The point of the analogy is to point out that it is a current crisis, not a potential one. It needs action and rectification now, to prevent further harm. People are being hurt right now by policies that may have ended de jure decades ago, but still have harmful lingering effects, not to mention that they are still de facto in place in too many places. Sure, we need to make sure things are up to code in the future, to prevent this from recurring, but the fire needs to be put out now.
While it is very true that we cannot go back in time to give the parents the kind of education and advantages they never had, that is exactly what we need to take into account. We need to realize that they were robbed of that education and advantage, and some sort of restitution needs to take place. We shouldn’t blame them for the environment that we created and benefited from.
How exactly that restitution should be enacted is very complicated, and needs more than any sort of blanket statement. Different areas and different people will have different needs. Ultimately, we need to find a way to essentially give them a middle class lifestyle, with a middle class upbringing, work ethic, and value on education.
White GI’s got back from WWII and were handed the middle class lifestyle on a platter, black people were denied this. It is our fault, not theirs, that they are in this situation.
The important part is whether someone codes white or non-white. For school admissions Asians and Jews typically code as white. In other instances (for example housing) these groups often code as non-white.
Forgive me, but I think you’re wrong. Here it is in Kendi’s own words, in which he clearly states that AA should be re-instated:
The repealing of quotas was only the beginning of the damage this case did to the antiracist cause in college admissions. Antiracist educators should be as passionately dedicated to repealing Regents v. Bakke as sexist evangelicals are to repealing Roe v. Wade .
Here again is Kendi in his own words for greater context (emphasis added):
The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. . . . The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.
That being said – here is my interpretation of his argument.
Standardized tests are held up as being Post Racial. The idea is, a standardized tests are an entirely objective way to find the most qualified kids in a batch of applicants so that we can admit people to schools in a fair and non racist way.
There are two pillars that must be upheld for this to be true:
Standardized tests are an accurate method of determining whether someone is qualified to attend our high end school
Standardized tests are race neutral
Kendi challenges both assumptions. He shows that standardized tests certainly don’t measure intelligence, and also seem to have little correlation with how well one does at college; rather, just like the test first used in the Ivy Leagues, it seems to measure how well one can take a standardized test. Students in affluent (and highly white, Asian, or Jewish) communities do better on these tests because their schools make them take the PSAT starting early in high school and offer practice tests and tutoring all the way till graduation.
So if the test doesn’t accurately find good college students, nor measure intelligence, and is in fact heavily biased towards some ethnic groups - worse, the same ethnic groups that the rest of society is also biased in favor of - is it doing its job?
I don’t think that outcomes tell us anything of the kind.
I might be persuaded to get rid of the test if it showed that it did not select well qualified students and/or selected students that failed to achieve expected outcomes. I think we can agree that it does not fail in that respect.
Now, we can argue about whether a test is the right qualifier or not but if not, then what are the better alternatives? I confess that I don’t know because I’m not an educator or a school administrator.
But if we agree that regardless of whether or not we test students, the evidence is clear that those from the lower end of socio-economic classes of society are failing to achieve the necessary aptitude for entry into institutions of higher learning, or not even applying at a proportional rate, well, I think that tells us where to focus our efforts and resources.
I’m not sure that we are disagreeing, or if we are, what we are disagreeing about. He was just using that as an example of how important it is, how much passion people should put behind it.
No I think he is arguing that wrongs have been done, and this is how to right them.
AA is discriminatory, by definition. The question is, is it the type of discrimination that is harmful, or helpful? He argues that it is the kind that is helpful, and unless you are looking at it solely from the perspective of an already privileged class, then I would agree.
There may be some white middle class student who has to go to one of his backup schools in order for a more disadvantaged minority to break out of the cycle of poverty. That may suck for the white middle class student, and they may feel as though they have been wronged, but it pales in comparison to the wrongs that were committed to get that white middle class student to where he was.
As long as there are finite spots available for education or employment, there will have to be choices made. And not discriminating in favor of the disadvantaged minority is continuing the harm that was done to their parents and grandparents.
In an ideal world, we would not have need of any such things as quotas or AA. Anyone could go to the educational institution of their choice, anyone could seek the employment and compensation they desired. We do not live in an ideal world, and so, if choices are not made that favor those historically disadvantaged, then that is perpetuating that cycle.
We either choose to continue the cycle, or we choose to break out of it. That’s what he is arguing, IMHO.
Here is my own interpretation; I dont agree with Kendi on everything or even most things, so I can’t tell you if he would agree or not.
There are many ethnic groups in our country, and their place in society is not and never had been equal.
Because of this, if you treat everyone exactly the same way, that is NOT equality. If one person is starving to death and another just finished a four course meal, and you give each of them half a loaf of bread, you are not treating them equally.
If you are having people try out for your track team, and one group gets to rest the night before the tryouts and the other has water splashed on them every 15 minutes all night, EVEN IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT, your tryouts aren’t fair.
So basing admission on standardized tests, well rounded extracurriculars, and a high GPA may find you the most qualified kids. Or it might find you the kids with the parents that can afford a cello, soccer lessons, and to spend every weekend with their kid at a parent-child volunteer program. Meanwhile bright inner city kids whose parents work multiple jobs dont have the same sort of opportunity.
