a racist would simply use something else.
Solidarity vs. Free Thinking
Solidarity (supporting one another, love for people) seems crucial for black survival/progress.
But desire for solidarity is "inadequate excuse for the stifling of dissent."
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: "It is wrong for anyone to feel motivated to police a so-called party line to which all African American intellectuals are supposed to kowtow."
The censors have it backward: "Free thinking is not treason; on the contrary, it is the greatest service individuals can perform for their communities."
Long chain of black intellectuals (DuBois, Hurston, Baldwin) proclaimed unwillingness to be bound by "right" solutions, enriching understanding.
Community needs dissent, dialogue, fresh ideas. Message of vehement criticism is dissent cannot be tolerated.
This implies black people are responsible for declining the invitation to "think for ourselves."
Author's Public Dissent: "Racial Preferences? So What?" (1989)
Essay in Wall Street Journal argued racial preferences have real beneficiaries, and black supporters (as beneficiaries) shouldn't be insulted if identified as such.
He thought it an "innocuous enough point," a starting for debate, not a political act itself.
He became the subject of debate.
Responses Received:
Dozens of letters: some friendly (complimenting "honesty," "courage").
Some (from whites) thanked him for saying "what had to be said" (he put these aside with "angry tightening of the lips" and "degree of guilt," as his purpose is not to comfort whites).
Other white writers were patronizing, assuring him he was "clearly smart."
Few letters from people of color were supportive. Many saw him as "the enemy."
One correspondent: criticized Harvard publicly, thereby aiding "white bigots" and injuring "white supporters." "Shame on you."
Another: called his essay "shallow self-deprecating," showing no understanding of affirmative action's accomplishments. Accused his "sarcastic remarks" of being "indicative of the cynicism and insecurity that is typical of a new emerging class of neo-conservative, black middle-class intellectuals who find themselves increasingly alienated from a growing black 'underclass' and grappling with their fears of not being accepted… by their white peers."
Some Yale black students criticized (more restrainedly).
Quarreled with "preferences" as implying a value judgment.
Suggested he underestimated white racism or overestimated white fairness.
Argued he should air views within the black group, not where whites could misuse them. This implied a need for a "united front."
One student: refusing to subordinate views to the group (on minor matters) denies group's legitimacy/existence.
Author's Interpretation of Criticisms: Not hostile, but "cries of anguish and disbelief," embodying an "awkward but urgent plea, the seductive call of group identity: Don't betray the group… stay with us, don't leave us, don't betray us!"
He recognizes the "one-for-all-and-all-for-one" communitarian appeal: the world is chilly, the group must stick together.
Impression of solidarity matters as much as solidarity itself. Defectors weaken the group.
Examples: Yale Political Union protest, Communist Party acquaintance's view that living in a white suburb weakens the inner city.
He admits he agrees he owes the group loyalty, and feels guilt when criticized for suburban living or causing pain to other black people.
He parts ways with critics here: if his views actually threatened progress, he would hesitate. But he denies the group's (or members') right to define the group's position or decide if his views do harm or good.
"Loyalty itself can be the motive force for respectful dissent."
Many of his critics may not realize that a plurality/majority of black Americans oppose racial preferences.
He doesn't cite this as authority; the intellectual's authority is reason, expressing deeply reasoned views, not popular ones.
It's painful to take positions that cause pain or are warned against, but the intellectual's task is "to answer not the cautions of friends but the call of the mind."
Historical Legacy of Silencing Dissent
Remaining silent would be a "tragic rejection of our history."
The fight for the right to read, learn, question, think, challenge was too costly to now pretend it was about imposing a black orthodoxy instead of a white one.
Glenn Loury: "I've got to have the freedom to go where my intellect leads me, in view of the opportunities the civil rights struggle made possible."
The black community has a "magnificent tradition of black intellectual dissent" but "no comparable tradition of black intellectual tolerance."
Historically, those whose views make the community uncomfortable are cast out, often on grounds that they don't speak for black people or are tools of white people.
Booker T. Washington Era (early 20th century):
Washington was the only black intellectual whose views mattered. He advocated industrial training and postponing political/social rights.
He railed against black critics as "ignorant in regard to the actual needs of the masses… They know books but they do not know men."
Case Study: George A. Towns (Atlanta University professor): Wrote a letter of support to William Monroe Trotter (Harvard-educated editor, fierce Washington opponent) after Trotter was arrested for protesting Washington.
Towns's letter, published by Trotter, stated that many educated blacks sympathized with Trotter and opposed white selection of black leaders.
Atlanta University's president, Horace Bumstead, faced pressure from Washington's supporters (school's financial backers).
Towns was pressured to apologize and to falsely claim his letter was published without consent.
The Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees adopted a statement of "great astonishment and profound regret" concerning Towns's letter, effectively censuring him.
Towns resigned.
DuBois's Reflection: Living under Washington's hegemony, any Negro complaint was silenced with "Mr. Washington did not agree with this." The young intelligentsia insisted on their right to think.
DuBois himself was forced from Atlanta University due to his opposition to Washington.
Marcus Garvey's UNIA dismissed DuBois "from the Negro race" for opposing their policies.
Other sad moments: Harlem Renaissance (artists had to be left), 1950s Un-American Activities investigations (leftist black intellectuals expelled from mainstream).
Many thinkers (Arna Bontemps, Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson, Paul Robeson) chafed under pressure to conform.
Author: It's appalling some want to return to days when black intellectuals were ostracized for "getting the shibboleths wrong." We should have learned to cherish critical thinking.
Encouraging debate is the way to progress; stifling dissent leads nowhere.
Hope for Dialogue
The author does not suggest sole blame; dissenters also use harsh rhetoric.
Goal: genuine critical discourse where diverse ideas are discussed.
Coretta Scott King (1989 African-American summit): "we have less unity than we had during the civil rights movement."
Author: Unity isn't groupthink. We need "group love," delight in diversity, discuss differences.
We must be careful defining "who have the right to call themselves black," as free-thinking dissenters may be more needed than we think.
Black conservatives are comfortable in their posts and "will not be silenced. Nor should they be."
Silencing debate limits solutions.
The Niagara Movement (1905): DuBois and others organized it against Washington's ascendancy to provide a platform for dissenting ideas.
Washington tried to suppress it using his influence over black colleges and newspapers.
"Too often, a challenge is still condemned as an attack on the group." The difference between past and present is who holds the "whip hand."
Clarence Thomas: "why, unlike other individuals… black individuals are not entitled to have and express points of view that differ from the collective hodge-podge of ideas that we supposedly share because we are members of the same race.'"
Answer: mistaken view that black dissent is more dangerous.
Ostracism of intellectuals is a "unhappy gift" to the next generation.
Legacy could be that the right to train minds is only for politically proper thoughts; free thought belongs to white people alone.
For many, solidarity makes dissent too costly.
Growing Dissenters: Author's impression (anecdotal) is dissenters are growing, especially among the younger, more successful black middle class (Ironically, the affirmative action generation).
This may motivate the anger against dissenters.
Organized groups beat disorganized groups, even if disorganized is larger.
New Niagara Movement Needed: For black dissenters to proclaim their right to think for themselves, comment on any subject (no matter how sacred), worship no absolute authority but truth.
Say what they think.
Reconciliation and Mutual Respect
Mainstream civil rights leaders have rights to their views, as do dissenters.
The tragedy is the thoughtful, rich contributions on both sides, needing "talking with rather than at each other."
He wishes for an Alcibiades (as in Thucydides' account) to persuade competing factions to work together.
He wishes for stillness, so monologues end and dialogue begins.
His "childish daydreams": Sowell and Bell shaking hands, Lester and Jackson breaking bread, Loury and Hooks thrashing out differences, born of "deep and abiding mutual respect and a willingness to listen born of a shared love for our people."
He notes the past seemed naive about the Berlin Wall or Mandela.
Chapter 7: Why "Black Conservative" Is Pejorative
The C-SPAN Incident (1990) and Nelson Mandela
Author and wife watched TV during Mandela's US visit (Mandela, though Deputy President, was perceived as the head of ANC).
A prominent (white) American conservative argued on C-SPAN:
Apartheid is evil (author: "Hear! Hear!").
Violence is not the right means to overthrow apartheid (author questioned: "what about the contras?").
Indiscriminate violence by SA government should be condemned (author: "But not the discriminate kind, evidently").
US should resume direct military aid to the SA government (author: "Uh—whazzat?").
Author and wife were baffled and furious. This "nonsense" undermines their "high-minded rhetoric" about ending divisions.
This conservative argument requires two unspoken premises:
US should aid regimes, even ideologically totalitarian ones, facing Communist insurgencies (author questions SA being authoritarian not totalitarian).
ANC is a Communist insurgency (author views this as an oversimplification).
Even if granted, resuming military aid only makes sense if a Communist-dominated SA is worse than a racist-dominated one.
This might have been plausible during the Cold War but is a "frightening" dismissal of apartheid's horror.
For the conservative movement, this argument is "politically correct," a shibboleth for membership.
