Affirmative Discrimination

...We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result...

...How can it be fair if the very bases of their judgments are fatally framed by absolute concentration on numerical racial criteria...

...If so, the logic of reverse discrimination raises the unpleasant question —which minorities are to be favored, and which not...

...Glazer notes three basic decisions of thought and action which ultimately established this 24 The Alternative: An American Spectator June/July 1076 orientation and its safeguards: first, that `the entire world would be allowed to enter the United States...

...Something then happened 3n the way to the promised [and, and it has come as a surprise to nearly everyone...

...has now emerged again as a significant factor affecting the number of persons who reside in the United States...

...But Johnson did not regardthese legislative triumphs as sufficient...

...Whether our full appreciation of it comes too late, and whether the instances in which affirmative action is now established are so widespread as to be a new kind of common law, are matters which need to be faced...

...Board of Education...

...Immigration...

...We are really left with a variant of Orwell's Animal Farm theme—all races are equal, but some are more equal than others...

...Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity...

...The new ones will come chiefly from Latin America and from other parts of Asia...

...Yet even were we to accept as cardinal the principle of equal group rights, :hereby abandoning the constitutional ioctrines of individual rights and equal Fairly of the laws, how would we Fairly define the groups in such a way as to increase equality...

...the nation of nations...

...they will be judged by their skin color, their ethnic origins, their names, or by what race they choose to be associated with...

...This bland preference says much about the civic contrast between American and European politics, explaining the absence of divisive class distinctions in our country...

...Leaving sentiment aside, and confining ourselves to logic, we can see in this a statement so portentous as to be a proclamation as powerful in its own way as any of the great Doctrines which any previous American President had ever uttered...

...In consequence, America )ecame the first great nation to define itself "not in terms of ethnic origin but in terms of adherence to common rules of :itizenship...

...Supposedly, "minorities" are singled out for preferential reverse discrimination, but in actuality all American ethnic categories now are minorities...

...When one contemplates the ethnic character of American society—Professor Glazer's preoccupation for quite a long time—it is clear that the official and colloquial language of affirmative action is statistically at odds with realities...

...As Glazer correctly notes, there was a logical outcome to Johnson's doctrine of equality of results for the American Negro—namely, the remedy of group favoritism could not long be confined to one category of Americans but would quickly spread as other categories arose demanding similar benefits...

...And in this instance, the reason probably had a simple explanation grounded in a not ignoble sentiment—the widespread revulsion against the standards of public morality in the South, which had denied American Negroes, on racial grounds, equal access to the public rights enjoyed by all other American citizens...

...The Civil Rights Act, which Johnson had just signed, had opened the gates of opportunity—equality of opportunity...

...What Glazer's book shows, with dismal clarity, is that a sure civic consequence of affirmative discrimination is to fan, and to kindle unnecessarily, fires of envy based not upon objective or ascertainable criteria of wealth, poverty, or real discrimination, but upon subjective criteria of race...

...But the Civil Rights Act did not provide for that...

...In one poignant passage, Glazer notes the passing of the ritualistic celebration of a transcendent, nonracist civic unity once common at least in the dynamic sectors of American life: "From the mid-sixties, I would say, the ethnic identity tended to gain on the general American identity...

...The entire structure of the American civic order is thus endangered by this abandonment...

...You do not take a person who, for years, has Affirmative Discrimination by Nathan Glazer Basic Books $10.95 been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, and then say you are free to compete with all the others, and still believe you have been completely fair...

...Knowing its dimensions, we are able to take further note of its effects on American society...

...introduces all of the strange predicaments in which we now find ourselves...

...26 The Alternative: An American Spectator June/ July 19...

...What the President now was saying was that this was not enough: now, equality of results would be the object...

...He quotes Herman VIelville in 1849: "On this Western Hemisphere all :ribes and peoples are formng into one federal whole...

...If the object of such favoritism had originally been that of integration, its effect has surely come to be that of disintegration...

...We seek not just freedom but opportunity...

...it is much more important than that...

...In the ecology of identities, ethnic identities for certain purposes and in certain contexts began to serve individuals better than a general American identity: ' VII...

