AGAINST 'AFFIRMATIVE ACTION':
Novak, Michael
AGAINST `AFFIRMATIVE ACTION' MICHAEL NOVAK The real question, under conditions ferent from that of Jews, just as it is ...
...The abroad...
...the ancient system of keeping them of a new Polish "leap forward" in I am sometimes tempted to conout, not because they lack talent or American life, points out that Poles clude from such a train of thought preparation, but because they are not constitute some forty percent of the that "affirmative action" and/or "quothe proper ethnic group...
...Thousands of are beginning to be represented in suggests the extent to which AmeriPh.D's look in vain for jobs, just as proportion to their numbers...
...even in political patronage, anybody...
...social systems so as to prepare their single executive officer was Polish- But, after a good deal of inner conyoung equally well, a strategy of American...
...Yet tas" offer a sound social strategy, and Jewish family culture and social in the local University law school, ought to be extended to Slavic-Amersystems have no peer, perhaps, in of 720 places only 23 are held by icans and Italian-Americans right preparing their young to excel...
...Slavic-Americans and open future made possible for Jews nomic life of the area are not Polish- Italian-Americans are far more talby the Enlightenment and by Ameri- American...
...can experience has hardly been alhundreds of thousands abandon col- But, as Richard Gambino recounts tered by the large, indigestible Slavic lege to go to work in factories or in his entertaining and moving new presence in its midst...
...Italian- Americans in college significantly exLatinos, and Indians-has quite prop- Americans face special difficulties with ceeded the proportion of Italianerly enlarged the numbers of those entrance boards of medical schools, Americans and Slavic Americans...
...Even the barest demog- (Continued on page 118) 5 April 1974: 102...
...it alters the ern the mayor's office and the eco- eration, by fiat...
...day, $7.95), there are already in New nal of Education (winter, 1973), The recent divisive preference of York City more Black professionals George Steven Swan points out that our Lords Spiritual of Opinion for the than Italian-American professionals in 1970 the proportion of Afromost needy in our midst-Blacks, (9 percent vs...
...The a field in which their talent is unhin- Northwest European origin...
...but they are not yet good enough...
...Instead Polish-Americans...
...The Double Standard and the Cathovancement in the professions, rightly The situation of Slavic-Americans lic Minorities...
...slight cultural shock induced by the and financial aid: fellowships and of- In scholarship and in the arts, they name Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich fers of a position...
...Scarcity limits scholarships Irish have been succeeding brilliantly...
...solo atprobability is extraordinarily high that dered and free, in the City University torneys came "from the Slavic and it will be Italian and Slavic Catholics...
...There different (according to Andrew Gree- Boards of Trustees, among deans and are not enough places in law school ley's studies) from that of the Irish...
...the powers that gov- alter the effects of history, in one genthreat to Jewish liberty...
...AGAINST `AFFIRMATIVE ACTION' MICHAEL NOVAK The real question, under conditions ferent from that of Jews, just as it is raphic facts are not known...
...ern European Catholics is quite dif- fully small...
...stores because they cannot qualify for book, Blood of My Blood (Double- Writing in The Notre Dame Jourfinancial aid...
...Any tive way...
...formal social system prepares them higher ranks, they are woefully under- He calls his article, quite properly, well for a meritocratic system of ad- represented...
...Stan Franczyk of lics will not passively accede to being action" will reproduce in modern form Buffalo, one of the great champions left out...
...In demanding to get in...
...He hopes such Cathofear that "quotas" and "affirmative is even more bleak...
...But when more especially the prestigious ones...
...It is preposterous to try to shift away from meritocracy is a Poles rank fifth...
...ented, disciplined, and prepared for can democracy...
...On of scarcity, is who gets left out...
...population in and near Buffalo...
...in the hundreds of along with Blacks, Latinos, and Inof revising other family cultures and Buffalo banks, until recently, not a dians...
...college presidents, and in places of for all who want to get in...
...of New York and in university facul- Mediterranean countries (fifty perJews, whose family culture and in- ties everywhere, particularly in the cent from East and South Europe...
...To enter On Wall Street, in the legal profes- real power and influence, Slavicmedical school, many have to study sions, in medicine, in politics, the Americans are virtually invisible...
...The shelf of writing about the creativity than most Americans noThe situation of Southern and East- Slavic-American experience is dread- tice...
...8 percent...
...And if Detroit in 1960, 75 percent of the Blacks, Latinos, and Indians do get in the creative arts, particularly in the lawyers in firms (i.e., those with stainto American professions, as they cinema, Italian-Americans have found tistically far higher income) were of should, who will be left out...
...newspapers and television flict, my judgment and my instincts "quotas" and "affirmative action" channels do not reflect the Polish- have come together in a deep revulmakes room for the less prepared American population in a representa- sion against ethnic preferences for and penalizes the more prepared...
Vol. 100 • April 1974 • No. 5