Rev. Keith Butler (black conservative minister): "We agree on percent of the issues… but because my position isn't identical to theirs on South Africa, I am somehow a traitor."
Black Views and Conservatism
Few black people hold the movement-conservative position on South Africa.
However, many black people agree with movement positions on other issues, especially "family values" social issues.
Focus-group surveys: support for Republican candidates increases dramatically when they are pro-life. Black voters care more about crime than white voters.
Apart from race-related political issues, black Americans tend to be more conservative than the nation as a whole on selected matters:
Abortion, prayer in public schools, role of women, criminal defendants' rights.
Surveys show black people significantly more likely to take the conservative position.
One study: black people twice as likely to oppose Supreme Court school prayer decisions; eight times more likely to think courts are too soft on criminals.
Contradiction: Despite this, the "black conservative is an outsider," and the word "conservative" is an epithet in much of the black community.
Many black people who hold conservative positions are reluctant to accept the label.
Shelby Steele complains he spends energy denying he's a conservative.
Author's Reluctance to be Labeled "Black Neoconservative"
This label stings him, increasingly applied as he discusses the costs of preferences.
A white colleague called him "quite conservative"; friends make "painful jokes" about his "right-wing views."
He claims he doesn't harbor many, or at least doesn't think he does.
Attractions of Conservatism: Belief in standards of excellence, inculcating strong positive values. Not always sure government programs are the answer.
"Conservative" Positions Held by Author (in his contrarianism):
Doubts about affirmative action (as currently practiced).
Suggested moral vision supporting "Reagan doctrine" in foreign affairs (he corrects a geographical faux pas here).
Argued in Harvard Law Review that Bork hearings threatened judicial independence.
Constitutional law scholarship adheres to original understanding (anathema to most legal theorists on the left).
He believes constitutional conclusions need not coincide with political preferences, a lesson both left and right need.
Why He's Not a Conservative: His targets of ire are varied; he gets "shibboleths of the right wrong."
Example: Taxes. He was raised to believe paying taxes is a privilege, a patriotic duty to support democratically enacted programs. He considers the right's view of taxes (except for national defense) as evil "ludicrous."
He criticizes the US for low effective tax rates compared to other nations with stronger economies, arguing "the future is expensive."
Education Funding: Believes in forceful government action (more money) for better education; it's "shortsighted at best and oppressive at worst" to oppose preferences yet expect underfunded inner-city schools to train the next generation of black professionals without capital.
Other "Uncongenial" Views to the Right: Willing to attack racial prejudice where the right is silent (e.g., capital juries valuing white murder victims' lives higher).
Zero white people executed for murdering black people in years after WWII until 1991.
The Unavoidable Label
He likes being "difficult to pin down, hard to label" (an "eclecticism of my political views"), seeing himself as a moderate with extreme views in various directions.
But the label "sticks": "black conservative" or "neoconservative."
Gaining a reputation as a dissenter on racial preferences leads to the assumption of dissent on all traditional civil rights agenda aspects.
He constantly receives invitations to comment on faculty diversity, law and race panels, civil rights books (which he usually declines, stating his expertise is elsewhere).
He has "no interest in serving as an exhibit." This is how he escapes being boxed on scholarly interests.
Political Boxing: Getting out of the box for political positions is harder.
Clarence Thomas Nomination: After his WSJ essay, Thomas was nominated to Appeals Court. Thomas's proponents (reading his essay) asked him to testify for Thomas.
He declined (admiration for Thomas, but no expertise in the dispute).
(Footnote: He also received a call asking him to testify against Thomas, based on his "interest in affirmative action" and Thomas's opposition to it, assuming he'd oppose Thomas because Thomas was black. He declined after material wasn't sent).
Civil Rights Act of 1990: After the Court made employment discrimination harder for plaintiffs, legislation was introduced to overturn decisions. Opponents of the legislation (supporters of the decisions) asked him to testify against the legislation.
He asked why they called; they said he had "some interest in affirmative action."
He explained his primary expertise was not civil rights law, and he thought the legislation was essentially correct and the Court decisions wrong. He offered to review materials but none were sent.
His response "seemed to confound him"—one can't criticize part of orthodoxy without criticizing the rest.
There's "no adequate label for a black person of such complexity." This throws people off.
Assumption: If a black person dissents on preferences, they must dissent on all civil rights agenda items.
Dissenters are supposed to press disagreements into policy and serve as "exhibits."
Glenn Loury (sarcastically): many white people expect black dissenters to "come riding in, battle-scarred, to say that it's O.K. to tell these runny-nosed kids who have tyrannized these white students to go to hell."
This attitude refuses to see blacks as complex individuals, looking only at skin color.
Labels, once affixed, are hard to remove.
Conclusion: He's stuck with the "black conservative" label, no matter his views on education funding, the death penalty, or the constitutionality of preferences.
Burden of Guilt: "To black people, Clarence Thomas has noted, the word conservative is all too often inseparable from the word racist." The Republican Party was "nowhere to be found" during civil rights struggles (Jack Kemp).
Accepting the conservative label carries an "unshakable burden of guilt," implying betrayal of one's people.
The conservative movement, not black people, must create a climate where this burden can be shed.
Challenges for Black Conservatives in the Movement
It's not easy for black people who want to be movement conservatives to find a niche.
Exclusion: Keith Butler's lament about litmus tests. Paul Weyrich: movement conservatives need to be more tolerant of differences to attract black converts.
Clarence Thomas's "Devastating Critique" (Heritage Lecture): After Reagan's landslide, Thomas found "blacks were to be tolerated but not necessarily welcomed" in conservative ranks.
Assumption: blacks couldn't be conservative. (Flip side of liberal assumption: blacks are leftist).
Constant pressure to "prove themselves daily."
Pluralism or different points of view "was not encouraged or invited—especially from blacks."
Their advice was often ignored; white counterparts "hid from our advice."
Little effort to proselytize uncommitted blacks.
To be accepted, a black person was sometimes "required to become a caricature… providing sideshows of anti-black quips and attacks." (Thomas is now a "lionized member" of the movement).
Lugenia Gordon (Freedom Republicans): RNC thinks "we're like Limburger cheese. A little bit goes a long way."
The Problem of the "Dirty Word"
"Conservative" evokes emotional responses: mainstream for whites, "lunatic fringe" for blacks.
Thomas Sowell: being black and conservative is "more strange than being a vegetarian or a birdwatcher."
Voting Patterns: Black people overwhelmingly vote Democratic (Dukakis got %, Mondale %).
Reagan's Racial Insensitivity: Opened 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi (site of civil rights workers' massacre) to extoll "states' rights" (old doctrine denying federal government right to regulate treatment of black people).
Author questions if Reagan/staff were unaware of offense (if so, it explains black suspicion).
Other errors: proposed tax exemptions for segregation academies, seemed to favor weakening Voting Rights Act, opposed SA sanctions (with bizarre arguments), railed against busing, opposed MLK Jr. holiday.
Justice Department officials criticized racial preferences.
Bush's Improvement: Better approval rating among blacks (three times higher than Reagan's lowest).
Fred Barnes: "Bush is helped enormously simply by the fact that he's not Reagan."
But this doesn't translate to GOP support.
Time magazine: "The most prominent black in the George Bush campaign was Willie Horton." (Horton ads were racially charged, though Ailes denied it and Atwater later regretted it).
Author: Ads were insensitive, but Bush himself isn't widely seen as racist.
Bush made efforts to connect with black leadership.
Reagan's "Principled Arguments": Each objectionable position had a theoretical defense (e.g., IRS shouldn't enforce public policy via tax exemption, Voting Rights Act parts misguided, sanctions ineffective, busing wrong, holiday costly, King's patriotism debatable).
But Reagan consistently chose arguments against what most black people thought was right.
No principled explanation for Philadelphia, Mississippi speech venue.
Suggesting black suspicion of Reagan was only due to distortions by civil rights leaders is a "disservice"—black people are not politically unsophisticated.
Bob Jones Case: Tax exemptions for segregation academies "particularly rankled." Clarence Thomas: "our death knell" for black conservatives seeking black community respectability.
Conservative Movement's Image Problem (beyond distortions)
The movement has real reasons for its poor image among black people.
It must "look inward" rather than blame the messenger.
Easily Cured Problem: Perception of who is welcome.
GOP trumpets black conservatives' achievements without "special consideration."
But critics note GOP often nominates black candidates only for "expected to lose" seats (e.g., Alan Keyes for Senate in Maryland).
Edward Rollins: black Republicans are never nominated for "safe" seats.
Solution: Nominate qualified black conservatives for winnable seats to gain black confidence, creating nationally prominent figures (like Douglas Wilder).
National Review: "first black President will be a fiscally and socially conservative Republican." Needs such conservatives in national prominence first.
Deeper Difficulty: Movement seen as "actively hostile to the progress of black people."
Economic Strategy: Lee Atwater argued low taxes/inflation benefit black families.
