Matthew Yglesias (May 14, 2008) - Obama and Affirmative Action (Domestic Policy)

Are there no blue-collar, white-working class people in Iowa, Maryland, Virginia, Vermont, Kansas, Washington, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Colorado and the 30+ states that Barack won?

Or, in these 30+ states that Barack won, are there only high-class, surburban people of leisure, college graduates and African-Americans?

And, is that what Someone wants us to believe — that in the 30+ states Barack has won, that there are no blue-collar, white-working class people in any of those states? I thought that white people were a majority in America, not a minority. I don't think we should allow ourselves to be Fooled Again!

Posted by Angellight | May 14, 2008 8:43 AM

Racial preferences will have to be ended one day (just consider the alternative). But people like Kaus who think there never should have been affirmative action, even in the immediate aftermath of a century of apartheid, can eat a fat one.

Posted by kth | May 14, 2008 8:46 AM

Ok, what's with that parenthetical? Obviously, it's correct, but this is bald-faced Petey-baiting.

Posted by jhupp | May 14, 2008 8:47 AM

To reverse the slide, blogger Mickey Kaus suggested...

And that's where I lost interest.

1992 was 16 years ago. For a lot of people like Kaus, Clinton's shtick and ultimate victory reinforced all the things he already believed, and they've wanted to duplicate that magic every year since then-- "who do you want to publicly repudiate the liberal base with?" is the equivalent of "who do you want to have a beer with?" for these guys. The political landscape is a lot different now than it was in '92, and there's no reason to think that pandering to the Kauses and Scheibers of the world will pay electoral dividends.

Posted by Tyro | May 14, 2008 9:00 AM

In college I had the same view as you: make affirmative action class-based, because aren't some white people disadvantaged too? And while I do think that we should have policies that promote lower class education and extend the sphere of viable jobs, it shouldn't be done at the expense of blacks. I'm surprised that you still think that after living in DC. Surely you can see that good jobs disproportionately go to white commuters, while the black residents primarily fill the low-skill jobs. There will be a time to move past race-based affirmative action, but now is not the time.

Posted by eriks | May 14, 2008 9:00 AM

One day soon the Supreme Court will strike down race-based admission policies anyway. In Grutter v. Bollinger, decided in 2003, the Court upheld Michigan Law School's affirmative action policy by the narrowest of 5-4 margins. O'Connor was the swing vote and Kennedy voted against it.

Next time the issue comes before the Court, it is almost certain to go the other way. I'm not sure how this factors into the election-year political dynamics for Obama, but that is the reality.

Posted by owenz | May 14, 2008 9:06 AM

Here's what Sister Souljah said in 1992 after the LA riots:

"If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?"

What was "silly" about Bill Clinton criticizing that, Matt?

Posted by Ron | May 14, 2008 9:09 AM

But shifting from the current system of affirmative action to one with a firmer grounded in actual socioeconomic disadvantage would, especially paired to a broader critique of other dimensions of privilege (legacy admissions, etc.), be the right thing to do on the merits.

"Actual socioeconomic disadvantage" != "economic class"

There's no question, from basic social scientific research, that being non-white and non-male and non-straight and cis-gendered constitutes socioeconomic disadvantage.

Shifting entirely to "class-based" affirmative action would leave millions out in the cold, particularly women.

I certainly agree that a finer-grained affirmative action could be more productive, but I think that just shifting the grain from race to class, as Kaus and others suggest, would be massively counter-productive, and while perhaps not right up there with "Souljah" as a straightforwardly racist plea, not a good thing on the merits.

Posted by DivGuy | May 14, 2008 9:09 AM

Somebody somewhere in the lib-blogosphere expounded a while back (TAP? TPM?) on why class-based preferences were an excellent but insufficient remedy for ongoing socio-economic injustice and discrimination (obviously--viz. yesterday's feature in the Post on Obamaites' confrontations with racial reality). I spent some time last month trying to find it, to no avail. Help, anyone?

Sounds about right to me--by all means, let's give everybody born downstairs a leg up out of simple fairness--but what's the frame for discussing the deep-rooted, perhaps hard-to-remedy cultural and social apartheid that still reigns in many American walks of life?

Posted by elle loco | May 14, 2008 9:22 AM

Re: Shifting entirely to "class-based" affirmative action would leave millions out in the cold, particularly women.

Why? If they’re poor they’d qualify for help. If they’re rich they don’t need it.

Posted by JonF | May 14, 2008 9:25 AM

One day soon the Supreme Court will strike down race-based admission policies anyway.

I'm not a lawyer, so can someone explain to me what the rationale would be to eliminate race-based admission policies while allowing legacy-based admission policies?

I agree with everything in Matt's post, except the assumption that Obama might do what he wants. My impression from his race speech and his first book (which I'm 1/3 of the way through) is that he has very liberal views about race and would be against ending race-based affirmative action.

Posted by Jim W | May 14, 2008 9:29 AM

I have sympathy for the idea and it's probably good politics, but like DivGuy I would prefer to go to something fine-grained. However, even though Obama is running, AA doesn't seem to be that high salience an issue right now with the war and the economy in a mess. Right now AA is more of a 1990's early post-Cold War culture fight, much like welfare reform.

"What was "silly" about Bill Clinton criticizing that, Matt?

Posted by Ron | May 14, 2008 9:09 AM"

For one thing, IIRC she wasn't saying "let's go kill some white people for a change," she was describing the mentality behind the rioters (of course, I might just be remembering this incorrectly). To give an example, I was once on a train reading a book for a class on the Holocaust (I think by Saul Friedlander) that was describing the mentality behind Nazism. Since the author was getting into Nazi's heads, the language used would make it seem to someone that just peered over my shoulder that the author was advocating the Holocaust. However, the author was a Jewish scholar who had dedicated their life to cataloging the horrors of the Holocaust. Sista Souljah was doing something similar here. Her sentence wasn't prescriptive, but descriptive. In addition, Clinton just decided to bring the issue up for no real reason at a NAACP event to triangulate. No one else had even been talking about it. Sista Souljah wasn't exactly the world's most high profile rapper at the time (saying the intro to "By the Time I Get to Arizona" isn't exactly the makings of the next Chuck D), so she wasn't exactly on people's minds the way major stars that have gone on bigoted tirades recently like Michael Richards or Mel Gibson were. It was opportunism at work on Clinton's part.