I think we agree on the above. Where I believe we disagree is in how to level the playing field. My thoughts on it run as follows:
We did not get ourselves into the problem overnight
We should not be looking for ‘quick fixes’ that make us feel good to get out of it
This in no way should be interpreted as asking disadvantaged people to be patient for a while longer because real fundamental change is a slow and grinding process
This is not a problem that is going to be solved by insisting that wrongs will be righted if only white people acknowledge their privilege
Kendi’s approach is short-sighted in that it advocates for discrimination as a way to overcome discrimination, which in any other setting would be seen as highly problematic
While I’m not as far left as Sanders, I do agree with his insistence that tackling the economic scourge of poverty will also do much to aid our struggling minority communities. A widespread program to aid our poorest would be “discriminatory” in that it disproportionately favors black Americans, and this is a feature, not a bug.
At the same time, there is a hearts and minds problem as well. So while the problem won’t be solved “if only” white people acknowledge their privilege, that DOES have to be part of it.
It’s highly problematic because it challenges the orthodoxy. His case is a provocative one: racial discrimination isn’t, per se, a social ill. It’s a social ill when it tends to increase racist inequality.
Take a super-simple example. Let’s say that, last year, every black person in the country was charged an extra $100 in taxes, compared to white people. This year, I propose that every black person in this country receive a $100 rebate on taxes. My proposal this year is racial discrimination. But it’s designed to rectify past racial discrimination.
The real world isn’t quite that simple. It’s not the case that every black person in this country has suffered equal harm from racist policies, nor that every white person has accrued equal benefit. The real world is messy. The ideal policy to address racial harms will, with surgical precision, precisely rectify harms for each person who suffered harm. It will discriminate on the basis of harm, not on the basis of race.
But real-world policies are never that precise. We lack the political adroitness and acumen to make them so. If past discrimination was explicitly based on race and sought to harm people based on their race, sometimes the best we can do to rectify those harms is to create a policy that helps those same people based on their race.
Suggesting that racial discrimination is a harm in itself is to suggest that once racial discrimination ends, the harm ends. That’s clearly not the case. Racial discrimination is a cause of harm in many cases, not the harm itself.
As far as college admissions/affirmative action goes…
Whatever your race, religion, or political affiliation, I firmly believe one of the most important things a university education should do is radically challenge all of your beliefs. With luck, this will lead you to discard some beliefs, adopt others, and keep the rest, but learn WHY you hold them and fully think them through.
I don’t think College should necessarily led you to one belief over another, but it SHOULD ensure that by the time you are through, you’ve given your beliefs thought and consciously chose to keep them, rather than doing so through inertia.
One of the best ways for that to happen is for college students to interact with radically different people, from all walks of life.
So if, as argued, standardized tests aren’t measuring your objective potential to do well in school; and if their results reduce diversity at colleges – I maintain that this hurts everyone. The lower income minority kids who never got a chance, AND the high income white and Asian kids who don’t get to experience as wide a slice of life.
I agree… And because we agree, it would behoove us to act in a way that does not create a new class of harmed that will require subsequent acts of ‘atonement and reparation’.
so is Affirmative Action the best solution? I don’t know. Like I said, it’s not JUST about race. If 10% of the student body was African American, but they were all coming from extremely affluent backgrounds, I don’t know that this would actually increase diversity of thoughts, upbringing, etc at the school. So maybe have Affirmative Action targeting poor students instead of specific races; or maybe we weigh entrance essays about experiences faced by the student slightly more heavily, and the standardized test score and number of extracurriculars a little less heavily. Maybe instead of a checklist (Instrument? Check. Sports team? Check. Religious youth group? Check. Volunteer group? Check) we give preference to someone who REALLY focused on and showed passion for just one activity.
But so far, I haven’t seen such alternate proposals. I’ve just seen people who want to completely eliminate affirmative action, and who scoff at the idea that diversity at a school is a good thing.
I speak from experience when I say, those people are afraid that their children will abandon the ideas they hold once they put them up to scrutiny. And regardless of what your belief is, that’s just cowardly.
It’s impossible to even in theory create a world that is as good as it could have been without the harm, since it is a negative-sum game. The world is worse on average because people have not been allowed to achieve their full potential, not to mention the active racism that harms people to no one’s benefit. So the best we could even in theory do is have everyone suffer equally, and of course in practice you can’t even do that.
There is an excluded middle here. Not every white or asian kid is ivy league school material (most are not). Not every black kid has missed his or her opportunity to attend an ivy league school. Truth of it is, most kids are pretty average academically. Most colleges cater to academically average kids. Most of these kids go on to graduate and onto careers and achievements. There is plenty of opportunity for average college students to be exposed to other students from all walks of life. The average college and the experience and education that they offer are too often overlooked.
Exactly - so if a white or Asian student doesn’t get into an ivy league school, but has their pick of all the other universities in the US; and this student, phenomenal as they are, was an edge case for getting into the ivy league school; and the reason they didn’t get in is that a second student, who is black, and also an edge case for getting into the ivy league school, DID get in – I maintain that the harm done is relatively small (the Asian or White student still has their pick of other universities, after all) but the benefit is large (Yale doesn’t become an echo chamber with only upper class white, Asian, and Jewish students).
I say all this as someone who is Jewish and who went to a very heavily white and Asian school (not an ivy league school by any stretch!). And I can confidently say that my college experience would have been better if I had met a wider variety of people, because the variety I DID experience (immigrants from Central America and LGBTQ communities mostly) were huge to helping me grow up and understand the world outside my (White, Jewish, and affluent) bubble.
I think we spend too much time and effort arguing about the edge cases. We should care far less about which edge kid gets into an ivy league college by fiddling with quotas and focus much much more on getting socio-economically disadvantaged kids prepared and interested in going to college from a very early age. That is where society would get the most bang for their buck (as it were), not whether an asian kid attending Harvard is going to be sufficiently exposed to other cultures.