True, but "a rising tide doesn't lift all boats" (some have holes, as does the social safety net).
This strategy targets black yuppies who are more likely to vote Republican (though grandparents likely voted Republican until 1964).
Strategy has failed to overcome "basic black fear of conservatism."
"Don't want to get their hands dirty": Paul Weyrich: white conservatives don't appear in inner cities except election time. (Keith Butler: Liberals work all neighborhoods; conservatives avoid them then wonder why no gains).
Clarence Thomas: GOP writes off black community as an "interest group not worth going after" (a violation of basic conservative principles).
Republican leaders make bold predictions about black votes, then explain why they failed.
Thomas: black Americans will move toward conservatism when "we stop discouraging them; when they are treated as a diverse group…; and when conservatives stand up for what they believe in rather than stand against blacks."
Defenders argue opposition to quotas gives a bad rap; movement supports civil rights, opposes barriers. True, but:
Conservatives reserve "greater part of their vehemence for affirmative action programs" (not just quotas, but racial consciousness).
Their condemnation draws thunderous applause, while throw-away lines about traditional racism do not.
If black Americans see hostility, it's not distortion; the positive message is absent.
Thomas: movement does too little to say what it's "for."
It emphasizes what it dislikes about civil rights orthodoxy.
Emphases: Keith Butler: "The black community is the one place where the federal government is actually popular." Conservatives are seen as "taking away" (especially in education). If they want inroads, they must "offer solutions."
Problem: They do offer solutions (enterprise zones), but black voters don't listen.
Thomas: "Blacks are not stupid. And no matter how good an idea or proposal is, no one is going to give up the comfort of the leftist status quo as long as they view conservatives as antagonistic to their interest, and conservatives do little or nothing to dispel the perception. If blacks hate or fear conservatives, nothing we say will be heard."
"Conservative" as a Dirty Word: Programmatic Issues
"Conservative is synonymous with the word racist" for many black Americans; seen as people who want to hold them back.
Not simple reaction to old guard conservatives or misperception.
Civil Rights Act of 1990: Bush first said no need to overturn Supreme Court decisions (making discrimination cases harder), then vetoed legislation as a "quota bill."
Author: Claim of quotas was likely a misreading. Even if true, a President often accepts unwanted provisions to pass a needed bill (like budget "revenue enhancers").
Why not for Civil Rights Act? Bush/GOP didn't see reversing decisions as sufficiently important.
Message: GOP more concerned about avoiding hint of quotas than easing burdens on discrimination plaintiffs. Black Americans "can hardly be expected to miss."
Racial Justice Act of 1990: Aimed to ease showing racial bias in capital sentencing.
Bush administration opposed (fear of "quota system for death sentences").
Author: Acknowledgment is needed that racial disparities in capital sentencing are concerning beyond the quota question.
If death penalty deters murder, then black people being times more likely to be sentenced to death for killing a white person than a black person means fewer murders of black people are deterred.
No white person executed for murdering a black person until 1991 (post-WWII). This should generate sympathy, not "mutterings about quotas."
Racial counting is misguided, and data may have explanations, but it's avoiding reality to ignore statistical disparities.
Symbolic Steps and the Persistence of White Racism
GOP could send more encouraging messages through symbolic steps.
Confederate Flag: Author wonders why conservatives, who wanted to ban US flag burning (as an insult to those who died protecting it), didn't speak strongly against Confederate flag display (insulting to hundreds of thousands who died fighting against it, or millions who suffered under slavery).
He believes both are First Amendment protected but notes the unequal response.
Republican Party as Home for White Racism
"The Republican Party is now what the Dixiecrat 'Party' once was: a natural and evidently comfortable home for white racism in the United States."
This is not to say most Republicans are racist, but that "true racists" are "far more likely to be and talk and vote Republican and conservative than Democratic and liberal."
This is an "observation, a bald statement of political reality," not necessarily a criticism.
Ronald Reagan and "States' Rights": Even if Reagan only meant to return federal programs to states, actual racists in the audience would find the vision of getting government "off the backs of the people" attractive, as government often opposed racists.
In the South, where city mayors are often black Democrats or white Republicans, Republican candidates often use "code words" and play up black support for opponents.
John B. Judis: GOP "court[s] the backlash vote," exploits "racially divided electorate."
RNC's "ballot-integrity" campaign (1986) targeted black votes, backfiring.
Concerns that racial preferences will be a "carefully coded but racially charged" campaign issue (like Jesse Helms's 1990 campaign).
Helms's ads (white people losing jobs to less-qualified minorities) tapped "fear and resentment… the backlash vote."
David Duke: Former KKK head, Hitler admirer, ran for state/Senate as a Republican, garnering over % of the vote. National Republican officials repudiated him.
Duke's insistence he belongs in the Republican Party and is a conservative is troubling.
Conservative Movement's Need for Introspection: It has "something more than an image problem." Its negative image among black people has real reasons.
Blaming the messenger (as neocons often accuse the left of doing) won't solve it.
Cure: Make clear white racists are "neither wanted nor welcome." (National Review acknowledged racists are attracted to the GOP by "incorrect views.")
Rhetoric Problem: Much conservative rhetoric (condemnations of affirmative action, welfare cheaters, federal regulation) aligns with racists' programs.
When this rhetoric is reserved for orthodox civil rights agenda, racists feel welcome. This emphasis is a conscious choice.
Thomas: movement is good at articulating negatives but not positives. (Latest comparison: preferences = apartheid, using stronger language than for contemporary discrimination).
Positive program is an afterthought, rarely presented to conservative audiences.
Conclusion: "Conservative is a dirty word in the black community because the conservative movement is frightening to many black people."
Not because it's hostile, but it's better at explaining what's wrong with civil rights than what's right.
More comfortable standing against black people than with them.
Willingly accepts racist members.
"Seems always to take its most important public stands against black people rather than with them."
Chapter 8: Silencing Doubt
Campus Silencing of Black Conservatives and White Critics
On campuses, black conservatives are seen as lacking "blackness other than the biological," having "forgotten their roots," "look black, but they are not… the black people who matter."
White people are free to challenge the diversity movement, but risk being labeled "Eurocentric heterosexist right-wingers."
New Grammar of Race: Affirmative action gave rise to it. Woe to those who use words incorrectly.
Dictionary of Cautionary Words and Phrases (1989): Published by University of Missouri School of Journalism, lists "offensive," "derogatory," and "objectionable" words for journalists.
"Qualified minorities": "Do not use in stories about affirmative action. Unnecessary description that indicates minorities are generally unqualified."
This means the qualification question is off-limits.
The author notes Orwellian quality: rules make some ideas impossible to express without being called racist.
Intellectuals and Unspeakable Ideas
Richard Herrnstein complains some ideas are treated like obscenity—not discussed in polite society (e.g., median black applicant less qualified than median white).
Russell Baker: racism is the "new communism"—a cry to silence opponents (and get them fired) similar to the 1950s cry of "Communist!"
Evolution of Conversational Rules
Racial inferiority assertions have caused immense pain and oppression.
The nation's racist legacy lives in "racial memory," making black people "skittish" about ideas that could lead to "racial subjugation."
"Hate Speech"/"Racial Harassment" Rules on Campuses: Aimed at making racist sentiments punishable.
Some advocates want to place the entire affirmative action debate off-limits.
Main motive is fear of racial incidents, many legitimate.
Being black in a white world isn't easy; students hope for respite in academia.
1980s saw sharp upswing in racially charged incidents (defacing posters, anonymous hate messages, harassment, intimidation, physical assaults).
Author's Stance on "Hate Speech"
Sympathies for freedom: he would oppose regulating "simple speech," even if insulting/offensive/painful (e.g., views of black criminality or intellectual inferiority).
Stanford undergraduate: "What we are proposing is not completely in line with the First Amendment. I'm not sure it should be." Author: his sentiments align with Alan Keyes, who called it "the most insidious, the most insulting, the most racist statement of all" to suggest black people are too fragile for such insults.
Boiling Blood: When critics of "p.c." movement (politically correct) condemn regulators but are restrained about the students whose comments cause righteous fury.
Apologists for racism insist incidents are just "free speech" and "good clean adolescent sport."
Example: White students calling Asian-American students "Oriental faggots" and singing "yellow submarine," dismissed as "just drunk, trying to have some fun."
Empathy for Victims: He thinks of black student cornered by white students in sheets with a noose.
Law student whose door was painted red with "NIGGER BITCH, THIS IS YOUR BLOOD."
Ten black Yale Law students receiving anonymous notes from "Yale Students for Racism" blaming black males for crime, concluding "Now you know why we call you niggers."
If this is "good clean fun," then Bernhard Goetz (subway shooter of black youths) had a grand time. (Goetz was acquitted; his fear and rage resonated with a frightened public).
Students of color claiming fear of harassers face skepticism; it's hard to be scared of "adolescents having good clean fun."
Goetz Case Racial Imagery: Shooter white, hasslers black. Defenders said race irrelevant. Author: if roles reversed, facts couldn't be the same.