Posted by Reality Man | May 14, 2008 9:30 AM

Why? If they’re poor they’d qualify for help. If they’re rich they don’t need it.

And if they're middle-class and get passed over again and again by middle- and upper-class men for promotions, they can just suck it up, I guess?

Again, class != socioeconomic disadvantage. Discrimination by race and gender and sexuality is very real, and just removing that from affirmative action would be profoundly counter-productive.

Posted by DivGuy | May 14, 2008 9:31 AM

1) I think that by the time you get to college age, it's too late to intervene and to make up for years of mental deprivation.

2) It's probably better to make a strong effort to improve K12 education in poor school districts --rural as well as urban, white as well as black -- and then let college selection remain competitive. With a broad base of college offerings for most people.

3) There is also a real need to ensure that hard work by youths will be rewarded. It stupid to bitch about poor US performance in math and science, to encourage kids to work themselves into the ground for years to get an engineering degree --only to tell them their reward is to compete with low-paid imports from China and India

4) Meanwhile, their goof-off peers who couldn't solve a calculus problem if you held a gun to their heads -- and who spent most of their school years drunk and getting laid -- go off and get well-paid jobs scamming widows out of their savings with cold calls about something called derivatives.

5) You want to keep your comfy lifestyle? Solve the energy problem. You want to solve the energy problem? Then reward those who do REAL work -- and fire the lying shitheads like Dick Cheney who got you into this mess.

6) But you won't do that , will you? You would rather vote for the most crooked people on the planet just because they jerk you off once every four years by pandering to your prejudices.

Posted by Don Williams | May 14, 2008 9:33 AM

"If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?"
What was "silly" about Bill Clinton criticizing that, Matt?

You are so perceptive, Ron! I bet when you read "A Modest Proposal," you were filled with rage that Swift could openly advocate cannibalism and still be respected as a writer!

Posted by James Gary | May 14, 2008 9:33 AM

I keep reading this suggestion--they make it sound like it's a shift in Obama's thinking. I seem to recall him specifically saying these things during an earlier debate.

Posted by natthedem | May 14, 2008 9:36 AM

I don't think Affirmative Action should change. Rather than "shifting" to socio-economic affirmative action, it would be best if the government and private donors boosted aid to colleges so that poorer students do not have to hesitate before they apply. Its a shame that only places like Harvard have the money to make such a change.

Part of the purpose of Affirmative Action is imply to ensure that we all learn and understand the differences between us- That whites, blacks, asians, muslim, jews, women, handicapped, gays all can speak and communicate with each other without hesitation. That is the vision the supreme court outlined in Grutter, and I think it is the right one. We continue to live in a multi-racial society, and as such, until our "multi-racial-ness" ends, I am unconvinced affirmative action should.

Posted by DQ | May 14, 2008 9:37 AM

Shifting entirely to "class-based" affirmative action would leave millions out in the cold, particularly women.

Women currently receive 60% of all bachelor's degrees in the United States - and that number is growing, not only at the undergraduate level, but at all levels of academia. Women are better students and are therefore getting admitted more frequently than men across the board. Accordingly, there is no basis for government-based affirmative action that preferneces women over men in college or graduate admissions.

Are women paid disproportionally lower salaries than similarly situated men in the workforce? Yes. But are we really going to solve this private-sector problem by putting even more women in public colleges and universities? Their admissions advantage over men is already dramatic.

Race-based admission programs are premised on a lack of minority access to higher education based on historical and socio-economic factors that have resulted in minority students performing worse than their white peers academically. In contrast, women drastically outperform men academically. So you are talking about apples and oranges when you try to compare gender and minority-based admission preferences. Beyond the rather dramatic distinction between race and gender under Equal Protection, the problems women and minorities face are different: minority students face problems accessing higher education...while women excel at accessing higher education, but struggle to achieve equal pay in the private sector.

In sum, changing race-based public education preferences to class-based preferences would have very little impact on women, who already excel at the admissions game as a class.

Posted by owenz | May 14, 2008 9:37 AM

I'm not a lawyer, so can someone explain to me what the rationale would be to eliminate race-based admission policies while allowing legacy-based admission policies?

The general rationale is this: Alumni have lots of money. The students who would benefit from affirmative action do not.

Posted by James Gary | May 14, 2008 9:38 AM

Re: Discrimination by race and gender and sexuality

Discrimination based on race is very real, I agree, and needs to be dealt with. I'm dubious as to whether there is much discrimination against women anymore in 21st century America. As for discrimination based on 'sexuality', I don't think a sincere religious belief that homosexuality is wrong counts as discrimiantion.

The basic division in our country is based on wealth and economic class, not race, gender or anything else.

Posted by Hector | May 14, 2008 9:38 AM

Here's what Sister Souljah said in 1992 after the LA riots:

"If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?"

What was "silly" about Bill Clinton criticizing that, Matt?

It was silly because no one knew who Sister Souljah was, and very few people would have even been aware of her statement if Clinton hadn't made a big production out of criticizing it.

Also -- and this is just a surmise on my part -- it was silly because the statement was likely not intended to be a serious suggestion, but was intended as partly a joke, and partly a criticism of black-on-black violence.

But really the silliest part of the whole thing is what a fuss the press has made about this -- all of us political junkies talk about a "Sister Souljah" moment like it was an important event -- is there really even any reason to believe that it made any difference at all in the 1992 campaign?

Posted by peep | May 14, 2008 9:40 AM

Are women paid disproportionally lower salaries than similarly situated men in the workforce? Yes. But are we really going to solve this private-sector problem by putting even more women in public colleges and universities? Their admissions advantage over men is already dramatic.