...Which not...

...Apparently unaware of his words' implications, he gave a commencement speech at Howard University in 1965 in which he said: "You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want and do as you desire and choose the leaders you please...

...History does not stand still: a certain aspect of Professor Glazer's theme, which he has not treated in this book, casts further shadows on the problem of equality and civic unity...

...All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates...

...We are the subjects and objects...

...said, "In the next three decades, it is expected that new immigrants and their descendants will total 15 million, or 25 percent of the total population increase...

...Its national consciousness :hus was shaped by values which `claimed universal validity and which were nevertheless the American way of ife...

...The publication of Nathan Glazer's Affirmative Discrimination marks the first time this issue has been comprehensively explored in both its contemporary and its historical dimensions...

...This flood of new positive law originated in the late 1960s in trickles and small rivulets...

...specific institutions early affected by them thus had no way of determining, from individual encounters with affirmative action policies, the magnitude of the changes in social values which adoption or acceptance of them implied...

...On signing them, he recalled in his memoirs, "the barriers to freedom began tumbling down...

...Glazer's question, "But how is this to be done...

...A surer recipe for civic commotion could hardly be imagined...

...Italics mine...

...The celebration of ethnic identity now proceeds at the expense of the celebration of civic identity...

...Whatever else can be said for it 3r against it, the merit printiple has had a simplicity to Et...

...the search for equality of group representation has served to intensify, rather than to diminish, the tribal sensitivities in American public life...

...What happened, .one wonders, to 'I Am an American' days...

...Affirmative Discrimination is much more than an analysis of how the principle of equality of results arose and now works in various sectors of American life...

...What lies at the heart of Glazer's argument is his contention that to abandon the public principle of individual rights is to abandon a cardinal pillar of the American civic covenant...

...VI...

...in that, once the rules are known, accepted, and applied in a color-blind Fashion, the outcome, as in any contest with rules, has a fairness to individuals...

...In retrospect we now see that the crusade for reverse discrimination ironically began at the very moment when many American liberals thought the capstone had finally been placed on the American ideal of equal rights...

...would be required to give up its group :haracter and distinctiveness as the price 3f full access into the American society and parity...

...Which races are to be favored...

...There are wealthy and poor Anglo-Saxons, Poles, Irish, Chinese, Negroes, Asians, American Indians...

...it erodes the historic bases of human rights under American law...

...With this book the import of our situation becomes fully clear...

...Indeed, the term 'America' became depreciated in the late 1960s...

...When does the favoritism meted to members of one ethnic group result in clear deprivation to members of another which officially has been deemed "advantaged" ? Who determines the answers to these questions...

...As these trends continue, so will America tend toward the condition once prophetically foreseen for it—a microcosm of the whole world's nations...

...in the attempt to devise standards so as to obtain"equal" results for ethnic groups, the very standards by which individuals have been judged (and the standards which advocates of equality long had demanded for the American Negro) are discarded in favor of arithmetical tests by which group equality is to be achieved...

...Now we know that when all individuals are equally judged by the same standards, all will not score equally...

...In the quest for group equality, the principles for which the Civil Rights movement long struggled have been subverted...

...We may not like what we see, but at least we see it...

...Yet one thing is surely clear—the practices required by affirmative action clearly contravene the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the fundamental ruling of the Supreme Court in Brown vs...

...Will the standards then collapse, or will they be affirmed...

...A clear reading of any recent American census shows the absolute number of white Americans below the official poverty line to far exceed that of any other ethnic group in our society...

...It might also be asked whether the traditional, and also quite revolutionary, ethic of civic America—one which judges individuals on their merits rather than or their skin color—may not be the ethic which best supplies both the cement for viable enduring nation, rekindling faith it a civic culture transcending tribes, anc attuned to the best possibilities for the "spaceship earth...

...Most Americans familiar with our experience as a nation of immigrants probably still consider the main chapters of this to be already written...

...Lyndon Johnson took justified pride in his role in the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965...

...what are the principles of our coexistence...

...We ask how we who have come here, or whose ancestors once came, can get along with each other...

...We know what happened to committees on un-American activities...