"Blackness can threaten simply by appearing unexpectedly." (Wealthy suburb, dark sidewalk, unexpected peephole view).
Goetz's lawyer conjured "innocent whiteness surrounded by threatening blackness."
"Innocent blackness" surrounded by "threatening whiteness" doesn't resonate for most white people; explains why white students chanting racist slogans are dismissed as "fun."
Black history teaches "unexpected whiteness can be threatening too." This is harder for most Americans to envision.
Author shudders to think how justice system would respond if a black student being harassed used a weapon. He doubts it would be a Goetz case revisited.
Building Understanding: Need to help white people see. John Wayne quote about always looking over shoulder applies to fear of racist violence.
Yes, many incidents are "harmless" (no physical harm intended), but victims can't be sure, which is part of the perpetrators' appeal.
Yale Law School Incident: Speech vs. Harassment/Intimidation
The anonymous note (hinting at group responsibility for crimes, aimed at individuals) was threatening.
Free speech defense is weaker for explicit threats.
Author: If the notice was on walls or signed, he'd treat it as protected speech and oppose exposing perpetrators or removing posters.
"On a university campus, perhaps more than anyplace else, unfettered debate is essential."
But the facts (anonymous, direct to individuals, hinting at group responsibility) transform it to harassment/intimidation.
Victims might feel "crushing burden of lingering white racism."
Alan Keyes might say drop it in trash, but threatening letters are hard to ignore.
Paradox: Rising racial incidents, but regulation must be deft, not allowing legitimate needs to get tangled with illegitimate wants (like detailed codes on language).
Schools must protect from physical harm/intimidation; First Amendment claims shouldn't detract.
Sharp Line: Between attacking individuals and offering offensive comments.
Some codes punish "demeaning epithets" and "generalized" racist/sexist remarks (University of Michigan's code, later struck down).
These codes are often broad enough to forbid questioning qualifications of preference beneficiaries, and some advocates intend this.
Much blood spilled defending free speech, even if it hurts.
Stephen Carter: "the sentiment to tilt the other way, away from 'harmful' speech, runs deep in the American character."
Authors of Constitution (passed Alien & Sedition Acts) would be impressed by these rules. Reactionary Supreme Court (early 20th C.) sustained limits on speech.
Diversity Movement Defense: Speech is objectionable only if it diminishes the learning environment for those whose oppression makes them sensitive to "threatening nuance that lurks behind racist sentiment masquerading as serious intellectual discourse."
Analytical Problems (Ira Glasser): If campuses are racist, why give racist authorities power to regulate speech? It's fantasy to imagine they'd use it as designers intend. (He references Mapplethorpe trial and Marxist-Leninist practices).
Tragedy of Energy Misdirection: So much energy put into crafting/debating codes by smart people of color, instead of focusing on education, health, safety for those in inner cities.
Author: We shouldn't necessarily ignore slurs, but chose which ones "get under our skins."
The world is full of insensitive thought; thin-skinned individuals will only think of themselves.
Much of what students face is horrible, but compared to parents/grandparents, much is "relatively petty."
Is it necessary to complain to white authority that a racist white student thinks black students are stupid? Many white people think that; they are stupid, but regulation won't make them smarter.
Ancestors fought so current generation could have opportunities; they would be alarmed at energy spent on policing speech rather than learning.
Response should be to "work hard enough to make ourselves… too good to ignore." Prove racist ideas wrong.
Shutting up a racist student won't stop them from practicing racism, but teaches the value of controlling regulatory apparatus.
Author's Caveat: Not dismissing all racist comments intended to intimidate. He wants black people protected, is sensitive to being a victim.
Racism/sexism are insidious forces.
Yale letters were intimidation, which schools should protect against, not racism itself.
He wants students of color comfortable, but focusing on speech limits screens out "hard truths about the way many white people look at the rest of us."
Margaret's World (from Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot's biography): Black community abundant/rewarding; white world dehumanizing but irrelevant to her because she "did not want to be part of it."
Current Reality: Black students/professionals do want to be part of the white world. This makes racial slights hurt more.
Opportunities are opening up, which is why comments hurt—they remind that many would prefer opportunities disappear.
Parents/grandparents breached the barrier; honor them by striving "not to feel the daily assaults even though we do want to be a part of that world."
Little time for chasing down racists; work needs to be done.
Ideas vs. Words: The Danger of Racist Scholarship
Words wound, but ideas are more dangerous.
Racist Scholarship Example: Assertion that general intelligence (g) is real, predominantly inherited, and black people have less g than white people.
William Shockley (Nobel physicist) popularized this in the 1960s.
Shockley's thesis: white people score higher because they are born more intelligent.
Critique of Shockley: His ideas were not just bad science (though eventually disproven by scientific error, not just "racist effect"), but perceived as "dangerous," "genocidal."
Colleges criticized for giving him a platform; prevented from speaking elsewhere.
Author (as undergraduate at Stanford): wondered if fear of debate was fear of Shockley being convincing.
Eventually, a debate was arranged: Shockley, a black psychologist, a white geneticist.
Shockley attacked the psychologist (who made claims like Shockley fearing black superiority, and hinted at personal problems).
The geneticist, however, "made mincemeat of Shockley's arguments."
Author's epiphany: justice comes from confronting truth; arguments should be dismissed on scientific error, not "racist effect."
Loren Graham's Hypothetical: Geneticist in Nazi Germany discovers Tay-Sachs more common among Jews. Should he publish, knowing it will be used to prove Jewish inferiority?
Graham implies no, due to political impact.
Author: This stretches the point. Information vs. policy. If power structure is determined to enact racist policies, they will do so with or without scientific support.
Conclusion: The problem with Shockley was not his "racist" views but their potential "racist consequences." The enemy was racism itself, not Shockley or his views. The fight to suppress his views was "poorly chosen and ultimately irrelevant."
The Overuse of "Racism"
The charge of racism is a cliché, but true.
Examples of "false cries of racism": Marion Barry's prosecution, criticizing Jesse Jackson, calling Farrakhan anti-Semitic.
This drowns out "true examples of racism" (e.g., capital sentencing disparities).
On Campuses: Real racism exists (e.g., KKK pranks), but often lost amidst cries that classroom comments are racist/sexist.
Yale Law students asked for a list of wrongful classroom comments, and for a mechanism to challenge professors.
"Racism is the new communism": Accusation of racism is treated as a conclusion of fact, warranting punishment/dismissal.
Professors are expected to prove they are not racist/heterosexist/Eurocentric.
"Classroom 'insensitivity'" monitored and corrected.
Author's Heart vs. Head: His heart is with forcing racists from authority, recognizing racism's evil.
But his head senses trouble if accepted "blithely."
Communism is also evil, but we don't drum Communists out of academia. Why bar racists?
Racist Professor Dilemma: A racist professor might treat students differently. Author agrees teachers who give grades based on skin color or punish disagreement have no place.
But this applies to all ideologies that lead to irrelevant criteria (e.g., Leninist entryism).
He believes if a professor is "genuinely racist" (bears enmity toward students of color), it interferes with pedagogy, and they shouldn't be hired.
The threat of racism to people of color has always been more than hypothetical.
Distinction: Not everyone called a racist is a racist. Must recover distinction between racist ideas and uncomfortable ideas.
Otherwise, risk losing exploration of ideas and moral high ground against real racism.
Rallying allies against white supremacist movement is harder when those allies are accused of racism for criticizing Jesse Jackson or questioning diversity.
Absurd Equivalences: Opposition to affirmative action cannot be equated with support for segregation. Differences are of kind, or vast in degree.
"Moral disaster": if everyone is equally guilty, everyone is equally innocent.
Student Activism and the Future
Mature colleagues see student activism as cyclical, shaking academia from complacency.
Occasional trendiness; 60s radicals moved to neoconservatism or professional sinecures.
"People do seem to move toward the center."
Current Wave of "Racist and Sexist Hunting": Still difficult to live through.
Examples: colleagues told it's racist to mention "minority group" in class, sexist to use "date," racially insensitive to call Watts a "ghetto."
The students' anguish and frustration are evident.
Author's Sanguine View (but cynical): Capitalism will co-opt activists; liberalism will absorb valuable ideas.
His children will rebel, lamenting demise of "real" student radicalism of the 80s/90s.
Words Wound, but Ideas are More Dangerous: Battle against racism must be never-ceasing, but pick fights carefully.
Worry about automatically labeling all doubters/dissenters/critics as racists.
Energy should be spent on equipping oneself for careers.
He feels frustrated by ill-chosen/unwinnable battles, yet acknowledges he'd likely make same arguments if a student.
Margaret's Story (Lightfoot): Margaret (privileged black family in segregated Vicksburg) found black community rewarding, white world dehumanizing but irrelevant because she "did not want to be part of it."
Current Difficulty: Students/professionals like himself do want to be part of the white world, so racial slights hurt more.
More opportunities exist, which is why comments hurt; they are reminders that many would prefer those opportunities disappear.
Racist comments won't hurt as much as if prevented from entering.
