Sitting on the family porch 60 years ago, in 1963, I found myself engaged in a heated conversation about the then-emerging notion of race-based, affirmative action. Dr. Ken Clement, a prominent black physician, political activist, and family friend, and my mother, a prominent mental health worker and political activist, were arguing in favor of it, against me, who doubted its wisdom. Everyone knows their side of the argument, and many people imagine mine. But I had no dog in the fight; then completing my second of four degrees—first, a BA; second, an M.Ed.—, I did not worry that anyone would take my place at the graduate level. I had three reasons for doubt. I expected whites to think themselves the victims of reverse discrimination and to resent it. I expected program supporters to partly justify its discrimination as pay-back for past discrimination against blacks (the idea of reparations was not then in vogue). And I expected the programs to yield underwhelming results. I did not see undisputed goods justifying dubious means.
Six decades later, no one has won and no one has lost the argument. The jury is still out. Undeniably, on average, the black population as a whole is better off now than it was then. But how much, if any, of that improvement can be attributed to race-based, affirmative-action programs no one knows. I know that one program at The University of Michigan got off to a bad start. During my five years there for two more degrees (an M.A. and a Ph.D.), the university admitted a number of intelligent, promising, but poorly educated inner-city Detroit blacks. Despite varied and vigorous efforts to help them adjust to a predominantly white student body and a small-city campus, and to overcome a deficient education, many struggled, dropped out or failed, and, I suspect, carried with them feelings of failure, shame, and perhaps anger.
What affected me were gender-based, affirmative-action efforts. When, in 1973, I entered a suddenly very tight and distorted job market for any English Ph.D., especially a white, male Shakespearean, the faculty consensus was that if only one graduate got a job that year, I would be the one. I did not. Because of gender-based, affirmative-action efforts, the SUNY Albany English Department was determined to hire a female assistant professor in my field from my department. It interviewed four women classmates, all less qualified than I, for the position. None initially seemed good enough. I was finally invited for an interview, but my host advised me that the dean was determined to hire a woman. She made the interview most unpleasant, and I learned that I was not going to be hired only when I heard that one of the four was finally selected. She went on to have a good career; since she was a friend of mine, I was and remain happy for her. However, she never seemed comfortable when we met at scholarly conferences.
Although my initial reaction was, of course, great disappointment—I had already published and been recognized as a distinguished teacher—, I never resented gender-based, affirmative-action efforts. I thought them unwise, if only because they denied me and other promising male would-be professors the chance to do in their fields and for their students what past achievements promised for the future. But I accepted the nation’s decision that such efforts were necessary, though unfair from a meritocratic perspective. I am glad that they have done women, black as well as white, much good, but I worry that their effect on many males is one of the causes of malaise among recent generations and counting of many males, white males especially.
My good fortune, thanks to a superb and, in the jargon of the day, well-rounded public-school education, was to have many arrows in my quiver. Because of strengths in math and science—I had enrolled in engineering physics at Cornell (but switched ASAP to the liberal arts)—, I developed a successful career as an independent consultant in defense, energy, environment, mainly. I retired to another successful career as an independent scholar in my field. Both careers as consultant and scholar were infinitely superior to any career which I might have had institutionalized as an English professor.
But what about others? Few have been as well schooled as I was. I know that, in the rush to find candidates to satisfy their affirmative-action efforts, many higher-ranked colleges did as Michigan did and enrolled students unready for college-level studies at their level. I hope that such sad consequences are infrequent today. But the taint of being an “affirmative-action baby” still casts a shadow on the accomplishments of those who have benefitted from those programs. An obvious case: Justice Clarence Thomas. Throughout his professional and personal life, he has suffered under that shadow. His judicial opinions seem designed to repudiate every liberal achievement as punishment of that persuasion for that shadow. His conduct, from marrying a white woman (OK by me) to accepting large gifts from wealthy, white men to feigning incompetence in filing or filling out the requisite paperwork, seems designed to scorn liberal establishment norms. Thomas is an extreme, but others likely share his grievance and resentment.
Yet the recent SCOTUS decision eliminating race as a factor in admissions seems a reasonable one. Even with its benefits, the percentage of blacks in institutions of higher learning (12.5%) remains lower than the percentage of blacks in the population (13.6%). This result after five decades of race-based, affirmative-action programs suggests their limitations; their educational benefits have not outweighed their social costs. Increased race-based, affirmative-action admissions cannot compensate, as Michigan learned, for a poor education. The implication is that, if minorities are to get a fair chance at a college education, they must first have a far better education than what they are getting today.
I speak not just of inner-city blacks. I speak also of any-size-town Hispanics. In New Mexico, only about 25% of all students can read and compute at the fourth-grade level. What that means is that 75% of students are weak, probably irrecoverably weak, in the fundamentals on which they must build in later grades and have for careers, not mere low-skill jobs. Obviously, state government is content with the silent discrimination of a persistently lousy public education most adversely affecting the large minority student population. But all students, especially minority students, need affirmative action, that is, action which affirms their right to an education ensuring proficiency in their subjects by implementing it. It has to begin with a reality check: the curriculum in most subjects is incomplete or incoherent, and most K-4 teachers are incompetent and uncommitted to teaching it. (Increasing the salaries of current teachers will not improve their teaching.) The sop to Hispanic and other minority parents is the pitiable affirmation of diversity, ethnicity, and identity—dead-ends in a meritocratic economy and a society increasingly stratified by education and resulting wealth. In that economy and society, New Mexico looks again to rank last.
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