baby come back

Dear Diane,

So I found this University of Michigan website that provides a very comprehensive summary of a whole archive of scholarly articles on "Race, Gender, and Affirmative Action." It then proceeded to categorize and define each argument, from defending affirmative action to opposing it.

Needless to say, I felt overwhelmed and proceeded to crawl up into a ball on my bed and play ten rounds of tetris. But at last, I carefully went through each argument so you don't have to and here they are. My goal is to summarize each point of view in under 25 words to make this post as accessible as possible.

IN FAVOR OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

FOR JUSTICE

• Compensation for past injustices (past)
• generalized compensation to the group comes closer to the ideal of compensatory justice than a refusal to compensate at all.

• Help block current mechanisms of discrimination (present)
• Discrimination is current

• Promotes integration, and thereby helps dismantle the continuing causes of race-based disadvantage (future)
• Forward-looking rather than looking to the past; dismantle disadvantages of racial groups,  democratic civil society

• Break correlation between class and race
• Stigmatized underclass racial groups

FOR DEMOCRACY

• Colleges and universities work to create the "the capacity to regard oneself from the perspective of the other, the foundation of critical interaction..."

• Race-neutral attempts to secure integration either fatally compromise academic standards or fail to generate significant black and Hispanic enrollment in selective schools. 
• "The most important objective of . . . [affirmative action policies] is to bring about greater ethnic integration of society's elite, on the reasonable premise that society functions more efficiently, more equitably, more democratically, and more harmoniously if its professional, managerial, academic, and political elite is ethnically well integrated." (Weisskopf)
• (I have NYTimes charts! yay!)

In California, particularly at Berkeley, blacks and Hispanic enrollment has significantly dropped, despite Hispanic population increasing. 

Florida, including U of Florida, contradicts this because it has fared okay, especially with Hispanic enrollment. 

FOR SOCIAL UTILITY (where diversity is seen as a benefit to the group vs just the individual)

• "The diverse whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts.  Diverse groups are more effective at solving problems than relatively homogeneous groups, even if the average individually-measured merit of the homogeneous group is higher than the average individually-based merit of the diverse group. "

IN OPPOSITION OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

ON MORAL PRINCIPLE

• Reverse racism: goes against equal protection of laws, thus turning the tables in favor of certain races is equally unjust as original discrimination
• Reverse racism is a really shitty argument in all circumstances, and the best comeback you can come up with is "you're a dumbass bonehead" but I've finally discovered an educated rebuttal:
• "The hostility [toward the oppressors] is the result of these [oppressive, segregated] actions, and whereas hostility and racial anger are unhappy facts wherever they are found, a distinction must surely be made between the ideological hostility of the oppressors and the experience-based hostility of those who have been oppressed."
• Here's my planned rebuttal when anyone says "reverse racism": you are being a little narrow-minded. When minorities express what you call "reverse racism," they are expressing anger and frustration at their history of being oppressed. This is not racism because racism is ideological hostility and oppression of somebody because of their race for no fucking good reason. 

• Violates principle of merit: individual with merits should be accepted or hired
• opens opportunities to minorities and women at the expense of the least advantaged white men

• Violates principles of compensatory justice
• Comes up with these problems: (a) benefits individuals who have not suffered discrimination; (b) burdens individuals who have not engaged in discrimination; (c) fails to adjust the size and kind of compensation to the specific discriminatory harms each individual suffered.

ON SOCIAL UTILITY

• Hurts intended beneficiaries
• Stigmatizes beneficiaries by saying less competent, can't compete on equal playing field
• Abolishing affirmative action would allow black students to attend less competitive schools, closer in qualifications; there is a disparity in minorities versus everybody else's merits 
• Creates white resentment against blacks (I was talking to Dr. Ketring, who used this argument)
• Relatively higher dropout rates of minorities because too challenging

• Socially divisive, creates fragmented country
• Gives incentive to minorities to identify with aggrieved group in order to claim special privileges
• This divides the nation as a whole

• Inefficient remedy to unconscious bias (see above as well)

• Diversity defense  cannot bear the weight put on it
• Same diversity rationale for race then should also apply to religion, but we reject discrimination on basis of religion
• Uses race as proxy (substitute) for attitudes is unconstitutional bc it depends on racial stereotypes

• Should be left to voluntary efforts not the government

• ***Economically inefficient
• I find this is one of the most powerful arguments against affirmative action, written by Glenn Loury
• Reduce black individuals' incentives to accumulate capital bc of systematically lower admissions
• Loury really articulates well the paradox that exists with providing leverage to minority students:
• "The political discourse over affirmative action harbors a paradoxical subtext: Middle-class blacks seek equality of status with whites by calling attention to their own limited achievements, thereby establishing the need for preferential policies. At the same time, sympathetic white elites, by granting black demands, thereby acknowledge that, without their patronage, black penetration of the upper reaches of American society would be impossible. The paradox is that, although equality is the goal of the enterprise, this manifestly is not an exchange among equals, and it never can be."

• Finally, the negative effects of affirmative action at three highly selective research universities and the advantages/disadvantages in terms of SAT points, done in a Princeton University study

• Whites: 0 (control group)

• Blacks: +230

• Hispanics: +185

• Asians: –50

• Recruited athletes: +200

• Legacies (children of alumni): +160

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Honestly, I am exhausted. I've read arguments, alternatives, rebuttals (indeed, very good rebuttals)... I have no idea what to think!!!! I'm already very bad at decisions (e.g. rocky road ice cream or mint chocolate??? #lifequestions)... but I want convictions. 

All I know is, affirmative action is happening and it has proven effective in enrolling minorities. I'm almost positive it's not going anywhere, but I hope it becomes shelved someday, because that means someday we will have achieved the equality President Johnson was talking about. Equality as a right, equality as a fact, and equality as a result. What a visionary.

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I technically missed a post. But considering you've missed... 4 posts??? imma be lax on myself. DIANE WHERE ARE YOU. the internet is weeping

love love love,

Elina