Affirmative action is not limited to college admissions.

It's quite clear that women no longer get an AA advantage in college admissions, so what you're talking about is beside the point anyway. I'm - I think obviously by talking about hiring and promotion practice - talking about affirmative action in the workplace.

Posted by DivGuy | May 14, 2008 9:41 AM

James Gary,

I meant, what is the legal argument for saying one form of discimination is not allowed whereas another form is. I didn't mean the real, cynical reason.

Posted by Jim W | May 14, 2008 9:41 AM

I'm not a lawyer, so can someone explain to me what the rationale would be to eliminate race-based admission policies while allowing legacy-based admission policies?

Admission based directly on race is subject to strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause as it constitutes discrimination based on membership in a protected class. The only case, to my knowledge, that a distinction based purely on race that has been held up is Korematsu (Japanese internment case). Legacy admissions, which are based directly on a relative attending school, because it distinguishes on the basis of something other than race, gender, ethnicity, or national origin, is subject to rational basis inquiry. There is seemingly nothing that doesn't pass muster under this.

An argument can be made that legacy admissions disproportionately privilege whites and disproportionately disadvantage everyone else. For constitutional inquiry, this is irrelevant (See Washington v. Davis). The Supreme Court has really never embraced such statistical realities except in the most exceptional circumstances (See Yick Wo, circa 1896) because of the slippery slopes to which it leads. For instance, Washington v. Davis was a challenge to standardized testing of police officers prior to being commissioned. Results showed that blacks were disproportionately likely to pass, whereas whites were. The court, quite unequivocally, refused to strike down the practice in a 7-2 decision absent a discriminatory purpose. That is, there must have been substantial, material evidence that a practice was adopted to promote a discriminatory purpose.

No matter how cynical you are, I think it goes without saying that legacy admissions are intended to benefit alumni, who tend to reciprocate with considerable charitable contributions and other in-kind benefits to the university.

Posted by nvs | May 14, 2008 9:46 AM

This seems to be quite a threatening briar patch.

AA is an attempt to remedy the injustices accumulated over centuries of detrimental bias based on race or gender. Virtually all conservatives would agree that these biases existed even as they argue that nominal removal of bias is sufficient justice.

Class-based AA would suggest that the accumulation of injustice is not ONLY the consequence of racism or sexism but is a fundamental feature of our social-economic system.

Posted by apm | May 14, 2008 9:46 AM

When you look at the empirical data the problem looks overwhelmingly cultural. Why is it that poor Asians (who are not white) rise so quickly through the education system and labour market? Obviously they too face the problem of having less wealth (at least initially) and not being white. Of course this does not mean it is not more difficult for blacks and minorities only that a solution that creates an equality of outcomes doesn't seem very effective or sustainable. Personally I would prefer to see higher funding in pre-university education to improve the equality of opportunities.

Posted by Gordon Gekko | May 14, 2008 9:50 AM

I know Don Williams means well, and I am all in favor of improving our pathetic K-12 standards/variability of educational quality nationwide. But I would caution against seeing all who come out of subpar institutions and underperform on standardized tests as damaged goods. In my experience, when people have native intelligence, even a mediocre education (in terms of cultural capital and exposure to AP-level curricula, etc.) gives them an adequate platform for excelling in the more pragmatic world, despite never acing their bubble-tests. Studies of law and med school graduates show conclusively that "affirmative action babies"--once/if they manage to obtain their degrees--go on to have marked success professionally on average. And I have been floored to learn how poorly some acquaintances from less-privileged backgrounds have done on grad-school-qualifying exams, when I know from extensive experience that they are sharp as tacks, can kick my ass on the NYT Sunday crossword, etc.

Posted by elle loco | May 14, 2008 9:51 AM

Correction: In the explanation of Washington v. Davis above, the challenged practice led to blacks disproportionately failing, not passing, than whites.

Posted by nvs | May 14, 2008 9:51 AM

I agree with this post, but it’s easy to see why Obama campaign people would think its pandering; the whole point would to make grumpy (presumably largely racist) white people feel better.

Nonetheless, the critical thing is that race based affirmative is incurably doomed, if the system can be revised in manner that makes it more sustainable then it really needs to be changed.

Posted by Christopher Colaninno | May 14, 2008 9:53 AM

race based affirmative is incurably doomed

And has been a for thirty years! just a long denouement, I guess.

Posted by DivGuy | May 14, 2008 9:57 AM

I'm not a lawyer, so can someone explain to me what the rationale would be to eliminate race-based admission policies while allowing legacy-based admission policies?

It is pretty straight-forward, actually.

There is a perverse logic at work: in the wake of the civil rights movement, the Supreme Court interpreted the Equal Protection Clause to require the application of the "strict scrutiny" standard to any law (or government policy) that discriminates on the basis of race. The Equal Protection Clause was created as a specific remedy against white racism against blacks in the Civil War era, and the Court's strict approach to striking down racially discriminatory law was a direct result of the civil rights movement. In other words, "strict scrutiny" was employed to prevent racism.

Conservatives have taken this body of law - which says "laws that discriminate based on race are bad because they are racist" - and turned it on its head, using the same standard to strike down laws that benefit minorities. With respecto to affirmative action, they exploit Equal Protection to argue that race-based admission policies should be judged just as harshly as, say, a law that bars blacks from voting.

Liberal justices have long argued that it ludicrous to evaluate policies that seek to remedy racism using the same standard designed for overtly racist laws...but this rather obvious argument appears to have lost. O'Connor was the swing vote on this issue - and with her off the bench, the Court will probably ban all race-based admissions soon.

Posted by owenz | May 14, 2008 9:58 AM

nvs, here's why everybody hates lawyers: go look in the mirror. Nihilist, sneering swine.... Might, plus a whole lotta BS, makes right, baby, and screw all the little people.

Posted by elle loco | May 14, 2008 9:59 AM

Be very, very careful: you all are once again rubbing the turd lamp and soon the Chris Ford / Steve Sailer djinns will appear!