...The earlier waves of migrants came chiefly from Africa, Europe, Japan, and China...

...Therefore if "deprivation" is defined officially and arbitrarily on racial grounds, and whites are excluded from favoritism, it is inevitable that wealthier and more fortunately circumstanced individuals will be favored for jobs and education, and that at least some poorer ones will be set aside, on grounds of race...

...second, that "no separate ethnic entity was to be allowed to establish an independent polity in the United States...

...Old favoritism gives way to new favoritism...

...Americanization' in schools is no [he Alternative: An American Spectator June/July 1976 25 longer considered desirable...

...But as the flood has crested, so its full dimensions can better be perceived...

...third, that "no group...

...t is this: that "what began as an effort to redress the inequality of the Negro turned into an effort to redress the inequality of all deprived groups...

...But the experience is not over...

...How is membership in or exclusion from a race to be determined...

...Now we are the wiser from experience...

...At long last the legal rights of American citizens—the right to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school—were given concrete protection...

...Since the dawn of history, neither poverty nor abundance has been assigned by race...

...The principle of merit may be imperfectly applied and enforced, but if based upon sensible :riteria of individual ability and perFormance (or even individual need), it Focuses the test of fairness upon persons, aot upon pers ons-as-group-representa:ives...

...They are illegal and unconstitutional when judged against these two standards...

...Perhaps, at that time, a busy chief executive was not alone in his failure to recognize the basic incompatibility between these two conceptions of equality...

...Book Review/Paul Seabury A Sure Recipe for Civic Commotion • • It goes without saying that a central question in American public policy now is the conflict between the rights of individuals and the privileges or claims of officially designated ethnic-racial and sex groups...

...Americans have tended in general to pride themselves on this civic equalityevery man is as good as any other—and the conception has had the merit of strengthening the social fabric by downplaying the ever-present civic dangers of envy, a primeval source of human malice and mischief...

...As Glazer puts it, the "new threat" is that the nation will "be permanently sectioned on the basis of group membership and identification...

...Not the least of the bafFling questions we are now tompelled to face is how an individualistic ethos—that each is entitled to equal and Fair treatment—is to be reiated to a collectivist ethos, that each group is entitled to such treatment...

...It has long been known to sociologists that Americans as individuals have generally preferred to regard their status euphemistically in terms of income rather than class, or at least to think of themselves, regardless of income level, as members of the middle class...

...and I assume that Professor Glazer has written thi: book as an act of commitment and fain that it will not...

...If only for defensive reasons, more and more groups have organized to protect or to obtain their purported constituencies' slice of the pie...

...indeed, Federal money is now available for just the opposite...

...For when tests are so devised as to obtain statistical results for groups, in order that groups may compete on "equal terms," individuals will no longer be judged on their own merits...

...A certain recompense and restitution was due...

...neither the poor nor the rich, the "deprived" nor the "overprivileged," have been races...

...The past andpresent dominate our discussion...

...As the U.S...

...Once persons are judged by criteria )ther than their own, their loss or gain will depend less upon their own accomDlisnments and more upon considerations extrinsic to them, and possibly irrelevant...

...V. The distinctive tendency of American civic values over the past 200 years is to be seen in their orientation toward ethnic difference and diversity...

...They have been persons...

...Like most ordinary people, Johnson probably never troubled much about the complexities which the idea poses...

...If the official bureaucracies, which now supply these answers, are preponderantly composed of individuals from certain favored minorities (as Glazer shows they are), is their judgment likely to be fair...

...If this is to be so, those who make and think of our civic policy might ask whether the America to which the newcomers come will be able to absorb them if it is already torn by an ethnic militancy based upon officially encouraged rivalries among those already here...

...That the full implications of this profound social issue were not completely recognized until recently may be explained in part by the fact that the question swelled so gradually, and in so many locales, through federal administrative rules and regulations, court rulings and orders, local ordinances and laws, and settlements negotiated by government agencies with myriads of business firms, labor unions, colleges, and universities...

...Commissioner a Immigration and Naturalization recently...

...There is no reason why America's destiny must follow tha of the Ottoman Empire...