Examines second thoughts on affirmative action

...At the heart of their disaccord—and everyone else's—is the ideal of a color-blind society...

...In his first New Republic piece, he writes that, with California's Proposition 209, the complexities of affirmative action "suddenly emerged, like a genie from the bottle...

...If the improved message to blacks amounts to slots at "the Harvards," you're not saying, or doing, much...

...If they couldn't compete successfully after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, they weren't working hard enough or living clean...

...He ignores the fact that a solid majority of all Americans supports special help as long as it doesn't involve double standards...

...you meet "useful" people, you learn how to interact with them...

...As Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in the 1978 case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race...

...April 6, 1998) and in a symposium on affirmative action in Commentary (March 1998).* This is a limited conversion...

...So perhaps, eventually, we'll be able to discharge fully our special obligation to blacks...

...JOANNE BARKAN is a writer living in New York City...

...Everyone receives equal treatment...

...Early on, most used it to limit the gains of the black civil rights movement...

...Podhoretz doesn't mention the implications of Loury's position that truly drive conservatives crazy: activist government, social programs, redirection of resources to the poor, and, eventually, more competitors on a more level playing field...

...Glazer, professor emeritus of sociology and education at Harvard, and Loury, professor of economics at Boston University, agree that Proposition 209 goes too far...

...Preferential affirmative action is a flawed, weak, and cheap tool...

...Glazer has several reasons for compromising the principle of color blindness: . the Harvards, the Berkeleys, and the Amhersts...

...I don't mean to paint Loury as a leftist...

...Asians, apparently, can fend for themselves, and so, for the most part, can Latinos...

...Or does cultural heritage define identity...

...Loury speculated that "the old Glenn Loury could be relied on to say to blacks what they didn't want to hear...

...What bothers me in all this is the off-hand, and ultimately irresponsible, carelessness...

...In brief, the conservatives' complete indifference to poor urban blacks and their enthusiastic promotion of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's The Bell Curve and Dinesh D'Souza's The End of Racism finally drove him away...

...it demands a response...

...Public spending would never help blacks...

...Then, as you come close, the consequences become a little larger...

...Through the 1970s, beneficiaries came to include not only African Americans (the initial focus of concern) but also women, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Alaskan native tribes...

...According to economist Paul Krugman (Slate, May 14, 1998), the first few pages of Loury's 1976 docDISSENT / Summer 1998 7 toral dissertation laid out the central quandary of race policy in this way: On the one hand, we want individuals to be judged by merit, not by race...

...A body can forfeit liberal or left credentials by worrying too much...

...If society cares about the child in the Bronx, it must offer special help—help not offered to members of other groups...

...No fact strikes me as more disheartening...

...When discrimination is no longer the law of the land, does the damage from past discrimination still get passed from generation to generation...

...The article never mentions Nathan Glazer's defection...

...Why does he think school officials bothered with the policy year after year if they didn't need it...

...Can you enroll in a program if you have just one black parent...

...These are not color-blind programs: Such a targeted effort . . . involves allocating benefits to people on the basis of race...

...Podhoretz slides over Loury's distinction between developmental and preferential affirmative action--the heart of Loury's position...

...LOURY ANGUISHES over the black middle class's ongoing desire for preferences: It is morally unjustified--and to this African American, humiliating--that preferential treatment based on race should become institutionalized for those of us now enjoying all the advantages of middle-class life...

...I asked Loury why--if his position hasn't changed--Norman Podhoretz (conservative editor-at-large of Commentary) wrote in the same symposium, "I for one preferred the old Glenn Loury to the new...

...Some conservatives may have held to colorblind absolutism out of conviction...

...Employers and teachers who believe that blacks can't meet the common standard might patronize them by setting lower standards of expected accomplishment...

...Such a program would have cost a lot...

...Then the rest of us can argue for them...

...Yet the college and business programs he mentions will not help "those languishing in the ghettos of America...

...The decline [in the level of public services] has perhaps been clearest in central-city teaching, where the number of black and Hispanic teachers and administrators has increased...

...A moral campaign bolstered their free-market economics...

...The thought that my sons would come to see themselves as presumptively disadvantaged because of their race is unbearable to me...

...If 260 million people are competing fairly, you won't end up with allwhite, all-male urban police forces, law partnerships, or Berkeleys...

...Hard-line opponents consolidated their position around the absolutist version of color blindness (and its corollary—competition on the basis of merit alone...

...He began his work as a public intellectual by writing about color blindness as a dilemma in American society...