Posted by El Cid | May 14, 2008 10:00 AM

"Be very, very careful: you all are once again rubbing the turd lamp and soon the Chris Ford / Steve Sailer djinns will appear!

Posted by El Cid | May 14, 2008 10:00 AM"

See, this is why we can't have nice things... I mean discussions. And everything was going so well...

Posted by Reality Man | May 14, 2008 10:06 AM

I'm not a lawyer, so can someone explain to me what the rationale would be to eliminate race-based admission policies while allowing legacy-based admission policies.

As for the legacy-based admissions, nvs correctly states the law (haha, in rather lovely lawyer-speak). The distinction is that affirmative actions policies specifically target race...while "legacy" policies apply to alumni of all races, and are not generally designed for a racially discriminatory purpose. True, the legacy admission candidates might be disproportionally white...but the policy itself does not state a racial preference on its face the way an affirmative action policy does, nor are most legacy policies created or applied with a specific "discriminatory purpose" in mind.

This might seem like a silly distinction, but it makes some sense when you look at various employment sectors in which one or more minorities are under-represented for any number of reasons (a lack of qualified minority candidates is most common). The court requires that the lack of minorities be a result of actual discrimination...rather than relying on statistics alone.

In sum: the logical and legal analysis for evaluating a policy that specifically benefits one race over another versus one that just happens to benefit one race over another is completely different.

Posted by owenz | May 14, 2008 10:16 AM

Here's my kind of guy. I'm sure that Mr. Yglesias will not be buying any of his tee shirts.

http://gothamist.com/2008/05/12/apollo_braun_de.php

Posted by SLC | May 14, 2008 10:23 AM

race based affirmative is incurably doomed

How so? As America's racial makeup changes, the constituency that benefits from AA increases, while the constituency that pays for it decreases. How in the world is that a recipe for AA's doom? Incoherence, sure, but doom?

Posted by TheOtherCyrus | May 14, 2008 10:28 AM

I fully support the SLC kind of guys wearing such T-shirts, as it saves me the time of getting to know someone and judging on an individual basis whether they are fools or not.

Posted by El Cid | May 14, 2008 10:28 AM

I'm not sure as "doom" is the right word, Cyrus, but recent Supreme Court rulings have been very hostile to race-based affirmative action. Any President wanting to keep giving historically disadvantaged people a hand up should keep that in mind, as there's no guarantee the Court will change any time soon (especially under a Democratic President).

Posted by Persia | May 14, 2008 10:35 AM

Doomed? I don't know personally.

But the legal precedents are relentlessly beginning to tilt against it.

Also, as racism is increasingly being percieved as fading away the willingness of the populace as a whole to support AA (which is lets be honest here a good intentioned form of reverse discrimination) is diminishing rapidly.

The world is changing. AA was once seen as an unmitigated enlightened good. More and more now it's beginning to be viewed as a racist in of itself and a form of rent seeking by specific minorities that is genuinely harming not only the majority but also other minorities.

Threading the needle on it all should be interesting.

Posted by Minnesota | May 14, 2008 11:00 AM

How so? As America's racial makeup changes, the constituency that benefits from AA increases, while the constituency that pays for it decreases. How in the world is that a recipe for AA's doom? Incoherence, sure, but doom?

Again, it is simple: the last major Supreme Court decision on affirmative action upheld the practice on the narrowest possible grounds, and Sandra Day O'Connor was the swing vote. Justice Kennedy opposes affirmative action. O'Connor has been replaced with a Scalia-clone and, as far as I'm concerned, that is that. The next time the Supreme Court deals with the issue, they will ban government-based, racial admission programs completely.

Affirmative actions may live on in some limited form, but the major component we all know - academic admissions - will be gone.

Posted by owenz | May 14, 2008 11:06 AM

ANY attempt to modify affirmative action needs to address our racially segregated K-12 system.

The thing that worries me about virtually every "class based" approach to AA I've ever seen is that it pretends that bias only starts when you're handing in your college apps. There's something really sick about a society that ignores systematic educational biases for the crucial first 18 years of life, but freaks out about mild compensating ones at the college level (where most of the people who really needed help have given up on the system anyway).

It doesn't help that inequality in our K-12 system is racial rather than class-based because poor whites are still much more residentially integrated with middle-class whites than poor blacks are. It's a lot easier for a poor white family to "free ride" on a nice suburban (or sometimes even rural) school than it is for a poor black family to do so, particularly if that poor black family starts out in a city center.

Posted by NS | May 14, 2008 11:18 AM

Uh. Affirmative action isn't even on the radar. Why would be bring it up?

Posted by Jay | May 14, 2008 11:20 AM

Uh. Affirmative action isn't even on the radar. Why would he bring it up?

Posted by Jay | May 14, 2008 11:21 AM

I agree with Jay. It's not clear to me why our side thinks race-based AA is, or ever will be, a winning/popular argument. To anyone that has applied to college/grad school and not received one of their top choices, the specter that it was based on someone getting a leg up for some factor such as race/ethnicity is real. Whether it's legitimate or reasonable is a completely separate issue, and one about people can make incessant arguments. But the point is that the number of Democrats that support race-based AA is consistently over-estimated.

Posted by nvs | May 14, 2008 11:34 AM

I guess I see the legacy based admissions as a more cut and dry issue:

If you're a private college/university, you can use just about any criteria of admission that you want. If you want to admit only black people, or only people whose parents went to your school, go right ahead.

If you're a public college/university, then you're subject to constitutional limits in preferential admissions. This is where legacy admissions and race based admissions are analogous.

Posted by Jay J | May 14, 2008 11:57 AM

I'm not sure as "doom" is the right word, Cyrus, but recent Supreme Court rulings have been very hostile to race-based affirmative action.

