Ending Affirmative Action / Backfire / In Defense of Affirmative Action
Zelnick, Bob & Bergmann, Barbara R. & Eastland, Terry
Books In Review - "Ending Affirmative Action / Backfire / In Defense of Affirmative Action" Bewitched and Bewildered by a Debate That Won't End. Ending Affirmative Action: The Case for Colorblind...
...This first of two volumes carries Welles's story up to the premiere of Kane...
...The year after Citizen Kane he made The Magni ficentAmbersons, an arguably greater film-but in his remaining four decades he never did anything else in that league...
...In the meantime, Israel must keep up its guard and must not yield further strategic territory...
...Nassau finally ended with an exam that, as a county official explained, is "more than satisfactory if you assume a cop will never have to write a coherent sentence or interpret what someone else has written...
...Reform in this area might well focus, at the outset, on establishing color-blind norms for government itself-a priority Eastland seems to favor and that now seems to be finding some favor in the courts...
...By the i970's he was best known for those wine commercials and the card tricks he performed on "Me Merv Griffin Show...
...They overlook that the "jihad" (holy war) and "liberation...
...on the contrary, in his speeches to the Gaza strip for the creation of a Pales- Palestinians and other Arab audiences, tinian state and by returning the Golan Arafat constantly repeats his calls for Heights to Syria...
...This remains an economist's book in its relentless abstractions, offering the kind of analysis by which intractable human dilemmas can be subsumed under an antiseptic term like "redistribution...
...Many observers of the Middle East Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and all scene seem to believe that the root of the the others-do not aim at peace with Middle East conflict lies in the dispute Israel or the recovery of some territory...
...Will Israel's yielding land and authority to the PLO bring it about...
...It can only happen through a complete change of mentality, policies and historical ambition in the Arab-Iranian block, abandonment of fanatic fundamentalism, and change in governance from despotism to genuine democracy...
...As long-time readers of this magazine know well, Eastland is a man who tells a straight story without pulling his punches...
...Zelnick tells about the Washington, D.C...
...During the Reagan administration, conservative activists tried to rewrite the affirmative action hiring requirements imposed on federal contractors-only to have the White House shelve the idea under pressure from big business...
...hatred of the Palestinian Arabs toward the Real Peace Must be Global...
...If nothing else, Zelnick's book remains quite persuasive on this point: government cannot be trusted to implement affirmative action policies without raising hackles...
...Clearly this is a book for the trusting reader...
...Still, Bergmann has one powerful point: enduring gaps in achievement between blacks and whites remain a source of social strain and national uneasiness...
...Thus, as both Eastland and Zelnick report, business has been very reluctant to sign up for crusades against affirmative action...
...It may not be feasible for government to reach the smallest businesses, he acknowledges, but it remains wrong in principle even for small businessmen to discriminate in such ways in their hiring...
...Israel's size is not of Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan, and Yasimportance...
...She draws this conclusion from extraordinarily broad aggregate figures from census data, from which she then somehow distinguishes the portion of residual differences attributable to differences in training, experience, or motivation, on the one hand, and to "discrimination," on the other...
...Zelnick does not try to defend any systematic theory or doctrine...
...Bob Zelnick's book is a useful antidote to the pleasant dreams of academic analysts like Barbara Bergmann...
...Sometimes the public is defrauded without even the pretense of good intentions...
...In practice, this would mean that disappointed white applicants would have as much claim to contest unfavorable hiring and admissions decisions as disappointed minority applicants...
...The PLO has not corresponded...
...And still, neither side is ready to abandon the debate, as these latest entries on the subject confirm...
...Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world...
...Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu Simon Callow Viking / 64o pages /$32.95 Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles David Thomson Alfred A Knop f /463 pages /$3o REVIEWED BY Francis X. Rocca 0 rson Welles died alone, so nobody knows his dying words, but his last utterance in the public consciousness was: "We will sell no wine before its time...
