EQUALITY. We claim to believe in it. At the same time, we preserve and defend institutions and structures that stand in its way. College admissions are one such barrier to equality. As the debate over the use of race in admissions rages on around us, swinging steadily towards the side of racial inequality, we should think about the issues more fundamentally than we usually do. If we strip off the hyperbole employed in defense of inequality, we will see that we still need affirmative action.
It's important during debates on using race in admissions to revisit the issue on theoretical grounds, outside the circle of frenzied scare-tactic speeches that convince upper-middle class white people that they've really been dealt a raw deal by life, that "reverse discrimination" is going to destroy them. The debate over affirmative action can't be meaningful unless we examine it at its most basic level.
Racial prejudice and discrimination still exist. We've made considerable progress toward eliminating them, but we're not there yet. The world in which we live is not color-blind. Racism still hurts many every day.
The overwhelming majority of those in the highest-paying and highest-power jobs are white. This isn't really surprising if you remember that, as a nation, we've only even moderately been committed to racial equality for about 50 years. White people had a 350-year head start.
So with the power structure heavily weighted in white people's favor, even if only a few of these white decision makers are remotely prejudiced, significant barriers to black achievement remain. Equality of opportunity will not exist until we counteract and then eliminate these barriers.
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Wherever a racial bias exists, it will tend to be one favoring white people. Thus, without any intervention, if a white candidate and a black candidate compete for an admissions offer, the white one will tend to win out more often that he should statistically. This does not mean that every college admissions office is prejudiced against black applicants. Only some are. But still, the system tends to slightly favor white students.
Affirmative action works as a minor corrective. If the playing field tends to slant slightly towards white people, let's counteract that by slightly favoring black people. All things being equal, give preference to the black candidate. This isn't reverse discrimination. Reverse discrimination would tilt the playing field in the opposite direction. It's "un-discrimination." Affirmative action simply combats discrimination; it levels an uneven playing field.
Opponents say this undermines a world order based on merit and threatens to unravel the fabric of modern society. That's feverish, irrational nonsense. First of all, the world doesn't operate on a perfect system of merit. It never has, and it probably never will. But even so, affirmative action doesn't throw merit out the window. In fact, it brings us closer to the goal of merit-based decision-making.
Racial prejudice is a far greater obstacle to a perfectly meritorious system than affirmative action ever could be. Granted, affirmative action is less than ideal. It would be nice not to have to rely on race at all. But we have to rely on race if we care about equality at all. We have to pay attention to skin color in order to move toward a day when skin color no longer matters.
Yes, you could say that affirmative action is unfair. But that isn't a reason to oppose it. The status quo is unfair. Either option - accepting affirmative action or rejecting it - involves unfairness in the short term. But accepting it at least promises to get rid of that unfairness in the long term.
Heaps of sociological and psychological data tell us that the most effective way to change someone's attitude about a different group of people is to actually expose him or her to those people. Integration - true integration, and not simply desegregation - will eventually eliminate racial bias. If we eliminate the cognitive dividing lines between black and white, inequality of opportunity will disappear as well.
The barriers to equality are no longer legal and structural, as they were for the first wave of civil rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s. They are now social and psychological. Combating them requires an approach that addresses personal interactions instead of overt legal decisions. A correction for subtle, sometimes even subconscious, discrimination is needed. This correction should not be permanent but should act temporarily to eliminate discrimination at its root. Affirmative action does exactly this. In the short term, it adjusts for prejudice by leveling a slanted playing field. In the long term, it brings people into contact with one another in the pursuit of a day when prejudice no longer exists - when we see each other not as black and white but merely as human.
(Bryan Maxwell's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bmaxwell@cavalierdaily.com.)
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