Because race-based affirmative action is as available to an immigrant as to the descendants of slaves from the antebellum South, the underlying political conditions in favor of race-based affirmative action are likely to strengthen. The Supreme Court can swim against a political tide only for so long. To the extent that whites remain wealthier on average than non- whites, and there's little reason to believe this is going to change anytime soon, the calls for affirmative action will only grow louder as more people stand to benefit from it. This isn't a question of principle, but elementary who/whom, zero-sum ethnic politics. This will influence the legislative climate, and the academic, and as if by magic, new justices on future courts will find arguments for race-based affirmative action much more persuasive than they were to a court appointed at the tail-end of a backlash.

"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do."

Posted by TheOtherCyrus | May 14, 2008 12:00 PM

"I tend to think so as well, and have been hopeful that this might happen at some point"

If we had refocused affirmative action on class, you would have never ended up in Harvard: (1) you have "fancy-pantsy" New Yorkers for parents and (2) you're not too bright, highly educated, sure, but not too bright, so you probably wouldn't have gotten into those schools early on in your life without a push.

But typical Yglesias, trying to make room for himself in the conversation simply by being the "contrarian liberal." That or you're just trying to remove the ladder after using it yourself.

Yes this post presumes many things about Yglesias, but he does the same on a daily basis, so I'll be as unkind to him as he is to others.

Posted by Israel | May 14, 2008 12:10 PM

1) I think there is a big blind spot in this discussion -- which explains why liberals have a hard time recruiting the support of blue-collar whites.

2) We've talked a lot about past discrimination of women and blacks. But from the viewpoint of blue-collar males, those two groups have been greatly PRIVILEGED for the past 200 years.

Neither group has had to fight in combat. Even today, women are not subject to being drafted into the combat arms. That danger became real for black males only relatively late in the day --during Korea and Vietnam.

3) By contrast, blue collar males have been cannon fodder who have died in every war we've had in the past 240 years. And have gotten little to nothing in return.

White men died to make African-Americans free -- few black males fought in the Civil War.

Women here have a great deal more freedoms than they do in other parts of the world -- but that is by the GRACE of white males, not something women fought for and seized on their own. (White males don't consider running your mouth "fighting" ).

4) To some extent, the problems of blue-collar males are their own fault -- the result of their culture.

Scotch Irish males value personal independence -- so they shun political organizing that more successful groups use to demand fair rewards.

The warrior code of honor and integrity does not make one well suited to be a corporate middle manager. One who urges his subordinates to work themselves into the ground -- and then tosses those workers out on the street when he needs to cut costs. One who succeeds as much by knifing his peers in the back and kissing the butts of his superiors as by anything resembling honest work.

5) There obviously is a negative side as well -- loyalty to tribe quickly becomes racism. Why else would an entire generation of Southern men die --and leave their families penniless -- in order to protect the property of wealthy Tidewater aristocrats who had screwed white sharecroppers for decades?? Protect property that 2 out of 3 Confederate soldiers were too poor to own?

And there's probably no group that is more stupid when it comes to manipulation by appeal to ego.
What other cultural praises the "Hard Worker" who works himself into the ground even though he receives a shitty wage -- rather than focusing upon how to improve his lot.

Posted by Don Williams | May 14, 2008 12:16 PM

shifting from the current system of affirmative action to one with a firmer grounded in actual socioeconomic disadvantage would, especially paired to a broader critique of other dimensions of privilege (legacy admissions, etc.), be the right thing to do on the merits.

I don't agree with that at all. There are all kinds of appropriate ways to help the poor; but in my opinion, affirmative action is only appropriate for victims of widespread identity-based discrimination such as Blacks, American Indians, Latinos, Muslims, and women.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 14, 2008 12:22 PM

He wouldn't use it as a campaign issue. But, major changes to affirmative action will come through an Obama administration.

Posted by Colin | May 14, 2008 12:26 PM

On Sista Soujah,

We can argue about whether we know exactly what she meant, but all we have are her words, which may contain some ambiguity.

But I mean, at the very least, her comments were ill-thought out and hyperbolic, right?

Perhaps Bill Clinton was being opportunistic, but so what? Can't we evaluate his comments on the topic without worrying about his motive?

The idea that criticizing someone who speaks as polemically as Sista Souljah is "racist" is one more reason why my previous understanding that I was a leftist was incorrect.

BTW, I knew who Sista Soujah was, and I have no way of knowing if I was one of the only people who knew who she was. What is obvious, though, is that a type of socially hostile gangsta or black nationalist rap was in vogue in certain circles in the early 90's, and it's popularity was not confined to underground or urban areas. Once again, the idea that calling these forms of "art" out on the carpet is racist or at all inappropriate is one of the many reasons I'm not a cultural liberal.

For some evidence of the types of things Sista Souljah might say or mean, here's a little clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HpiD5H3KCE

I suppose it's racist of me to point out that her video appears to have been made by a racist and/or demagogue?

Posted by Jay J | May 14, 2008 12:37 PM

If you're a private college/university, you can use just about any criteria of admission that you want. If you want to admit only black people, or only people whose parents went to your school, go right ahead.

I disagree...somewhat. The Civil Rights Act broadly prohibits race-based discrimination by recipients of federal assistance. So if your school takes federal money (and nearly all of them do), it would likely run into trouble with the courts for an overtly racist admissions policies designed to exclude minorities.

That said, there is no question that private schools have considerably more latitude when it comes to admissions, and I don't know of any cases of private school affirmative action policies being successfully attacked by white students.

Posted by owenz | May 14, 2008 1:12 PM

natthedem is right, and Colin probably is. To eliminate race as a factor in admissions would be as wrong as to eliminate geographic location or the many other elements of a kid's background colleges consider, for reasons of history, fairness and.student-body diversity. But Obama has more than once said that he doesn't think his own kids or others similarly privileged should get any particular benefit from any affirmative-action programs. Just one more instance of Obama's reality-based judgment.

Posted by rj | May 14, 2008 1:21 PM

Good point owenz.

I guess there may be some harmony between this topic and the case where several universities disallowed Army recruiters on their campuses.

