AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: LETTER TO A WORRIED COLLEAGUE
Coser, Rose Laub
Dear Colleague: I am glad you agree with me that discrimination against women in employment generally, and in the academy in particular, has to end; and that the socialization process, by which...
...If goals were formulated in terms of numerical changes at all levels, professors would have to go to work in their graduate departments and among their underAFFIRMATIVE ACTION 367 graduates and exert pressures, for example in teachers colleges and departments of education, for changes in the high schools and elementary schools...
...In your scholarly work you would never make statements that have no evidential basis, but you (and many others) feel free to do so in ideological matters...
...If one takes presently available "pools" as a guideline for future recruitment, as was done at Berkeley, nothing much is going to change and the spirit of affirmative action is destroyed...
...You, an oldtime socialist, are of course not one of them...
...You are worried lest affirmative action represent a "quota system" with its implied injustice precisely against minorities...
...4. There is no evidence for the claim that the level of excellence is being threatened through numerical goals...
...While I reject such rhetoric and believe that we should always be most cautious in dealing with human lives, whether or not they are in our own camp, some sacrifices sometimes cannot be avoided...
...This leads to my final point...
...Looked at from the point of view of a collectivity (for example the family) instead of from the point of view of the individual, for every husband who does not find a job there may be a wife who does...
...In the unlikely event that 50 years from now men and women seek and receive equal employment at all levels, there will have been some reshaping of the opportunity structure...
...I remember seeing (before the days of affirmative action) admissions lists to Harvard Medical School that included some students with a C average (white men, of course...
...I would like to warn you against those who come to you to ask for your sympathy in the name of "excellence," when what they are complaining about is competition...
...If we were not so hung up on the notion that the man has to support his family, nothing much would be changed...
...My reply is: (a) the academic child is the father of the academic man (and I am claiming that mothers and academic women should take their turns...
...A student from Nebraska has a better chance to get into Harvard than one from New York, "everything else being equal...
...Note that no department has to hire a woman or black unless they are the best persons for the job...
...It is terrible only if one maintains the view that men have to be the providers of their families...
...On the microlevel, one hurts some people with every decision that is made at a committee meeting, as you and I well know...
...This would be more realistic and more creative and would also prevent people from passing the buck of ending discrimination to a lower level...
...For example, there might be less protection of the inept if an organization were not permitted to "promote" some of its undesirable faculty members into the administration but were forced to search for the best possible administrators at all levels...
...6. You are worried about being "unfair to specific individuals...
...In short, numerical goals are meant to end the very type of discrimination quotas perpetuate...
...According to the Chronicle of Higher Education for February 10, 1975, the proportion of women in faculty jobs in the country as a whole, and in all ranks, has increased from 22.3 percent in 1972-73 to 24.1 percent in 1974, and that of full professors has increased from 9.8 percent to 10.3 percent during that time...
...My friend Cynthia Epstein has called my attention to the fact that by tracing the "horrors" of sex discrimination to earlier periods in the socialization process, many people feel free to abandon efforts for change in their own bailiwick...
...People who are born in the ghetto "need" support but somebody who chooses to buy a Cadillac should not expect support or even sympathy for having to make high monthly payments...
...The assertion is made not only by honest people who want to be at peace with their own conscience but also by those who use it as a scare word for propagandistic purposes...
...But many men may want to enjoy temporary or permanent periods of staying home, just as many women do today, and this could be a privilege rather than a sacrifice...
...I want to take issue with this interpretation and hope that I shall be able to convince you that you should join us in our efforts for affirmative action...
...Of course, too few women or blacks have been added anywhere to test the proposition...
...and you fear that some deserving white males, innocent of the past misdeeds that have caused our present distress, might be hurt...
...368 ROSE LAUB COSER 9. There may also be compensations for men who might feel hurt by affirmative action...
...It muddles the issue...
...Departments are asked to demonstrate that such a search has been conducted and that the person who is being hired is indeed the best one obtainable...
...Suppose we are successful in our endeavors, including those aimed at motivating women and blacks to enter the fields that traditionally have been occupied by white males...
...We know that for blacks there is even less progress...
...All we are saying is that there are other considerations than the aforementioned ones that also have such pertinence...
...Also, it strikes me as sheer arrogance for a white male to assume that because a black or a woman was hired in his stead, the standard of excellence must have been relaxed...
...I am asking you to agree that it is as important to integrate blacks and women as it is to integrate people from peripheral areas of the country...
...One would have to set goals for recruitment at all levels of education (I am pleased that you agree with me that societal definitions of appropriate occupational sex roles should be changed) and then project, as demographers do, the possible changes in pools in the various fields for the next 10 years...
...There is a "good" reason for this, as there is a "good" reason for regional representation...
...3. The point I have been making means, of course, that numerical considerations other than those for academic excellence are being introduced routinely in regard to issues that are considered socially or politically pertinent...