...I have, however, little hope and no confidence that we'll get such a program in the foreseeable future...

...He concluded: "Then, in public discourse, positioning takes place relative to others...

...Second, on diversity: unfortunately, this notion is gaining popularity as a rationale and immediate goal for preferences in higher education...

...They're pretty quick to impugn the motives of anyone who worries aloud about the social divisiveness of group preferences or the effect on political coalitions or the effect on perceptions of achievement or the moral liability of "reverse discrimination" (visited upon those who lose out when someone else gets a special preference...

...Glazer is making just this point, but he emphasizes the most elite schools too much...

...On principle, I like worriers...

...Liberals, leftists, and the civil rights leadership judged him disloyal...

...have become, for better or worse, the gateways to prominence, privilege, wealth, and power in American society...

...everyone competes on the basis of individual merit...

...They constructed their position around society's obligation to help those damaged by discrimination...

...Loury has no trouble taking a stand against what he calls color-blind formalism: The color-blind principle, while consistent as a self-contained legal rule, is in my opinion neither morally nor politically coherent . . . . Indeed, since all anti-discrimination enforce8 n DISSENT / Summer 1998 ment requires classifying, monitoring, and counting employees by race, the only fully consistent color-blind position is to advocate the repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964...

...You could count on him to criticize liberals who were defending affirmative action...

...Conceptually, it puts the cart before the horse...

...Liberals and leftists supported affirmative action, meaning all forms of special help, including preferences...

...How do we square this noble conviction with his opinion of public schools...

...Who is black...

...In time, I am convinced, this preference will not be needed...

...THE BAKKE decision sanctioned another principle (of sorts), diversity, which gave the entire dispute over color blindness a new twist...

...Glazer says we should keep using a double standard in admission requirements for now...

...Or blacks in sociology class, Asians in history...

...If a program operates in a mixed black and Latino neighborhood, can poor Latinos enroll...

...First, consider the case of any black who wins a job, contract, or school acceptance...

...In this postProposition 209 period, Loury emphasizes "the distinction between saying that affirmative action doesn't work sometimes and saying that it's never okay to take race into account...

...THERE' S ANOTHER objection to the diversity rationale, one that Glazer himself suggests...

...If yes, are we shifting our criterion to low socioeconomic status...

...The conflict between these two requirements arises when a "category" of people has suffered long-term, debilitating discrimination, such as 350 years of slavery and Jim Crow...

...and some 58 percent of black students at Berkeley did graduate...

...Represent blacks during freshman year, Asians sophomore year...

...Loury added that his former neoconservative allies reacted negatively when he started talking more about "his people," his communal attachments...

...One wonders what the mixed-race student should do...

...He found a home among neoconservatives for about fifteen years...

...Glazer and Loury disagree about almost everything else...

...Glenn Loury, who broke with the neoconservatives a few years ago, has reshaped his position...

...GLENN LOURY' S case is different...

...He'd like to use public resources to break the inheritance pattern of social capital...

...We kept the old system for as long as we did because it was cheap...

...He maintained that he never advocated abolishing affirmative action completely, even during the time he was associated with the neoconservatives...

...Sensible people, including the vast majority of welfare recipients, would have preferred a fullyfunded jobs program including general education, skills training, child care, health insurance, job placement in the private sector, and, when necessary, interim employment in the public sector at a living wage...

...If yes, then society must offer "special help" so that victims of past discrimination can eventually compete as individuals on merit alone...

...Loury describes his current position in the Public Interest (March 1997) and in the Commentary symposium to which Nathan Glazer also contributed...

...In 1996, a circuit court banned affirmative action at the University of Texas Law School...

...New blackowned businesses would get management assistance so they could bid on government contracts competitively...

...No one...

...For example, fewer black students go into science and math...

...all want to represent and communicate that point of view...

...Both Krugman and Jim Sleeper (in his book Liberal Racism) tell the story of Loury's break with the right...

...they arrive at different policy conclusions...

...For one thing, it would be expensive...

...Everyone not involved in the selection process can logically assume that the black might have benefited from lower standards...

...all accept having group membership emphasized over individual identity...

...The idea that preferences will supply campuses with blacks who will typify "their" particular point of view rests on some odious assumptions: All blacks share the same point of view...

...Suppose policy makers could answer these questions...

...Everyone can also logically assume that any white who wins might do so despite reverse discrimination...

...In the past, he often argued "you can do harm" with race-based policies...

...When Glazer realized that blacks might disappear from the nation's most selective colleges, universities, and professional schools, he swore off absolutism...

...At no point...