Parents fought to breach barriers; honor them by striving "not to feel the daily assaults even though we do want to be a part of the world that generates them."
Little time for chasing racists and punishing speech. Barriers are falling, opportunities opening. "There is work to be done."
Chapter 9: The Special Perspective
Reconciled Solidarity
It is time for black people to end internal divisions (traitors/patriots, dissenters/loyalists, neoconservatives/left-radicals).
Task: reconcile and build a "reconciled solidarity" based on shared love of people and culture, not agreement on programs or viewpoints.
The diversity movement, despite faults, has an unexceptionable underlying theme.
Shared History and Perspective
"People of color are marked and tied together by a shared history and, to a lesser extent, by a shared present of racial oppression."
This history cannot be shrugged off and shouldn't be forgotten.
He wants his children confident nothing is closed to them, but never to forget generations of sacrifice and that racist forces "still lurk in the shadows."
He wants them to understand their rich culture and glorious history and to be "steeled against the many forces that will seek to deny and distort both."
Alice Walker: black people can be middle class in money/position, but not in "complacency."
This shared situation produces a "predictable, if not always unique, perspective" on many issues (e.g., voting Democratic, opposing death penalty).
William Coleman Example (Bork Nomination)
William Coleman (wealthy black Republican lawyer) was an avowed supporter of Reagan but felt compelled to testify against Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination (his was the most effective testimony).
Coleman's explanation: the Supreme Court played an important role in ending discrimination. As one who greatly benefited from progress toward a "free, fair and open society," he would be condemned for failing to testify.
The author doesn't suggest blackness compelled opposition (Bork had black supporters).
But Coleman's explanation emphasizes the point: shared history of oppression affects black people, even if in different ways.
Critique of the "Single, Genuine, Preferred Black Perspective"
Author does not deny shared history makes black people different from white people.
His quarrel with diversity forces: how this translates into a single, genuine, preferred black perspective to be uniquely valued.
Black people are not the only group that suffered.
There is no a priori reason to prefer black suffering to any other (other than making black lives/arguments easier).
Should be looking for commonalities of suffering.
Fear of Losing Uniqueness Claim: Many black people find "commonality of suffering" threatening.
Fear: If claim to unique suffering is lost, how much "hard-won political ground" will be surrendered?
The "Unique Suffering" Argument (Grounding the Civil Rights Agenda)
Claims black suffering is unique (slavery, forced cultural abolition, prohibited/inferior education, relentless drumming of unfitness, near destruction as a people).
Black people are "society's victims."
Preferences/special programs are "payment for a debt that society owes us."
Society must pay, whether out of guilt or justice.
To expunge debt, society must recognize claim on scarce resources (jobs, elite education).
Underlying assumption: problems caused by the world must be solved by the world.
"The world that has caused the unfairness must come back later and adjust the scores."
Inversion of Historical Insistence: The claim of uniqueness takes the majority's historical insistence on black-white difference and makes it work the other way.
"You treated us as different then; you will choke on those differences now."
In the affirmative-action-as-diversity era, celebrating differences is a rallying cry and a critique of accepted understandings, demanding a share in world interpretation.
"It says we matter. Our oppression makes our world different from yours and our voice different from yours. Those differences matter."
Author agrees history makes black people different, but it's wrong and dangerous to insist it makes them different in a "predictable, correctly black way" or to insist their differentness is "more valued than anybody else's."
The Idea of Difference: Feminist Scholarship and Racial Critique
Feminist scholars (e.g., Carol Gilligan on moral reasoning differences between sexes) have explored difference more fully.
Critics of Gilligan fear uses opponents might make of the notion that there is a fundamental distinction.
A similar vision was seized by scholars asserting the "point of view" of the oppressed black community.
The "Difference Approach": White writers and non-white writers are separated by an "unbridgeable chasm"; their experiences of reality diverge.
Black writers have "different voices," reflecting their backgrounds, seeing oppression/culture more sharply.
A just society would account for this difference, not silence it.
"Black Experience": This vision presupposes a "uniquely black reality" that whites cannot fathom (Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power: white people cannot escape "overpowering influence… of his whiteness in a racist society").
Liberals claim to recognize this but tell blacks to ally with those who "share a sense of superiority based on whiteness."
This idea silences critics; oppression becomes its own authority ("You can't understand").
Critics of Racial Difference: Challenge the premise of a "monolithic black experience."
Risk of Stigmatizing/Ghettoizing: If white intellectuals can't do what black intellectuals do, then perhaps black intellectuals can't do what white intellectuals do.
Harold Cruse: Negro intellectual is "retarded child," only knowing "piddling intellectual civil writism" and integrationism, playing "second and third fiddle to white intellectuals."
White intellectuals don't recognize black intellectuals as speaking for themselves and the nation, but rather as needing to be spoken for.
Edward Shils (critic of "primordial attachment to color"): hoped intellectuals would be judged without reference to race/nationality. His prediction that this attachment wouldn't deflect intellect is what difference theorists deny.
This implicitly condemns scholars of color to a "narrow and unhappy path," writing mainly for each other, unable to aspire to higher goals than "best black economist."
Failure to Account for Dissenters: Difference theorists struggle to explain black critics of preferences (Loury, Sowell, Steele).
They imply dissenters have "surrendered to the racist society, sold out." The problem is with them, not the theory of a singular black experience.
The notion that "reasonable minds, even reasonable black minds, might differ" is "worse than absurd."
Julius Lester's Critique of Difference: His memoir, Lovesong, chronicles his conversion to Judaism and estrangement from black separatists. It's a statement of "universality of human experience."
He rejects the idea that unique black experience makes white understanding impossible.
"It is a statement that negates literature, art and music, nullifies the realm of the imaginative and says it is impossible for human beings to reach out from one loneliness to another and assuage both."
Lester sees aspects of himself in diverse art.
Author's Argument: Experiences that make us different don't make us unable to understand each other. Jack Greenberg can teach law and race; Jonathan Pryce (white actor) can authentically portray a Eurasian; Daniel Lewis James can write about a barrio (as Felix Gutierrez stated: "That's the key, get to know us.")
People of color are not mysterious; our world is not impenetrable. Sharing backgrounds, experiences, visions is important "simply as people ourselves."
"Difference, in short, is a bridgeable chasm… bridged when we 'reach out from one loneliness to another,' not in anger… but in love."
Bridging the chasm is a choice, a social and spiritual act (David Tracy).
This notion of difference as a chasm to be bridged allows for blurring/crossing lines, proclaiming: "We love you because you are different; we love your differentness; we value it; we want to learn from it."
This applies to black/white division, gay/lesbian rights, empowering the homeless.
Internal diversity within the black community is also ignored by stereotypes. "We should love and value us, black people in all of our diversity: rich, poor, gay, straight, religious, secular, left, right."
These distinctions don't define blackness; it's society's attitude toward them and their attitude toward themselves, culture, each other. "We are defined by the choices we make."
Dialogue and Reconciled Solidarity
Author quotes Alexander Bickel on judicial review: public reaction is part of "endlessly renewed educational conversation" between judges and public. A "conversation, not a monologue."
Black people should adopt this model: a conversation, not a monologue or bitter argument.
Shared love for people should be the center.
Model for solidarity that doesn't impose a "right way to be black."
Task: build reconciled solidarity where appreciation of "differences, the attitudes and visions that make black people unlike one another, is the focus of our efforts to re-create ourselves and our society."
This might serve as a model for the larger white society, which is called upon in "rhetoric of diversity" and "fundamental fairness" to do the same.
Critique of Diversity Movement's Analytical Error
Diversity movement is correct that the world should celebrate black culture as special.
But it errs by insisting black "specialness" adds value in a way others' does not. (If not, no reason for universities to seek scholars to tell our story).
No logical connection between being special and voices being uniquely valued. "The world is full of special people and all of their voices are unique."
Diversity movement insists on valuing black voices due to oppression by whites.
This supposition (white oppression makes black perspective more valued) rejects the idea that recognizing difference can be a binding force of love.
There should be no "hierarchy of suffering."
Not because no one suffered more, or no moral basis to judge.
But because making suffering a "badge of authority" defeats valuing diversity.
Imposing a hierarchy ("We have suffered more than you…") makes it a "bitter contest."
Practical Importance (Response to Affirmative Action Critics):
Critics cite other oppressed groups succeeding without preferences.
Diversity advocates respond: 1) Other groups did benefit informally; or 2) Other groups' experience is irrelevant because they haven't suffered as we have.
The second strategy of "deciding who has suffered more entails considerable risk."
Julius Lester's Story of Competing Suffering: Colleague screams at Lester, saying black people have been through "more hell than a Jew in Auschwitz could imagine."
This makes suffering a competition. Holocaust horror isn't in its uniqueness needing explanation; it's plain on history. Same for black oppression.
"Humanity has proved itself capable of perpetrating any number of horrors; and to those who suffer from them, each is unique. The error comes in assuming that it matters which one is the most horrible."