It seems like if you thought that these universities shouldn't be allowed to do this, on account of the federal money they accept, then you must believe that these same institutions are subject to federal law or the constitutional opinions of the Supreme Court on preferential admissions of any type.

I know politically, and perhaps even morally, most people want to leave the black colleges (HBC's) alone, (meaning, let them do as they wish), but don't these schools consciously keep their racial numbers where they are?

Posted by Jay J | May 14, 2008 1:21 PM

When anti-affirmative action initiatives get on the ballot, they tend to do well. They passed in California, and more recently in Michigan, despite a well-funded advertising campaign opposing it. Liberal organizations realize that since affirmative action is so unpopular, their best chance at stopping these referendums is to keep them off the ballots in the first place. So far, they have succeeded in keeping anti-affirmative action referendums off of this November's ballots in Missouri and Oklahoma. They failed to keep one off the ballot in Colorado, and ballot initiatives in Nebraska and Arizona are still pending.

Posted by Fred | May 14, 2008 1:47 PM

And a black politician would be the right person to lead the charge -- the current system isn't sustainable over the long term and it would be much better to see it dismantled by someone with genuine concern for social justice than to go down at the hands of someone intent on fanning the flames of racial resentment and then leaving every other inequity in the education system unchallenged.

Matt's argument sounds a lot like the recent argument of two critical race legal scholars, Guinier & Torres, in "The Miner's Canary". The idea is that we should use race as an analytic tool for fundamental social injustices that are made apparent by race, but also extend to class. For instance, black activists energized about the lack of equal educational opportunities and inequities for blacks are naturally some of the first people we can count on to make broader critiques about access to educational hierarchies that are unfair across the board, across wealth, race, and gender. They argue that nonwhites are more prominent in social justice movements because being nonwhite in America tends to produce an "oppositional consciousness".

I tend to think they are right, and in that sense it is not difficult to understand the preference among blacks for Obama's candicacy. Clinton has been presenting herself as someone who is very adept at the game of zero-sum power. She's tough, she's a fighter. She sells her candicacy on the basis of her personal characteristics. The idea is that if you elect someone with the right qualities, you'll have a powerful insider who can get things done for you.

That message just doesn't have much traction among the social justice community, especially blacks. I think this has much to do with the disappointing results of strategies that have focused only on affirmative-action and other forms of "tokenism". These access strategies have allowed a few folks from marginalized groups to obtain insider positions of prominence, but have not generated improvement for the vast majority, and may actually be inefficiently sapping the political will of the social justice movement. (This is not to say that the social justice community does not support affirmative action -- only that they insufficient on their own).

Obama speaks much more in the language of systemic change, and this more than skin color explains his ability to garner black votes. His campaign strategy must account for the game of zero-sum electoral politics, to be sure, but his campaign does have the hallmarks of the organizer interested in going beyond zero-sum access strategies: create new locuses of power so that once insider status is obtained, we will not be beholden to the same regressive constituencies that prevented social change in the past. Hence the focus on building grassroots infrastructure, ditching lobbyist money, etc. This is what was being sized up when black voters were initially skeptical of Obama, unsure of whether he was "black" enough -- they were evaluating whether he was going to be able to shift gears from the purely access-based strategies of the past that had left the progressive community hanging high and dry by eliding race, focusing only on class, and in the process immobilizing the constituencies that had the most potential as allies for social justice projects.

This is the same reason social justice activists, especially those organized around political race identities, are generally not as enthusiastic about Clinton's campaign. I, for one, am highly skeptical that personal attributes of toughness or experience are enough for any particular power-holder to create progressive change. Personality constraints on power-holders are not the kinds of constraints that are holding back progress. Getting into office but owing your political fortunes to the pharmaceutical lobby, on the other hand, is a serious constraint.

Which is all to say that I think Matt has the right idea here: affirmative action needs to be part of a higher-order strategy for alleviating fundamental socioeconomic wrongs.

Posted by StJoe | May 14, 2008 1:57 PM

Lani Guinier personifies the uselessness of race-based affirmative action (not that I think class-based affirmative action is much more promising). She is the daughter of a Jewish mother and a Jamaican academic; she is the sort of 'black' person who gets helped by affirmative action at elite schools such as Harvard. Too few actual African Americans (i.e., the folks AA was intended to benefit in the first place) have the aptitude to make it through an elite college even if they were given preferential admission. They'd be better off if Dems focussed on policies that offer better earning opportunities for high school grads.

For example, limiting illegal immigration could raise wages for construction jobs (during the next expansion in residential construction), and opening up some of the 85% of the outer continental shelf that's currently off-limits to energy exploration would create a lot of high-paying jobs in the energy sector.

Posted by Fred | May 14, 2008 2:11 PM

Of course affirmative action is not a full employment program for minorities, and I agree that if that's the rationale, it is useless. Focusing on giving one group a boost in the competition for wealth and privilege, however justified by historical imbalance in that competition, is foolish if it leads you to ignore the fact that those opportunities for wealth and privilege are shrinking. While Guinier is an example of how affirmative action may fail to benefit people who lack wealth, she also represents for me the most salient reason to continue affirmative action in higher education: Institutions of higher education do not exist just to create gateways to personal wealth -- they also train people who will hold power and influence over the rest of society. Affirmative action is supposed to augment the representation of people who lie on any axis of oppression, race or gender or class, so that schools are more likely to graduate leaders who will be attuned to race, class, and gender-based wrongs. Of course, that strategy doesn't work if the political survival of those leaders depends on them satisfying the same regressive sources of power that generated and tolerated those wrongs in the first place.

Posted by StJoe | May 14, 2008 2:39 PM

Democrats would probably be better off if the Supreme Court did abolish race-based affirmative action. It's quite toxic for our political coalition. I've often suspected that Nixon backed affirmative action for precisely this reason.

