Balancing Black and White
ROBERTS, STEVEN V.
Balancing Black and White_ The Bakke Case: The Politics of Inequality By Joel Dreyfuss and Charles Lawrence III Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 278pp. $8.95. Justice and Reverse Discrimination By...
...Whites object to affirmative action when it favors minorities, yet raise no cry about admissions policies that kowtow to the wealthy and well-connected...
...In Justice and Reverse Discrimination, Alan H. Goldman—a white male Jew, just like this reviewer—avoids specific cases and advances an abstract theory of moral justice...
...But Dreyfuss and Lawrence, like many black activists, equate the Supreme Court's compromise with defeat...
...What is the price of progress, and who pays it...
...Only a black and white decision—or rather, a black over white decision—would have satisfied their demands...
...Special treatment means that someone else, someone white, is going to get hurt...
...Bakke won his battle, but in arguing that he should have lost this book makes some telling points...
...Either whites become victims, or blacks remain victimized...
...Today, that legal structure is just about gone, but the dilemma of race is still here...
...272 pp...
...Allan Bakke's middle-American "social status," the authors contend, "had at least as much to do with his exclusion as race...
...While the result is a dense and difficult essay with little interest for the general reader, his conclusions merit attention...
...To take one example, the authors deride the notion that "qualifications" mean very much when it comes to admissions or employment decisions...
...The authors of The Bakke Case are both black—Dreyfuss is a writer, Lawrence a lawyer—and theirs is a clearly black perspective...
...Worse, the minorities who would probably benefit from generalized affirmative action are those already enjoying advantages —the judicial offspring, not the janitorial...
...I have talked to dozens of admissions officers around the country, black and white alike, and virtually without exception they have learned that "qualifications" and "competence" are very real and important concepts...
...Blacks still rank near the bottom on every index of well-being...
...If whites do not pay a large price, they conclude, far costlier than whites now seem willing to pay, the race problem will remain unsolved...
...Thus the central questions posed by these two new books: In promoting racial minorities, how much injury to the majority is justified...
...The white author would probably argue that it stresses race too much and demands too great a sacrifice...
...In fact, the word is included, along with "competence" and "reverse discrimination" in a list of "code words" for what they call "the New Racism...
...As Joel Dreyfuss and Charles Lawrence III put it, "To make a place for those underneath clamoring for a share of the rapidly dwindling privileges of affluence, some members of the majority would have to give way...
...Reviewed by Steven V. Roberts Washington reporter, New York "Times" Twenty-five years ago this spring, the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, the first explosive charge in the demolition of the legal structure of racial discrimination...
...As a result, most professional schools now feel that their affirmative action programs have been ratified...
...Without a doubt, the specter of "qualifications" has often been used to disguise racial bias, yet that is not the same as saying they have no meaning...
...There could be no resolution without injury to one side or the other...
...To the black authors, the Bakke decision does not stress race enough, and does not demand enough sacrifice from whites...
...Not surprisingly, each book gives different answers...
...Dreyfuss and Lawrence focus on the story of Allan Bakke, the white engineer who complained that affirmative action had kept him out of medical school...
...16.50...
...The only persons entitled to the benefits of affirmative action, Goldman argues, are specific victims of discrimination...
...Here was a potential victim who fought back, and the authors should not really be shocked that he did...
...When the Supreme Court ordered Bakke into medical school, it also said that race could be used as a factor in admissions decisions...
...The problem is not that the tests are biased, it is that the pool of minority students who are able to complete professional school remains sadly small...
...The Court, it would appear, probably struck a good balance...
...The true victims, those who are on the bottom, would continue to get left out...
...One notable exception was Wade McCree, the Solicitor General of the United States, whose original brief in the case, interestingly enough, tended to favor Bakke...
...Blacks and other racial minorities need affirmative action, special treatment, in order to achieve equal status...
...By offering a black perspective on a critical subject, this book performs a genuine service, but that strength is also a weakness...
...After all, as they rightly point out, the Bakke case had as much to do with economics as race, and the rallying cry of "reverse discrimination" "was nothing less than a reaction to competition from minorities at the middle class level...
...Since Bakke involved a white male suing the white male administrators of the University of California, blacks were virtually excluded from the debate...
...To my mind, at least, some of its key arguments are unper-suasive and plain inaccurate...
...Blacks, say the authors, were "suspicious" of the white male lawyers who defended the university, and they don't think the attorneys did a very good job...
...Justice and Reverse Discrimination By Alan H. Goldman Princeton...
...But special treatment, as opposed to neutral treatment, goes far beyond the issue posed by Brown and raises a much more difficult controversy...
...This brute fact has spawned the argument that removing the legal vestiges of bias was not enough...
...Moreover, they have learned, often from painful experience, that standardized tests often measure at least the minimum abilities needed to complete a job or course...
...If all minorities, children of judges as well as janitors, are offered special treatment, Goldman feels this would be unfair to whites...
Vol. 62 • July 1979 • No. 14