Shared Suffering: Nobody should criticize Jews for remembering the Holocaust. Black people should also remember the slave trade. Alliances among despised people are important (Hitler despised blacks too).
Diversity movement proposes suffering as a contest, valorizing people of color specially for their oppression.
Refusing to hire a scholar because she embraces suffering is wrong. But saying a faculty is incomplete without hiring such a scholar repeats the error of Lester's colleague based on race/suffering. "nothing about value or authority ought to turn on who has suffered more."
Victimhood as a Quality: Judith Shklar: "Victimhood happens to us: it is not a quality."
Even if suffering brings unique value, it's sentimental to assume only a positive inheritance from the past.
Example: New York taxi driver refuses black males (based on data of black men being responsible for % of crimes against cabbies).
This driver also makes an assumption about shared characteristics (negative).
His label may be more damaging, but logic allows him to be as 'right' (consequentially) as diversity theorists.
Racial Stereotyping (Overlooked Point):
Popular image: stereotyping is guided by "irrationally skewed reasoning" (Gordon Allport: "antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization"). This implies stereotyping is bad because irrational.
This carries the normative message: "Don't use them if they don't work." Implies rational stereotypes are acceptable.
Danger of Rational Racial Categorizations: It's dangerous to suggest racial categorizations are acceptable if a "rational fit between ends and means" can be made.
If the result is oppressive, the rationality of the categorization is irrelevant.
In private life, anyone making a racial judgment will believe it rational.
Diversity Movement's Parallel: It embodies the same trouble as other efforts to define special shared characteristics for preferential treatment.
"Peculiar language forced upon us by programs that treat people as members of groups and assign characteristics on the basis of that membership has an ugly mirror image" (negative characteristics).
Preferential treatment (liked or hated) roots in race as a proxy for other information (disadvantage, oppressed voice, criminality).
"Always been something unsettling about the advocacy of a continuation of racial consciousness in the name of eradicating it."
All versions of racial preferences require explicit race consciousness, which has little to do with getting people to stop thinking in racial terms.
While preferences aren't intended to denigrate, those excluded are "victims of racial discrimination" (a distinct, non-trivial wrong), not racial subjugation.
Backlash against preferences is not trivial; explaining it away as racism is silencing criticism without debate.
This is a sign of losing the "moral high ground."
"We must learn once more to love and cherish individuals for who they are, not for what they represent; and, having learned it once more ourselves, we can once more teach it to a doubting world."
Chapter 10: Special But Equal
Missed Movements and Armchair Radicalism
The author went to college too late for "The Movement" (antiwar demonstrations).
He envied those who participated in building occupations, thoroughfare blocking, class disruptions (he had a candlelight vigil).
Old radical hands on campus complained his generation only wanted grades and jobs.
He saw himself as a "loner" and "egotist," not part of the "indefatigably united people." No interest in marching.
He embraced "leftish stances" of a "reflective and scholarly nature," using words as weapons (armchair radicalism).
Wrote papers on Truman's racism and atomic bombs. Encouraged Stanford Daily to critique power structure (applauding takeovers elsewhere, chiding UN resolution as harmful to Palestine, criticizing Henry Kissinger).
Wrote a signed column for three years, often about race, mostly left-leaning, but also attacked "darlings of the left." Example: criticized Judge Sirica's "inquisitorial tactics" at Watergate, and in "The White Movement's Burden," criticized radical left for co-opting demands of students of color.
He is proud of columns criticizing the effort to bring back the "Indian" as Stanford's mascot, arguing "Ethnic stereotypes are inherently racist."
The Shock of "The Plan"
He was stunned in 1990 to read in black New Yorkers believed the AIDS virus was "deliberately created… to infect black people," and another % thought it "might possibly be true."
He was shocked and disappointed, partly by his own irrelevance. He argues for black people to stand on own achievements, but many black people fear white people will not give them a fair shake.
He proposes having black professionals "too good to ignore," but many believe racists will find ways to ignore them.
Racism in Professional Labor Market: This strengthens the case for excellence. Rational employers will hire excellent people of color, driving discriminating employers out of business.
This might have been naive a generation ago, but with increasing penetration of professions by non-whites, it's plausible now.
Racism won't disappear soon. It has "existential reality."
An elderly black woman (1942): "Prejudice is one of the Devil's trump cards to increase misery."
Making one's way in the corporate world without preferences requires "eternal vigilance" against racism.
But must be cautious about what is called "racism," "racial discrimination," vs. "life's unfairness." (His other work distinguishes racialism from racism).
Distinguishing Differential Impact from Discrimination
Socioeconomic achievement gap between black and white communities is largely due to nation's racist legacy.
But the black professional class acquits itself well; the gap shrinks when nonracial factors (age, education, marital status) are held constant.
Caution: Avoid easy generalization from statistical disparities.
Using statistics for a prima facie case of discrimination has led to a "conversational habit" where any disparity is seen as discrimination, rather than a racially differential impact of some other kind of discrimination.
Purest Example: No black president elected doesn't prove racial animus, though one might believe it.
Michigan Legislature (1988): Claimed Detroit Symphony Orchestra discriminated because only one full-time black performer.
Ignored blind screening process and that only of top conservatory musicians were black, with perhaps good enough for a major orchestra.
Statistics alone didn't prove racism.
Differential Impact vs. Discrimination: Not the same. Policies impact groups differently.
Conclusion: Always changing the world for black benefit is a "terrible mistake." Sometimes the world won't change, and "we must… change ourselves."
NAACP New York (1986): Endorsed Tobacco Institute's view that public smoking bans discriminated against black people.
Theory: Black people smoke more, so fines disproportionately hurt them.
Hazel Dukes (NY NAACP president): "Fines… would hurt minorities more." (Facts: % black men vs. % white men smoke; % black women vs. % white women).
Author: This is literally correct, like restricting any other drug black people are disproportionately addicted to (e.g., crack).
black people die yearly from smoking-related diseases. This dwarfs drug violence deaths.
A smoking ban has a favorable differential impact on black people.
Mistrust of White Officialdom: Many influential black New Yorkers opposed smoking restrictions out of suspicion of white officialdom, especially health officials (e.g., Wilbert Tatum, Amsterdam News publisher: health officials claiming to help black people are "hypocritical bastards.").
Assumption: White officials pursuing other, inimical goals (e.g., dominating black race).
Why they want to keep black people down is rarely specified, but racism needs no rational motivation.
This attitude of mistrust allows for "shameless exploitation" by interest groups (beverage bottlers, NRA) using "specious arguments about discrimination and mistrust of white authority" to gain black support.
Argument: legislation is pushed by elitist white do-gooders who ignore disproportionate costs on black people (e.g., bottle return bill as regressive tax).
The "Out to Get Us" Narrative
Black people are not to blame for mistrust of white people.
Easy for a middle-class professional in the suburbs like himself to say no secret conspiracy exists.
But for poor/working-class black folk, seeing consistent white success: "No wonder… so many black people… simply do not trust white people to be fair."
Every bad thing that happens to a black person, happens because the person is black. "The white folks are everywhere, and they have done it all to us."
Amsterdam News cartoon (1950s): black men treed by a bear, one says, "If we get out of this alive, I'm calling the NAACP, because I know the white folks arranged this somehow."
Marion Barry Trial (Washington D.C. Mayor): Many black people felt he was treated unfairly by the federal government.
Evidence that white establishment won't tolerate powerful black politicians.
Prosecutors argued he was a drug-using official.
Valid Points on Both Sides: Prosecutors used questionable means (ex-girlfriend, enabling drug use).
But Barry was a crack user, lending financial support to a violent drug empire.
Author: He doesn't know if prosecutors targeted Barry due to race, but Barry deserved to be prosecuted (like Oliver North, Michael Milken).
Barry flaunted defiance, daring prosecutors, which would elicit strong response regardless of race (Judge William Hastie).
"The Plan": The rumor of a concerted effort to "get" black elected officials persists, particularly in D.C., due to restlessness with black rule.
survey of black New Yorkers: % agreed government targets black officials to discredit them; % thought it might be true.
This view, though possibly wrong, isn't implausible given J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO targeting black civil rights leaders.
And racism still bedevils the nation.
Author's Counter-Argument: "The Plan" is almost certainly wrong.
Not clear it's in white power structure's interest to strike down black leadership (no revolutionary threat).
Capitalism has made peace with civil rights; successful black entrepreneurs are more important than an oppressed lumpenproletariat.
Old left theories of capitalism needing cheap labor are irrelevant.
A conspiracy of that scope would take enormous effort without motive. "we are, I fear, no longer worth the candle."
Politicians and Racism: Even if corporate America doesn't conspire, white politicians might attack black leaders to please racist constituencies.
If black success "galls white Americans," leading them to irrationally suppress black officials, that's still no excuse for black officials' misbehavior.
Practical solution: demand black leaders be "more pure than Caesar's wife." (Author concedes this is a high standard, but necessary).
Equal Standards and Market Dynamics
The argument that white people target black people is also a response to those advocating for equal standards.