...The reader who does not demand too many "details" may also be ready to take on faith Bergmann's larger conclusion: "If we reduce discrimination and segregation in the labor market...
...It's more than two years since the handshake between Yassir Arafat, and Yitzhak Rabin...
...Extrapolations from such data might suggest that if employers are less inclined to accept minority candidates with the same paper credentials as white candidates, their selections may not simply reflect irrational or unfair bias...
...can only happen through com- real peace will control over the plete change of mentality, policies and be difficult to administered historical ambition in the Arab-Iranian block...
...Both Eastland and Zelnick report that business was quite reluctant to support this measure - and even more reluctant to be seen supporting it...
...But this pattern, if it is at all prevalent, might in turn be cited as a justification for affirmative action-as a means of counteracting market forces working against less capable minority applicants...
...Though Bergmann is a professor of economics (at American University in Washington, D.C...
...This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME Fads and Logic abouti'he h6dde EastPO...
...Until someone figures out a way to square the circle, however, it does not seem likely that there will be an effective demand for extending government controls, in the way Eastland seems to contemplate, to add a whole vast and potentially quite litigious and assertive constituency-namely, white males-to the existing clients of the government's anti-discrimination machine...
...Average SAT scores, even for the lowest family income group among white students, remain higher than the average scores for blacks from families in the highest income brackets...
...Critics are no longer constrained by fear that it is "racist" to criticize affirmative action...
...That such a book could be published by a top ABC news reporter-and endorsed by Ted Koppel on the back-also tells us something...
...Box 590359 San Francisco, CA 94159 elected governor had accepted almost $300,000 in campaign contributions from an Asian-Indian organization...
...The country is still confused and exasperated by the subject...
...Since then, Israel has made crucial concessions to the PLO in the quest for peace, most importantly, yielding vital strategic territory to it...
...Did I mention that Prof...
...We have virtually no overhead...
...Blacks and women earn less on the average than white males, and some...
...If government continues to promise meaningful protection from bias or favoritism, it cannot let schools and employers fend off complaints with the breezy excuse that decision standards (for admission, hiring, promotion, etc...
...75 The American Spectator • October 19 9 6...
...this society, which keeps potentially useful drugs off the market until they are tested for a near eternity, which bans carcinogens that must be eaten by the pound to produce harmthis society consciously and deliberately graduates doctors who are less qualified to treat the sick than would be the case i f admissions to medical school were based purely on ability and not on race...
...Last year, President Clinton ordered a review of existing federal programs to make sure none were either abusive or unnecessary...
...She defends this practice on the ground that the advantages of greater "integration"-both to schools and employers and to the country as a whole-would be frequently neglected if not for the countervailing pressures of affirmative action...
...Bergmann served on the Council of Economic Advisers in the heady 196o's, as the War on Poverty was being hatched...
...Zelnick cannot contain his astonishment over this fact: "The conclusion is inescapable...
...No wonder business and academe are not on Eastland's side...
...The PLO, Israel's Israel's yielding its heartland, "partner for peace", has not disavowed Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank"), and this...
...And reducing the invariably found a terrible end...
...I include my I tax-deductible contribution in the amount of $ AS/41A I I My name is I I live at I a My contribution is in the amount of $75 or more...
...One can use any system of selection (SAT scores combined with GPAs on a special formula, scores on aptitude tests combined with ratings on an interview, etc...
...Of course Welles had done plenty of other things before their time...
...So affirmative action is needed to redress this bias...
...Because certainly, and the Palestinian rejectionists-not Israel, with its fewer than 5 million inhab- only do not participate in the negotiaitants and less than 10,000 square miles tions, but vehemently oppose them...
...AnothJews long pre- er reason that dates Israel's "Real peace...
...FRANCIS X. RoCCA is a writer living in New Haven, Connecticut...
...Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and so was PresiThe main reason that real peace is so dif- dent Bashir Gemayel of Lebanon, all of ficult to attain is the political and cultural whom envisioned peaceful cooperation context of the Middle East, which is domi- and co-existence with Israel...
...That is not Zelnick's point, though he does not seem concerned to refute that kind of argument as a matter of principle...
...There is no mechanism for forcing the federal government to organize a national voter referendum (and such a thing has never been attempted...
...attain in the territories...
...As Eastland points out, schools and employers now deal with this problem by contriving to achieve the "correct" percentage (or at least, a politically acceptable level) of minority admits or minority hires, so the standards used to judge non-minority candidates do not come under government scrutiny...
...Eastland offers a whole series of such stories (derived from actual court cases) to bolster his concluding appeal for "color-blind justice" to satisfy the most fundamental American principles...
...He reports, for example, that because of racial preferences in medical school admissions, the average college GPA of successful black applicants in 1994 was not only below the average of successful white applicants but even below the average of the white applicants who were rejected (comparing the average GPA for rejected white applicants as a separate group...
...Eastland insists that it is wrong even for the small Korean grocery operator to favor fellow Koreans in his hiring practices...
...Iin State Zip Mail to FLAME P.O...
...present cli The Menace of Islamic Funda- mate is that any agreement that could be mentalism...
...He offers a good deal of data, for example, on the enduring gap in educational attainments, even when one controls for the effects of family income...
...It remains to be seen whether such criticism will prove more than a futile exercise...
...Instead, he offers a sobering "reporter's look" at affirmative action in practice...
...So Eastland holds that government must not abandon any of the jurisdiction it now has under existing civil rights laws, but simply begin to enforce these laws in an even-handed way...
...The argument Bergmann presents is disarmingly simple...
...King territory of Israel from 10,000 square Abdullah of Transjordan was assassinatmiles to 7,000 square miles would not ed by the rejectionists, so was President seem likely to bring peace one step closer...
...Yet Eastland's favored approach has its own difficulties...
...Shortly thereafter, it was reported that prosecutors in Washington, D.C...
...of this disparity is probably caused by systematic bias or exclusion on the part of employers...
...contract set-aside program that wound up according 6o percent of new construction contracts to some very wealthy immigrants from Portugal (technically eligible for preference as "Hispanics") and the California contractor who qualified for preference on the ground that he is 1/64 Cherokee (and therefore eligible for preference as a Native American...
...it is the very existence of sir Arafat himself will escape such fate...
...Emphasis in the original...
...between the Palestinians and the Israeli Their publicly declared aim is the destrucJews...
...Eastland's principle may seem the inevitable and most straightforward response to the sort of hazy, utopian dreaming embraced by advocates like Barbara Bergmann -and the most logical response to the catalogue of chicanery and abuse reported by Bob Zelnick...
...That, in turn, would mean that employers and educational institutions would face pressure to develop very precise and rigid decision standards (to show that all decisions were lacking in bias either way, based strictly on the numbers...
...The debate over affirmative action and "reverse discrimination" first came into prominence during the election year of 1912, when President Nixon began earnestly affirming his opposition to racial quota policies that his own administration was elaborating...
...His decline, too, was premature...
...trying to enforce any standard in private employment markets or private admissions...
...Box 590359 San Rar=oqCA 94159 FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit 501(c)(3)organization...
...had to dismiss a quarter of murder charges prior to indictment due to "sloppy police work...
...her book offers remarkably little hard data or serious economic analysis...
...It was a marginal group of outsiders who managed to gather the necessary backing to organize a popular referendum on the so-called California Civil Rights Initiative (a proposal to prohibit the state government from exercising racial, ethnic, or "gender" preference in its own hiring, in its contracting decisions, and in admissions to state institutions of higher education...
...Even Republican leaders have been equivocal on the issue...
...It does not seem likely that conflicting appeals to the courts will yield a very clear resolution in the absence of legislative action...
...Why didn't anyone think of that before...
...Zelnick highlights many such abuses...
