2003.03.10: In Defence of Affirmative Action (part 2)
Enjelani made some very good points in her comments to a recent post of mine. She says:
if affirmative action is designed to level the playing field, then it needs to do so by the right criteria. Tamika has a weight strapped to her back when she runs the race: why? because she's poor? because she grew up getting shot at? because she had a single mother and six siblings for a family? these are reasons to give someone extra points in the admissions process. not the color of her skin. yes, the people with these disadvantages are disproportionately minorities. but to award them points based on genetics, rather than economic and social circumstance, can only heighten racial tension. if Jill grew up getting shot at, shouldn't she get points too?
In regards to what she has written here, we see very much eye to eye. I agree that the leveling of the playing field should be done by the right criteria. I agree that the reasons listed above are the appropriate reasons for giving an applicant extra points in the admissions process. I agree that Jill should get extra points if she grew up getting shot at.
If I could design my ideal affirmative action program, it would award points for the hardships that the applicant must overcome, regardless of race. Of course, by and large, there are many hardships that result as a result of race, so it should not surprise anyone when the underrepresented minorities end up with more extra points than the majority.
This program would also award points to compensate for the biases of the admissions officers/interviewers (Like Jim, I'd also love to see a study of the college admissions process in addition to the study done on job applications). Again, regardless of race (for example, an admissions officer could be biased against people from the deep south, and this program would compensate for that). And again, no one should be surpised when the underrepresented minorities end up with more points than others.
This program would require an intensive background check on each applicant and would also require frequent studies of the admissions officers/interviewers in order to correct for their bias. And all of the various components would require constant calibration.
Of course, this program would not be immune to detractors either. Someone will always complain that their particular hardship should count for more than someone else's.
At any rate, my ideal is completely impractical. Completely unimplementable. First of all, it requires way too much work. How can we possibly do a complete background check on every job applicant/college applicant? And second, it involves a serious invasion of privacy of each applicant. So what can we do more realisitically? Well, if we are willing to give up a little bit of accuracy, we can look for trends and averages.
Hey, look at this! The average underrepresented minority gets twenty more points than everyone else. If we just give the underrepresented minorities twenty extra points, then we can actually implement a program that is practical, and gets it right 99% of the time. If we don't implement it, then we'll be wrong most of the time when it comes to underrepresented minorities, but at least it will be "colorblind" and "fair" (except that it won't be fair to underrepresented minorities anymore...but who cares about them?).
(As for the question of when to dispose of Affirmative Action: Keep doing studies. This year, the average trends show that underrepresented minorites get 20 more points than others. Next year, it shows that they only get 18. Eventually, when institutional racism is finally a thing of the past, it gets down to zero, and we can discard the whole system.)
Sorry about the snarkiness, but I really don't see how trying to couterbalance institutional racism counts as being unfair. That is, unless you see institutional racism as being fair.
Sure Affirmative Action isn't perfect. It gets it wrong occasionally. But getting rid of it insures that we will get it wrong even more.
jim says:
...I really don't see how trying to couterbalance institutional racism counts as being unfair. That is, unless you see institutional racism as being fair.
Well, I think this is the whole crux of it for me. I simply don't agree that institutional racism harmfully affects minority applicants. I think institutional racism helps minority applicants. Racism (in this case of the word referring to decisions made on the basis of race) leaves an extremely wide door open to minorities that does not exist with whites.
It's like I was saying in your previous post, the academic world is very different from the real world. Racists in the real world are generally uneducated and close minded. Conversely, ethnicity in college is encouraged. I, as a white person, have no benefit. The profile for me is that I have nothing to overcome. So if anything, racism works against whites more than anything.
This may all sound shocking, but in my experience, it seems to exist. As I said previously, I have no racial club, no member of a minority to act as my benefactor, no scholarship distinguishing me as uniquely striving above my race, no United White College Fund.
As I see it, the distinction is the real world versus the academic world. The parallels between them simply can't be made.
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