Medical School Admission Argument: "It is a sad irony… that when the door is finally opened to the minority student, the standards for entrance are raised."
Author: Even without extra points, truly excellent people of color won't go begging for jobs.
Race continues to add value in hiring by elite institutions, reflected in price.
Arizona Law Professor Lawsuit: White professor sues university for paying a junior Native American professor a higher salary.
Commonplace: Highly qualified people of color are subject to bidding wars, earning more than white professionals of similar attainment.
Study of university faculties: top non-white professors earn more when correcting for experience, degree quality, publication rate.
Investment banker friend: his firm would pay extra for an outstanding black attorney if other firms bid up the price. "That is… simply the way the market works."
Market Forces and Racism: The market is not racist; a free market will bid up prices for valuable, scarce commodities (outstanding diverse professionals).
These results are a small part of a larger story.
But "the market is only fair, not just."
If current market behavior is a result of bidding wars for a small supply of excellent black professionals, then as affirmative action increases those ranks, the price should drop.
Opponents of quotas who stress recruitment of qualified minorities should accept slightly higher race-specific salaries as transitional. This is how one recruits competitively.
Derrick Bell was right: refusing to meet competition is refusing to recruit. If the pool of excellent black professionals is small, recruiting wars will be brisk.
Beyond Color-Blindness: A Better Grammar of Race
His hope for a future of equal standards should not be confused with a "color-blind society."
"Wholly neutral assessment" is empty. Martha Minow: any word to describe uniqueness puts someone in a class. Law and moral suasion can only prod to favor some generalizations.
Question for affirmative action advocates: Is it good/safe to encourage white America to think in racial terms?
Question for color-blindness advocates: Is it good/safe to deny differences among people/subcultures?
He doesn't want a "dull and (literally) colorless" world where no subculture can celebrate itself.
He doesn't want government always color-blind, as it prevents celebrating achievements.
Needed: "A better grammar of race"—a way to account for it without punishing it.
Start by saying race will not be used as an indicator of merit; no one is more valued by skin color. Everyone's merit judged by same tests.
If tests are truly unfair (not just exclusionary), they should be replaced.
Missing Step: Some standard will always be used. It should be explicit, and everyone must meet it.
Dilemma: In a turbulent racial history, the concern that the path to professions is a "lure to get us to give up on true freedom" (Mario Baeza: "Am I adopting a way of thinking that could be used to enslave me?") is a core of the diversity movement.
This motivates black children who say studying is "acting white."
Nationalists (1960s): power structure made education available for a hidden agenda.
Academic/Professional Standards: The whispered (or shouted) claim that people of color are victims of a "plan" (centuries of affirmative action for whites, or virulent racism).
Challenging preferences (due to less-qualified beneficiaries, or questioning legitimate achievements) is met with: standards lack objectivity, import cultural bias, or are racist.
The idea of meeting/beating them anyway is dismissed as irrelevant, a smokescreen, naive, or "thinking white."
Author's Conclusion: This is "thinking like a professional." Professionals function in an integrated world; this is not a betrayal of birthright.
Mario Baeza: "I'm integrated, but I've never tried to be white. That's not what I aspire to in life."
Competitive World: Professions are competitive, with a market test (perform well enough to justify compensation).
Many successful professionals are impatient with debates over affirmative action in hiring.
"'I've made it because I'm good,' said the corporate executive… and that, at bottom, is what all professionals, black or white, must believe in order to succeed."
Success from merit is a "deliberate decision to try to live in a world that encourages and rewards excellence."
Kenneth Clark: Society needs to differentiate democratic philosophy from "stable standards of excellence." Egalitarianism should not dominate intellect, aesthetics, ethics.
Broadening opportunities should not come at the price of pretending "nobody is ever better than anybody else at anything."
Leveling Implied in Affirmative Action Rhetoric: Elite institutions exist due to belief some are smarter. Black people seek entry for this reason.
He winces when preference supporters "talk blithely of tossing out the window standards of excellence" (for college entry, grading, hiring, promotion) that might be rational.
Arguments: standards are white male playthings, not possible, or meritocracy is bad.
Author's View: Standards of excellence are a "requisite of civilization." Denying excellence is possible means nothing is better than anything else, making human progress a "joke." But excellence and civilization exist.
Not every standard is necessary for every civilization (Jomo Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya). Intellect standards don't travel well across cultures.
Excellence and Diversity are Not Enemies: Professional success of generations of non-white professionals disproves this.
Most success achieved by meeting established standards. Beneficiaries of affirmative action have made the most of their opportunity to show they meet the same standards.
The Future: Beyond Preferences
If not defeated by slavery/Jim Crow, black people won't be beaten by affirmative action's demise.
Before preferences, black achievements (middle class growth, college matriculation) were rising at higher rates.
Black professionals should do no worse without affirmative action, and may do better when thrown on their own resources and knowing they must meet universal tests.
Define a future of fairness and demanded opportunities, without letting others limit horizons.
Vincent Harding: black reaction to Emancipation Proclamation was to work toward their own answers, not wait for "white definitions of black people's freedom."
The demise/restriction of preferences is a "new stage of struggle," an opportunity, not a burden.
Chance to be free of assumptions of intellectual incapacity and competitive deficiencies.
Chance to prove to a doubting world: "our future as a people is in our hands."
Author's Faith: Will survive without preferences. They are a convenience, but in current form can be an insult/counterproductive.
Battle to preserve preferences is costly and may be lost. Assisted middle class but did "nothing at all for the true victims of racism."
Talking about diversity/excluded viewpoints is not the same as bringing in "the oppressed themselves."
Continuing to center future strategy on affirmative action will lead to further collapse of solidarity.
White criticism is met with anger; black criticism with bewilderment, pain, hostility.
In difficult years, cannot allow squabble over preferences (which help those least in need) to "interfere with the needed dialogue on what to do next."
Cost in solidarity: growing uneasiness among successful black professionals with affirmative action forms that allow different standards.
Investment banker: "I feel that if we're all on a level playing field, we'll be stronger."
The Reverse Schelling Effect and Tipping Point
Ranks of dissenters are swelling.
Analogous to Schelling effect (integrated schools resegregate as whites with lowest tolerance leave, increasing proportion of blacks, causing next group to leave, etc.).
Reverse Schelling Effect: Black students/professionals with smallest tolerance for being beneficiaries insist on exiting.
This makes those with next smallest tolerance wonder why they're staying.
Not yet at the point where black people force move away from preferences, but a "critical mass may soon emerge, producing… the tipping point."
Tipping point will be reached: either economic stress turns white professionals against preferences, or black professionals decide they've had enough (stereotyping, different standards, best black syndrome).
The end of affirmative action is near; "always best to have the ark built before the deluge."
More of the future is in black hands than thought, not due to absence of racism, but greatness as a people.
White people may or may not help.
If white people do less than is just, only two solutions: complain or help ourselves. Proverbs say the Lord favors helping ourselves.
Chapter 11: Racial Solidarity and the Black Intellectual
The Civil Rights Movement and Solidarity
Alice Walker: Civil Rights Movement gave black people "each other forever." It taught their need for one another.
Clayborne Carson: He tried to rename it "black freedom struggle," seeing it as about changing black America, a struggle of "self-transformation."
Regardless of racism's evolution, the movement means racism can never again affect them with the same virulence.
"Each other, forever": Gaze into faces and see commonality (experience, history of oppression/triumph). A "common transformation from a people that has been victimized to a people that has taken its fate into its hands."
This is the "bright and valuable side of racial solidarity."
The Grimmer Side of Solidarity
Intellectuals often chafe at "groupness." The task of the intellectual is free thought; solidarity expects thought/action "the way the group demands."
Problem is acute when group members decide who is a "member in good standing" based on whether the intellectual helped or harmed the group.
Growing Perception: Among black intellectuals, solidarity is seen as a problem.
Shelby Steele: "As a middle-class black, I have often felt myself contriving to be black."
He wants to do away with solidarity, believing "collective black identity fogs up the sacred line between the individual and the collective."
It's a "repressive identity" that generates a "victimized self-image," curbing individualism, diminishing possibility, demoralizing. It's a "skin that needs shedding."
Author: Steele describes a real phenomenon worth abandoning, but solidarity is more than making everyone think alike.
"Loving our people and loving our culture does not require any restriction on what black people can think or say or do or be."
How could this "miracle" (abandoning solidarity) be accomplished in a race-conscious nation (as Steele affirms)?
Author's Frustration: He regularly receives letters from organizations marked "Dear Minority Colleague," assuming agreement simply due to race. This angers him.
"The minimum obligation of black people to one another is to accord the respect that comes from acknowledging that we fairly sparkle with a diversity of outlook."
"Minority" as an Awful Word: He understands its use but dislikes it.
Beyond the "black nationalist response" ("I'm not a minority anything…"), it carries "unsettling implications of permanence."
It refers to "how we are" (universal, always/supposed to be), not just group size.
Carries the "baggage of our nation's woeful history of mistreating its 'minorities.'"