...In laying out her main argument, for example, she reports that "the true penalties for discrimination suffered by average full-time black and female workers" are "about $3,000 a year for black men and $5,000 for black and white women"-a figure she deduces from differences in the average yearly wage of white males as a group, compared with the average among these other groups...
...Barbara Bergmann's In Defense ofAffirmative Action does live up to its title...
...By age io he was quoting Voltaire and Oscar Wilde...
...Islamic fundamentalism cannot tolerate a Jewish presence on any part of "Arab territory...
...Peace in the Middle East Can it be achieved by yielding land and authority to the PLO...
...What are the facts' Israel that is an intolerable offense to the fundamentalists, an unacceptable insult The Root of the Middle East con- to Islam...
...But the debate is sure to continue...
...He tells about the decision by state officials in Ohio to extend affirmative action preferences, in awarding state contracts, to Indians (from the Asian subcontinent) shortly after the newly You deserve a factual look at...
...And that may well take a very long time...
...Those who feel that way may take heart from Terry Eastland's uncompromising argument for "ending affirmative action...
...By itself, however, it will not constrain any of the federal programs that continue to provide pressure toward racial or "gender" preference...
...Can ultimate peace be achieved in this manner...
...It may not be unfair to note that it is also a very brief book (with widely spaced type to fill a meager 180 pages of text...
...Bergmann is quite candid in acknowledging that affirmative action often amounts to an explicit preference by which a member of the target group will gain advantage over someone more qualified by the usual criteria of selection...
...Not 72 October 199 6 . The American Spectator surprisingly, with preferences on this scale, less than half of black medical school graduates pass their National Board exams for medical certification (at least on the first try), while the pass rate for whites is 88 percent...
...Callow adjudges Welles the actor overly fond of "the big gesture" at the expense Nipped in the Rosebud: The Price of Early Genius...
...r Yes, I want to help in the publication of these ads and I in clarifying the situation in the Middle East...
...and that it could be resolved by tion of the Jewish state...
...Your tax-deductible contributions are welcome...
...One hopes that real peace-the Arabs' acceptance of a Jewish state and peaceful co-existence-will come eventually...
...Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work, for these clarifying menages, and for related direct mail...
...Chicago, where his mother tried to groom him to fulfill her frustrated musical ambitions, then died when her son was nine...
...I Please send me your 1-hr...
...The clamor for yielding attained in this round of negotiations these territories to the Arabs is the first would be a non-global one...
...by z6 he had made one of the greatest movies of all time on his first try...
...One can nated by the menace of Islamic funda- only hope that President Mubarak of mentalism...
...But it cannot come about by Israel's yielding its strategic advantage to those who are still sworn to destroy it...
...The California initiative, which will go before state voters in November, seems 74 October r 9 9 6 • The American Spectator likely to pass and may provide some moral reinforcement to critics of affirmative action...
...Equally significant, the PLO has until now not complied with its promise to abolish the clause in its "covenant" that calls for the destruction of Israel...
...To cite another example, he reports the experience of New York's Nassau County (home to the populous Long Island suburbs of New York City), which was repeatedly sued by the Justice Department (even in the Reagan years) to revise and then re-revise its eligibility standards and selection examinations for police officers, because too few minority candidates satisfied the standards and passed the exams as they were...
...a]ll of us will benefit from revitalized central cities, lower crime rates and fewer panhandlers, fewer homeless...
...She does not explain how this feat of analysis was performed, but simply offers a footnote with this assurance: "Details of the calculations are available from the author...
...He tells us about Sharon Taxman, the white New Jersey school teacher fired to ensure, during a period of layoffs, that a black colleague could be retained for the sake of "diversity goals...
...The most ferstep in the immutable Arab attempt to liq- vent enemies of Israel-Iran, Iraq, Libya uidate Israel altogether...
...The Declaration of Independence itself, he insists, "implies the necessity of colorblind law because only that kind of law fully respects the equal rights of all persons, as individuals...
