August 23, 2008

• Carl Cohen takes his opposition to racial preference too far.

  I entirely agree with Cohen's basic sentiments on the issue: We should not be judging persons based on their race, sex, skin color, or national origin (not to mention their sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or political views). "Diversity" and proportionality of representation are not sufficient reasons to abandon this fundamental principle.

  But Cohen takes this too far in Affirmative Action and Racial Preference, condemning any action which produces diversity or proportionality of representation, regardless of whether it is actually racially preferential.

  For instance: Admission based on hardship. Some colleges, now that their states (rightly) forbid explicit racial preferences, have adopted programs in which students are preferred for admission based on categories such as the following:
  * Victim of violent crime
  * Low socioeconomic status
  * Single parent
  * Mental or physical disability
  * Inferior schooling

  As a consequence, these schools have seen minority enrollments increase, to levels comparable to those when they previously instituted explicit racial preferences.

  Cohen condemns these programs on these grounds, that, since minorities are known to be more likely to fulfill these requirements, such programs are a kind of "underhanded" racial preference.

  He could not be more wrong. These programs are exactly what we should have, what we should always have had, instead of racial preferences.

  A program of "underhanded" racial preference would use other features, such as this:
  * Plays basketball
  * Speaks Spanish
  * Wears dresses

  Obviously, the only reason to select these features is that the first will, statistically speaking, select Blacks, the second Hispanics, and the third women; there is no logical reason that students who play basketball should be given differential treatment compared to those who play baseball.

  But features used in hardship programs are entirely different; they are the sort of features which actually are morally relevant.

  A student raised by a single parent, of low socioeconomic status, with a physical disability, is extremely unlikely to have a 4.0 GPA and a 1600 SAT score. However, such a student with a 2.9 GPA and 1100 SAT score, with few extracurriculars and no sports---though these would normally represent summary rejection in most colleges---has demonstrated remarkable resilience to hardship, tenacity, dedication, work ethic, and even innate talent and intelligence, of exactly the sort that colleges ought to be looking for. This student should, I predict, do fine in college, so long as appropriate measures are taken to allow em to pay tuition and compensate for eir physical disability.

  The fact that, statistically, most such students will be minorities---note that many will not!---does nothing to change the fact that it is fundamentally just to admit such disadvantaged students on the grounds that they have the will to succeed and the right to try.

  If it so happens that such a "race-blind, class-conscious" admissions program would increase diversity and approximate racial proportionality, all the better! Racial non-proportionality is a symptom of injustice; if after a manipulation to solve the problem, the symptom disappears, in medicine that's called treatment. If this is really all we needed, maybe we're closer to social equality than we thought.

  But either way, it is still right to take a person's circumstances into account when judging eir his merits in a college or employment application.

  • 1:23 pm
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