Being addressed as a "minority" means being put in a set, told who I am, my history, how to act, what views to endorse. This is "inimical to the intellectual life I wish to lead."
Angered by assumption that skin color is key to politics, intellect, criminality, aesthetics.
"I am not, for them, a human being, a free thinker with ideas of his own. I am a name on a list, a 'minority' law professor."
Self-Reliance and Group Love
Critics think escaping the box means shedding the "second skin" of solidarity. But solidarity doesn't harm intellectuals.
Ethnic identification is tremendously important for defining personality and giving meaning to racial pride.
Not plausible or desirable for intellectuals to abandon backgrounds/communities/cultures.
"Our people need us." Trained minds contribute to solving the black community's crisis.
Obligation to history and community should not be silencing, but not "mere lip service."
Need solidarity: "not in the sense of groupthink but in the sense of group love."
Few ethnic groups made socioeconomic progress without at least temporary solidarity.
Untangling Self-Reliance from Solidarity: Steele and others argue black situation changes when individuals are responsible for acts/achievements, not just victims.
Author agrees that refocusing on black people as individuals (who achieve through personal effort) is laudable, potentially justifying abandonment of contemporary affirmative action.
Abandoning Groupness?: Nationalists of earlier day disagreed. Lone black person in white racism sea provided rich polemical territory.
Postulating a society with little overt/covert/unconscious racism is needed to dismiss solidarity's fears.
Author is less certain such a world exists.
Dissenters' Partial Rightness: Opportunities exist.
"Inexcusable" that many black children/young adults refuse/are unwilling to take advantage of opportunities.
Ethic among young people: academic achievement is a "betrayal of the group." (See Chapter 5).
Barriers to Talent Acquisition: Even if few barriers for talented, there are barriers to acquiring talent, often class-based.
Parental socioeconomic status correlates with school success (child-rearing practices).
Social/economic conditions are a principal barrier to next generation's advancement.
Racist Indifference (Beyond Racist Oppression): Society ignoring needs of worst-off (e.g., underfunding preschools which improve learning, or safer schools).
This may not be racism, but it's not a "helping hand."
Effectiveness of "Groupness": Is it an effective weapon to force society to address needs? Steele might ask.
Author: Cries of racism are unlikely to enact new policies. Era of playing on victimization to coerce white society assistance is over.
Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: Black people (viewed as immigrant community from Great Migration) have made as much progress as other immigrant groups in similar periods.
If Sowell is right, solidarity is even more pressing, as other groups relied heavily on it.
Solidarity as "Group Love": Not collective coercion, not special perspective from oppression, not suppressing dissent.
Means "embracing our people themselves, in all their wild and frustrating variety."
Capacity for Judgment: Embracing people doesn't mean suspending judgment.
Author's personal experience: drug dealers settling dispute with semi-automatic weapons, endangering his family. No sensitivity to oppression should excuse their culpability.
Crime has causes, people aren't born bad; government needs serious, expensive policies to ameliorate causes.
But never confuse causation with "mindless determinism" where individuals lack responsibility. Most people of color don't turn to predation.
"We should not be proud of our society for creating a world in which they are tempted, but we should not confuse the temptations of an unequal society with the coercions of a racially determined one."
Must never lose capacity for judgment, especially of ourselves.
Celebrate achievers, but don't pretend they're the only ones making choices.
Morality standards matter as much as excellence. Many black people commit heinous crimes not solely driven by hunger/neglect/racist policy.
Huey Newton's "illegitimate capitalists" phrase is "unsatisfying."
"To understand all may indeed be to forgive all, but no civilization can survive when the capacity for understanding is allowed to supersede the capacity for judgment."
Professional Attainment and Embracing Blackness
Judgment is not inconsistent with "loving, embracing" solidarity. Professional attainment is not either.
Being middle class, suburbanite, financially secure need not mean being fully assimilated if black.
He values having other black people in his neighborhood, for his children to interact with black adults.
He doesn't want to be "the only black, the first black, the best black."
Alice Walker: Civil Rights Movement's greatest gift is opportunity to set denied goals, and the "brimming confidence that solidarity breeds." (Solidarity in valuing one another, rooting for each other like past generations for Marian Anderson, Jackie Robinson, MLK Jr.).
This perspective is not richer, better, or more valuable than anyone else's, but it is ours.
It marks them as special and sets them apart. It's a good definition of culture. Shared history brings anger and solace.
This shared history "makes us a people." This does not mean institutions must shop for "our perspective."
It means their perspective is unique, but not that they are all the same.
Identity and "Socially Constructed" Race
Defining "we" (black people sharing history): requires naming and giving content to the name.
Price M. Cobbs: Evolution of self-naming (colored, Negro, black, African-American) highlights "profound shifts in the psyche of a group of people struggling mightily to define themselves rather than be defined by others."
Defining blackness by how one thinks (as many tried) is problematic. "We must have an identity in order to exist."
Anthony Appiah and DuBois's Vision of Race: "A vast human family might contain people joined not by biology but by an act of choice."
Imagine race as a proxy for choice.
Author's Yale colleague: white people who think affirmative action unfairly favors blacks should be free to switch races, accepting its burdens and benefits.
But race assignment is exogenous, not chosen, and society defines it, often for a reason.
Biologists/anthropologists question scientific significance of race (as color), it's linked to proving inferiority.
Social Significance of Race: Considerable, though illogical (e.g., why children of mixed marriages are labeled black, not white).
Appiah discusses DuBois's complex racial identity, noting that DuBois's Dutch ancestry doesn't make him Teutonic because the Dutch weren't Negroes; DuBois is. Therefore, African history is part of Afro-American history because it's the history of people of the same race.
Final Word on Solidarity: Ideally a choice to claim a people, culture, history.
But in race-obsessed America, solidarity is exogenous, existing because others defined race. Not free to redefine it. "Solidarity is required of us simply because we are 'people of the same race.'"
Racism, Success, and Dissent
Professional acceptance does not eliminate racism.
Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon: black insurance agent commits suicide by leaping from a lily-white hospital, having forgotten how to fly.
Symbolism: professional success in white America doesn't guarantee survival in that world. "When he spreads his wings and leaps from the cupola, he is just as dead as any other nigger."
Law school classmate: racism holds all black people back. Malcolm X: black man with Ph.D. is still a nigger.
"One similarity that cuts across all differences… is the reality of racism. We might have our beautiful wings, but we still can't fly."
Current Truth is More Complex: Shelby Steele is partly correct that racism is receding for the burgeoning black middle class (the affirmative action generation).
But racism still operates with "awesome force in the lives of many of the worst off members of our community."
When talented black intellectuals leap, "they are not likely to fall."
Dissent from the "incapable of significant advance without white beneficence" vision is understandable.
Caution against Arrogance: Even with freedom to fly, black intellectuals must not become arrogant, forgetting past sacrifices.
Dissenters must not be self-righteous. Unlike civil rights leaders, many in the rising generation haven't faced Bull Connor's dogs or Southern jails.
John Jacob (National Urban League): today's young people haven't known poverty, lived in segregated communities, and believe their achievement is from being smart.
Precisely. The ranks of dissenters are thicker among younger, successful black people, but they must remember opportunities were purchased by civil rights struggles.
Even in dissent, respect for traditional civil rights leadership is due.
Civil Rights Leadership's Role: Must recognize that dissenters live in the world they struggled to build.
Opportunities are available to some, not just none. They used education to think for themselves.
If dissent is painful, it's irrelevant to argument assessment. Dissent should stand/fall on merits, not race.
Neither dissenter nor leader position should be privileged solely by race or suffering.
Goal: Open, robust dialogue. Loving solidarity doesn't stifle dissent; true love for people is open to better paths.
Leader's role: to articulate. Activist's role: to organize. Intellectual's role: to "stand apart, to support what seems sensible and criticize freely what seems wrong."
If a new tradition of tolerance grows, all sides can work together.
If squabbling persists, remember it's among successful black people, debating how to help those still suffering.
It's worst for children (over half born in poverty, little hope for American Dream). Stop the "bitter internecine warfare" for them.
Conclusion: A Dissenting View About Dissenting Views
Written to spark dialogue, not just persuade. He accepts correction.
DuBois's question: "How does it feel to be a problem?" Answer: "being a problem is a strange experience."
Black intellectuals are a problem because their training is in independent thinking. It's hard to be part of a political movement.
Marxism was the "embarrassing result" of intellectuals deciding not to think for themselves.
The author is an intellectual, not a leader. He observes, analyzes, expects others to analyze his errors.
His criticism is constructive.
His fear: the book will only lead to a new label, "Black Neoconservative," which will be just as inaccurate, stifling, painful, and a denial of his right to think.
DuBois was right: strange but exhilarating to be a problem.
Americans haven't fully appreciated that "reflective and open dissent is an act of loyalty." It's a pledge of allegiance.
For the black dissenter, dissent can be "even more. An avowal of race. An acknowledgment of solidarity. An act of hope. An act of love."