Speaking of toxic, I was wondering if anyone shares my college experience. Because the school was known to be admitting a number of black students as an affirmative-action measure, the general assumption was that all black students were unqualified to be there until they showed you otherwise. Nobody felt particularly aggrieved by this, since a current student hadn't been personally harmed by the policy, obviously. But it sure looked to me as if affirmative action was driving the races further apart rather than bringing them together.

Posted by AlanC9 | May 14, 2008 3:58 PM

AA will be not be needed within the next 15 years, or so said the all knowing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Posted by Tommer | May 14, 2008 5:43 PM

It is with great reluctance that I find myself in agreement with Mr. Don Williams relative to the screwing over of low income white males in this country. I think it is clear that affirmative action should be focussed on economic inequality, not race or gender. I also agree in part with Mr. Fred that as currently implemented, affirmative action tends to favor middle class minorities. People like Neil Tyson, from a middle class background have no need of such a program.

Posted by SLC | May 14, 2008 7:01 PM

Why in the world is "Never gonna happen" surprising?

"Never gonna happen" was obvious from Obama's 1995 autobiography. It's his story of "race and inheritance."

He's devoted what part of his career that he has spared from self-promotion to using political power to take from whites and give to blacks: becoming a black organizer, running a black voter registration drive, joining an anti-discrimination law firm, and running in mostly black districts on black concerns.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 14, 2008 7:54 PM

Let's also be clear that anybody who thinks a class-based system of affirmative action will lead to anything like the current level of representation of blacks in elite institutions is living in a dreamland. The bottom ten percent of white students in socio-economic status score as high or higher on the SAT than the top 10 percent of blacks in socioeconomic status.

The huge little secret of affirmative action is that the African-Americans who benefit from it tend to come the upper levels of American society. Dumping a race-based system for a class-based system would benefit whites overwhelmingly.

Heck, as Lani Guinier and Henry Louis Gates have been complaining for years, a majority of blacks at Harvard are only pseudo-African Americans, of recent white or immigrant background -- like Obama. Or Guinier, for that matter (she's half Jamaican-half Jewish and looks like Gilda Radner), but she's honest about it). The descendants of American slaves are mostly out of luck at getting into Harvard already. Under a class-based system, affirmative action beneficiaries like Michelle Obama would be totally swamped by smarter, harder working white and Asian kids from the same lower-middle class background as her.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 14, 2008 8:09 PM

Let's also be clear that anybody who thinks a class-based system of affirmative action will lead to anything like the current level of representation of blacks in elite institutions is living in a dreamland. The bottom ten percent of white students in socio-economic status score as high or higher on the SAT than the top 10 percent of blacks in socioeconomic status.

The huge little secret of affirmative action is that the African-Americans who benefit from it tend to come the upper levels of American society. Dumping a race-based system for a class-based system would benefit whites overwhelmingly.

Heck, as Lani Guinier and Henry Louis Gates have been complaining for years, a majority of blacks at Harvard are only pseudo-African Americans, of recent white or immigrant background -- like Obama. Or Guinier, for that matter (she's half Jamaican-half Jewish and looks like Gilda Radner), but she's honest about it). The descendants of American slaves are mostly out of luck at getting into Harvard already. Under a class-based system, affirmative action beneficiaries like Michelle Obama would be totally swamped by smarter, harder working white and Asian kids from the same lower-middle class background as her.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 14, 2008 8:11 PM

Surely you can see that good jobs disproportionately go to white commuters, while the black residents primarily fill the low-skill jobs.

Gosh, why could that be? Discrimination is the only possible answer.

Posted by Glaivester | May 14, 2008 8:17 PM

Obama's wife has been in the affirmative action racket for years, running various well-paid "diversity" programs at the U. of Chicago medical center. So, Sen. Obama knows exactly how little affirmative action does for poor blacks; he knows how it's a payoff for affluent blacks like, say, the Obamas.

The idea that Obama would divert this gravytrain is ridiculous. The only reason he ever feints in the direction of non-racial quotas is because he knows how ridiculous affirmative action for the rich sounds to the naive public.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 14, 2008 9:58 PM

Steve,

There's no affirmative action in Paulville.

Only the blood, sweat and tears of honest to god hard working salt of the earth folks - just like you! - who've never benefited from any government program, initiative or had anything handed to them because of his/her race.

Considering that, I'm surprised you're not more excited to be relocating there. They'd love you. Besides, you can make some extra $$ ghost writing for the good doctor when Lew has to take a (totally non-government mandated) sick day. In addition to your gig as minister of racial purity, you'd do quite well.

When are you leaving?

Posted by SoCalJustice | May 14, 2008 10:12 PM

People forget that, even in 1992, Sister Souljah was a relatively marginal rapper who was mainly viewed as a hanger-on to Public Enemy. I remember reading Spin magazine before the "Sister Souljah incident," and her one album got horrible reviews, not for racial reasons, but because it was bad hip-hop. I don't have 1992 poll data handy, but I don't think the incident would have hurt Clinton with black voters all that much. In 1992, a lot of older black people hated rap music just as much as older white people did. Some older black voters may have actually approved of Clinton's denunciation of Sister Souljah, similar to how Bill Cosby goes off on a tangent these days about black youth who wear baggy trousers.

Posted by jonp72 | May 15, 2008 12:41 PM

Under a class-based system, affirmative action beneficiaries like Michelle Obama would be totally swamped by smarter, harder working white and Asian kids from the same lower-middle class background as her.

What is this based on? Do you know what Michelle Obama's SAT scores were? Or are you just making stuff up?

Posted by Jim W | May 15, 2008 12:54 PM

JimW asks:

"What is this based on? Do you know what Michelle Obama's SAT scores were? Or are you just making stuff up?"

I love these kind of questions!

3-2-1-Kaboom:

Michelle Obama was educated at the top public high school in Chicago, Whitney Young, which only accepted the highest scoring applicants on the entrance exam—within each race. Time reported in 1975:

"… the $30 million Whitney M. Young Jr. High School will open as a magnet in the fall with—among other things—an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a special center for the performing arts and a separate curriculum for medical studies. Whitney Young also has a strict admissions quota: 40% white, 40% black, 10% Latin, 5% other minorities and 5% at the discretion of the principal."