...Blacks might then perform at a lower level, turning the expectation gap into a self-fulfilling prophesy...

...the drop was 43 percent at UCLA...

...I'd vote for the switch...

...I OURY STILL abhors (no verb could be too strong) race-based preferences, by which I he means lower standards for blacks...

...The old federal entitlement program was a misery: niggardly, demeaning, and self-perpetuating...

...He offers no arguments, let alone convincing ones...

...Podhoretz might claim that developmental programs "inevitably" degenerate into preferential ones, but why--after thirty-five years of experience--must they...

...6 DISSENT / Summer 1998 that higher education boosts the prospects of young people because it offers not just knowledge but networks...

...He didn't know that the moral universe is a messy place where our best and favorite principles collide...

...Nathan Glazer turned out to be one on the conservative absolutist side...

...Have we then failed—once again—to attend to blacks' specific deficit in social capital...

...Black students might get provisional admission to a state university with the stipulation that they spend one or two years at a local community college, raising their scores to competitive levels...

...Finally, on the special obligation to blacks: most recent articles on higher education note the dropout rate at Berkeley, which is 42 percent for blacks and 16 percent for whites...

...Diversity—women on the police force, blacks on the construction crew, Latinos on the college faculty—became more than real-life evidence that discrimination wasn't taking place...

...Podhoretz calls the new Loury "disingenuous" because "he embraced a program that sounded as good in theory as it had in 1965 but that nearly 35 years of experience should have taught us was inevitably subject to corruption in practice...

...Loury uses mathematical logic to demonstrate this reasoning...

...Now we don't have even that...

...On principle, we also require a liberal democratic society to root out discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin...

...Affirmative action should help create the equal opportunity...

...But special help to one group sabotages color blindness...

...Yet, with it, the black middle class continued to grow after 1973 when the postwar economic expansion ended...

...A crusade against DISSENT / Summer 1998 5 affirmative action dovetailed with opposition to welfare-state programs, activist government, and progressive taxation...

...I reread his articles, looking for a more positive evaluation...

...John Kennedy first used the term affirmative action in a 1961 executive order exhorting federal contractors to ensure nondiscrimination...

...They analyze affirmative action from different points of view...

...In this respect, the affirmative action predicament resembles the welfare dilemma...

...In order to clarify the matter, I interviewed Loury by telephone this past May...

...Glazer sounds as though he's worried most about the reputation of these institutions...

...in 1997, the combined number of entering blacks and Mexican Americans sank by about 60 percent...

...Instead of "preferential affirmative action," Loury proposes "developmental affirmative action...

...there is something behind the argument for diversity . . . The presence of blacks, in classes in social studies and the humanities, immediately introduces another tone, another range of questions (often to the discomfort of black students who do not want this representational burden placed upon them...

...His rethinking, at this point, sounds like noblesse oblige confusedly acknowledging a faux pas...

...one grandparent...

...As quoted by Steven A. Holmes in the New York Times (April 5, 1998), Glazer accounts for his conversion this way: "It's one thing to fight for a principle, which is a very good principle, especially if you don't expect it to win...

...Must applicants attest to being brought up sufficiently black...

...Krugman bluntly states that Loury "has basically never been able to get off square one—because at no point over the past two decades has he been able to find allies who are even willing to accept the reality of the dilemma...

...First, on the gateways to success and on the message sent to blacks: everyone agrees *I am quoting Glazer from these three articles...

...And beyond that...

...Does Glazer expect these schools to help incorporate blacks fully into society...

...Approved by voters in 1996, Proposition 209 bans all affirmative action in the state's public sector by outlawing any consideration of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, contracting, or education...

...For Loury, public efforts directed to poor urban blacks are "a matter of social ethics...

...By prohibiting that group identity ever be taken into account, it transforms an absolutist version of the "color-blind principle" (perfect nondiscrimination) into law...

...Wealth and privilege, they could argue, were nothing more than signs of merit...

...I hesitate giving up what we have until I know we'll get something better...

...all-white Harvards will "look bad...

...they object to Proposition 209 for different reasons...

...Well, perhaps, because Loury also argued in 1976 that social problems internal to the African American community were stymieing black progress more than active white racism...

...Diversity naturally results when individuals, with their different inclinations and talents, have true equality of opportunity to pursue their goals...

...Shouldn't we open up more gateways, broader gateways, rather than reinforce the old bastions of privilege...

...He supports preferences only for blacks and only when they apply to institutions of higher education...

...Just as opponents of affirmative action include absolutists, supporters include hard-liners who turned affirmative action into a sacred cow...