...After a thorough search has been conducted, the best qualified person—a white male if he is the one—should be hired...
...Supporting a wife and having a child is an option, one that is expected to give pleasure, and may well be a luxury...
...When asked to join the picket line in front of stores during the civil rights campaign in the early '60s, he hesitated to do so because, he said, if the picketing is effective in keeping customers away this might lead to the firing of innocent salesgirls...
...It is facile to say that, because in both cases numbers are at stake, the cases have the same meaning...
...that is, if one talks of family rather than individual income...
...THE EDITORS tions and in society at large if people would not fear, rightfully so, that some of their rights and privileges—deserved as they may be— might be abrogated...
...The main point here is that it requires a redefinition of the division of labor and the prestige structure in the family and society generally...
...5. For affirmative action to be effective it cannot, of course, take the shape it took at Berkeley, where bureaucratic number games did more to maintain the status quo than to change it...
...I propose that if this were taking place, departments would hire better men or women for their faculties...
...Numerical goals, in contrast, are meant to get people in...
...Faculty and administrators are to devise means of recruitment that are objective and universalistic, that transcend the old-boys-club way of doing things...
...b) recruitment of faculty proceeds on a similar basis as the admission of students, only the process is even more secret and subtle...
...This is true of the tenure system in academia as it is of the seniority system in industry...
...and that the socialization process, by which women are directed away from the world of work and productivity, ought to be changed...
...Such options do not need to be compensated for or rewarded, as if they were a congenital or social handicap or a service to the country...
...A chairperson who gives this as a rationale for rejecting an applicant or for refusing tenure finds this easier to do than to say, "you have disagreed with me," or, "you are not congenial," or, "you are not good enough...
...1. To liken "numerical goals" for ending discrimination against women and blacks to "quotas" is a fallacy...
...It seems to me those of us who have spent a lifetime analyzing in our work the more complex meaning of social processes, rather than accepting what is seemingly obvious, owe it to our intellectual integrity to use more sophisticated thinking in our ideological stance as well...
...and this, of course, means restructuring the society...
...Could it be otherwise, perhaps...
...Such reasoning obfuscates the distinction between two different kinds of human needs...
...And please also be sure to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...You have read Caplow's and McGee's Academic Market Place, as I have...
...Need" may arise from circumstances over which individuals have no control, or from circumstances that have resulted from an individual's own choice...
...2. It is contrary to the facts to assert that educational institutions (just like others) use no numerical considerations for admission to their ranks, even when "quotas" have been given up officially...
...7. Every policy will hurt some people who do not deserve to be hurt...
...I hear: " He has a wife and a new baby and can't find a job because the department has to hire a woman or a black...
...8. Implicit in some of the arguments I have heard about men being hurt by affirmative action is the notion that it is worse for a man not to find employment than for a woman, because a man has to support a family...
...q AFFIRMATIVE ACTION 369...
...For example, we know that many colleges and universities reserve a certain proportion of admissions for regional representation...
...You must have experienced, as I have, some white man whom you respect saying to you: "I have been a victim of affirmative action...
...Quotas are meant to keep people out...
...And I suspect that the affirmative action argument is not being misused without malice aforethought...
...Universities routinely reserve a certain proportion of places for offspring of alumni even with a lower academic record than otherwise permissible...
...Yet you are reluctant to join in affirmative action to reach these ends...
...I would like to argue the contrary, namely that affirmative action, instead of threatening excellence, will help achieve it...
...numerical goals are meant to get people in who do qualify for the main requirements for entrance, and who would be kept out otherwise for reasons that are not pertinent to the performance that is sought...
...That is, quotas are meant to keep people out on one extraneous criterion, whether or not they otherwise qualify for the main requirements for entrance...
...Our endeavors to bring about equality between men and women are not simply aimed at a few more jobs for some women, but at restructuring the family...
...Let me speak to this point next...
...I am reminded of the words of a well-known author and philosopher, whom we both know but who shall remain unnamed...
...As you and I well know, together these 366 two measures assure both perpetuation of the elite and the maintenance of some "openness" to permit some social integration—the perfect amalgam for an open-class society...
...You may object that I am speaking about student admissions, and not about recruitment of faculty...
...Is this really so terrible...
...May I suggest that this is what most people who object to affirmative action are afraid of...
...On the macrolevel, one hurts some people with every piece of social change one helps bring about...
...Yet, some white men may indeed get hurt when they would deserve not to be...
...Much of the mediocrity that exists comes from particularism, as you well know...
...Here is how: affirmative action means open search...
...After all, there would be less resistance to change both in our organizaTo Our Contributors • When sending manuscripts, please make sure that you do not send your only copy...
...I know of no department that has suffered in excellence by adding women or blacks to its faculty...
...Yet the same man had defended only a few years earlier the Soviet intervention in Hungary with the argument that "the building of the British empire cost innumerably more lives than Soviet interference in Hungary...
Vol. 22 • September 1975 • No. 4