Michelle was overshadowed by her smart and athletic older brother Craig Robinson, who is now the head basketball coach at Brown University of the Ivy League. Newsweek's cover story recounts:

"For Michelle, Craig's easy success was intimidating. 'She was disappointed in herself,' her mother tells NEWSWEEK. 'She used to have a little bit of trouble with tests …'"

Her poor performance on tests remains a sore point with Michelle, who brings it up in odd contexts, such as when discussing her husband's standing in the polls last November:

"You know, [I've] always been told by somebody that I’m not ready, that I can’t do something, my scores weren’t high enough."

Newsweek describes her career at Whitney Young:

"… but she was not at the top of her class. She didn't get the attention of the school's college counselors, who helped the brightest students find spots at prestigious universities. … Some of her teachers told her she didn't have the grades or test scores to make it to the Ivies. But she applied to Princeton and was accepted."

Not surprisingly, just as Thomas Sowell would have predicted, four years spent in over her head among white liberal elitists who see themselves as better than the rest of America because

(A) they loudly proclaim their belief in equality; and

(B) they have above average IQs

left Michelle's sizable but fragile self-esteem in tatters. Suffering the self-consciousness common to the young, she felt that everybody was secretly putting her down for her intellectual shortcomings, and focused her anger on whites. Newsweek says:

"There weren't formal racial barriers and black students weren't officially excluded. But many of the white students couldn't hide that they regarded their African- American classmates as affirmative-action recipients who didn't really deserve to be there."

Ironically but inevitably, Princeton's diversity sensitivity programs just exacerbated Michelle's racial paranoia:

"Angela Acree, a close friend who attended Princeton with Michelle, says the university didn't help dispel that idea. Black and Hispanic students were invited to attend special classes a few weeks before the beginning of freshman semester, which the school said were intended to help kids who might need assistance adjusting to Princeton's campus. Acree couldn't see why. She had come from an East Coast prep school; Michelle had earned good grades in Chicago. "We weren't sure whether they thought we needed an extra start or they just said, 'Let's bring all the black kids together'."

Princeton racialized Michelle's consciousness. She majored in Sociology and minored in African-American Studies. Newsweek says:

"Michelle felt the [racial] tension acutely enough that she made it the subject of her senior sociology thesis, titled "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community." The paper is now under lock and key … (Today, Michelle says, not quite convincingly, that she can't remember what was in her thesis.)"

Hilariously, the Princeton website where all her classmates' senior theses are made freely available for the edification of humanity until the end of time listed hers as being "Restricted until November 5, 2008," which just happens to be the day after the election.

Newsweek went on:

"Michelle wrote that Princeton "made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before." She wrote that she felt like a visitor on the supposedly open-minded campus. "Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton," she wrote, "it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.""

On Friday, the Obama campaign released her thesis. Here's a highlight, in which the potential First Lady explains how much she wants to be, well, "Black first:"

"These experiences have made it apparent to me that the path I have chosen to follow by attending Princeton will likely lead to my further integration and/or assimilation into a White cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant. This realization has presently, made my goals to actively utilize my resources to benefit the Black community more desirable."

Now, I, for obvious reasons, am not in the business of criticizing other people's punctuation. Nor do I think that anybody's glorified term paper is all that important.

Yet, because the candidate himself has made sure to leave such a minimal paper trail from the 1980s and 1990s (one immense autobiography and a single op-ed, according to Lexis-Nexis), anything that casts light on the Democratic frontrunner's personal views on crucial issues is needed.

Predictably, the same feelings of personal and thus racial inadequacy manifested themselves when she got into ultra-competitive Harvard Law School on another quota. The Newsweek reporter explains:

"At Harvard, she felt the same racial divide. … 'She recognized that she had been privileged by affirmative action and she was very comfortable with that,' [friend Verna] Williams recalls. Michelle recalls things differently. … Her aides say Michelle earned her way into Harvard on merit by distinguishing herself at Princeton."

When she graduated from HLS in 1988, she was hired by the high-paying Chicago corporate law firm Sidley Austin (which, perhaps not coincidentally, posts a 2,000-word statement describing their "Commitment to Diversity" on their website).

One problem remained: the Illinois bar exam. It appears that in 1988 she either failed it or was unready even to try it. She eventually passed and was admitted to the bar in May 1989, almost a year after graduation. (In contrast, her husband was admitted only a half year after graduating from Harvard Law School three years later).

There's nothing shameful about failing the bar exam. Hillary Clinton, for example, failed the Washington D.C. bar exam. According to blogger Half Sigma, 19 percent of applicants failed the July 1988 Illinois test. But, whiffing even once is not the kind of thing that is supposed to happen to Harvard Law School students. (Similarly, Hillary only told her Yale friends that she passed the Arkansas bar exam; she kept covered up until 2003 that she had failed the D.C. exam.)

Being admitted to the bar is public, so word of Michelle's no-show on the list of new lawyers likely spread among her old Harvard classmates in late 1988, leaving another wound upon her pride. If, however, she'd gone to the kind of law school where graduates frequently take a few tries to pass, she would have felt better about herself and less bitter at the white race.

After a few years at Sidley Austin, she let her law license lapse and began working as go-between for Mayor Daley's Machine. She enjoyed the kind of vague but well-paid career made possible by affirmative action. The description on the candidate's website of what exactly she's been doing for the U. of Chicago Medical Center is eye-glazing but ultimately revealing: she's in the diversity racket.

"She also managed the business diversity program. Michelle has fostered the University of Chicago's relationship with the surrounding community and developed the diversity program, making them both integral parts of the Medical Center's mission."

With great power comes great rewards. A couple of months after her husband was sworn in as U.S. Senator, Michelle's salary at the Medical Center was raised from $121,910 to $316,962.

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/080225_michelle_obama.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 4:18 PM

Obama and Affirmative Action

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