...In the second half of the decade, the term came to mean special help: outreach to victims of past discrimination, specialized training, and—most controversial—preferential treatment in hiring, job promotions, awarding of government contracts, and admission to institutions of higher education...

...On the other hand, a child growing up in the South Bronx and a child growing up in Scarsdale do not have the same chance in life even if they have equal talents and even if racial discrimination no longer exists...

...Arguing affirmative action for thirty-five years, Americans have, in essence, been arguing over the value and reality of color blindness...

...He, a sociologist, didn't know that many social scientists and university administrators had, for years, predicted a "whiteout" with the end of affirmative action...

...this country has a special obligation to blacks that has not been fully discharged...

...Podhoretz, of course, doesn't allude to these matters in his Commentary article, which he devotes exclusively to Loury's deviation on affirmative action...

...UnforDISSENT / Summer 1998 9 tunately, he doesn't answer basic questions about race-based programs for blacks...

...I found this: "we have been trying to improve education for decades, with some limited success...

...I only point out that "the public goal of raising the competitive abilities of disadvantaged blacks" through developmental affirmative action must involve some government intervention and redirection of resources...

...Still others (including neoconservatives who cobbled together a political line in the 1970s and then shifted ever farther to the right) found absolutism perfectly suited to their larger agenda...

...Loury never states that he's altered his position on affirmative action--although pundits and his conservative critics certainly claim he has...

...As an alternative to double standards, Loury's idea initially appealed to me...

...He finds them pernicious in two ways...

...they are required by "widely embraced democratic ideals...

...Nathan Glazer, who crusaded against affirmative action for more than two decades, has switched sides...

...Latino admissions fell 40 percent at Berkeley and 33 percent at UCLA...

...Like everyone else, he saw that when Proposition 209 went into effect, the number of blacks admitted to the University of California's selective Berkeley campus plunged 57 percent...

...Suppose we could exchange our current double-standard policies for a complete program of well-designed and wellfunded developmental affirmative action...

...strict application of the principle of qualification would send a message of despair to many blacks . . . . Glazer's reasoning, explained many times over in his articles, doesn't cohere into a position that's politically or morally compelling...

...The job of like-minded sociologists and economists is to spell out the better policies...

...Let's put personal relations aside and consider this: could it be that Loury's position poses a more serious challenge to the conservative credo...

...Are we willing, in the name of the principle of color-blindness, to accept this result . . . ?" Glazer describes his conversion in the New Republic (January 27, 1997...

...Glazer's elite, even with blacks added, is too small and too interested in self-perpetuation to provide the gateways...

...Diversity became a goal in itself: our institutions should reflect our diverse population even when we can't blame a lack of diversity on discrimination...

...What distinguishes it from preferential hiring or admissions, though, is that it takes seriously the fact of differential performance and seeks to reverse it directly, rather than trying to hide from that fact by setting a different threshold of expectation for the performance of blacks...

...Loury traces his thinking back through the 1980s, when he demonstrated how low income resulting from low social capital (family connections, cultural milieu, and so on) gets transmitted from generation to generation...

...The disparities between blacks and whites, he still argues, could continue indefinitely unless blacks receive special help...

...He states this fact but fails to discuss what specifically wilt help poor urban blacks--even though he calls their plight "the most intractable aspect of the racial inequality problem today...

...Instead of lowering standards, we should fund summer workshops, curriculum development at historically black colleges, and research assistantships for promising black graduate students...

...Our laws and customs and our primary and secondary educational systems will fully incorporate black Americans into American society, as other disadvantaged groups have been incorporated...

...then he calculates the bottom line: "In practical terms . . . the outside reputations of most blacks will be lowered, and that of most whites enhanced . . . ." Second, Loury argues that preferences can "undercut the incentive for blacks to develop their competitive abilities...

...Both say that California's draconian Proposition 209 provoked their rethinking...

...For them, discrimination against no one means special help for no one—end of discussion...

...That's the price of admission--don't wear your identity too heavily--although they don't hesitate to show their Jewish identification...

...He never suspected that an absolutist position on one principle might compromise others...

...My actual position hasn't changed," he told me, "but the emphasis has...

...On principle, we require a liberal democratic society to turn a blind eye to the race, color, religion, sex, and national origin of its members...

...he used words like "disincentives" and "crutch...

...As for women, "in academia the preference for women, now abetted by the women's movement, has become excessive . . . . The social status of African Americans is, however, "the most enduring reproach to the egalitarian ideals of American society...