...about Danny O'Connor, the white police officer repeatedly denied promotion while forty-three officers with lower scores on the departmental exam and with less seniority were bumped ahead of him in the name of affirmative action...
...of territory (smaller than Lake Michigan), Those Arab statesman who have tried to cannot possibly be a threat to peace or a come to terms with the Jewish state have menace to the Arabs...
...and Dublin, where as a trustfunded orphan of i6, Orson bluffed his way into the company of the Gate Theatre and made an instant hit playing a German Duke thirty-five years his senior...
...They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines...
...While the main emphasis of Eastland's book is on direct governmental preference schemes, the implication of his larger argument is that all of these varying, private selection systems should be brought under government scrutiny to ensure that they operate in a truly evenhanded way...
...Most of the action takes place not in Hollywood but on the legitimate stage, and at the other scenes of Welles's boyhood: Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he was born to a prosperous manufacturing family...
...Whatever its arguments in the abstract, Zelnick is more troubled by how affirmative action is taken to abusive extremes or bent to corrupt purposes...
...It offers a full bore defense, refusing to concede any fundamental problems either in the feasibility or the justice of affirmative action...
...the capitals of Europe and Asia, where his alcoholic father took him on extravagant, desultory vacations...
...But a modest congressional proposal to reign in preference in federal contracting has already been shelved for this season by Republican leaders...
...After reviewing the history of racial policy and some of the landmark court battles of the past, he focuses his attention on particular, individual victims, to emphasize the unfairness of it all...
...As Zelnick reports, admissions officers at universities use this data as justification for affirmative action-on the grounds that if there were not extensive preferences shown for minority candidates, top schools would have few minority candidates...
...The fundamentalist Moslemsflict...
...Simon Callow, an accomplished actor and director in both theater and film, brings a colleague's sympathy and insight to his account of Welles's brilliant career...
...Having elevated color-blind justice to a fundamental moral principle, he must reject the suggestion-advanced by Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein and more recently by Dinesh D'Souza-that government should simply withdraw from 44 American politicianssimply cannot betrusted to keep racialpreferences withinreasonable orresponsible limits...
...Moralistic appeals from both sides have rattled and distracted the electorate for a quarter of a century-more time than elapsed between the founding of the Anti-Saloon League and the adoption of the Prohibition Amendment, twice as much time as elapsed between the start of that earlier "noble experiment" and its ultimate repeal...
...Ending Affirmative Action: The Case for Colorblind Justice `Terry Eastland Basic Books / 229 pages / $23 Backfire: A Reporter's Look at Affirmative Action Bob Zelnick Regnery /415 pages / $2750 In Defense of Affirmative Action Barbara R Bergmann Basic Books / 213 pages / $23 REVIEWED BY Jeremy Rabkin...
...JEREMY RABKIN teaches government at Cornell University...
...In view of these realities, is real peace possible...
...so long as it does not provoke the disapproval of anti-bias monitors by yielding the wrong numbers for minorities...
...If President Clinton is right that "the era of big government is over," we are not likely to see any ground swell of new public demands for a systematic reallocation of opportunity and rewards in the American economy across racial lines of the sort urged by Barbara Bergmann...
...After hearing enough of such stories-and there are many in Zelnick's wide-ranging and wellresearched book-Americans may well conclude that politicians simply cannot be trusted to keep racial preferences within reasonable or responsible limits...
...are too complex and subjective for government to understand...
...After much delay, high level White House staffers produced a report assuring the president that no existing programs were either abusive or unjustified...
...But by Eastland's own account, the principle involved cannot readily be confined to government, especially if government continues to enforce non-discrimination norms on the private sector on behalf of some groups...
...Murderous attacks on Israelis have increased to unprecedented levels...
...videotape dealing with three important aspects of Israel's strategic situation...
Vol. 29 • October 1996 • No. 10
