Nearly 25 years ago, as the Young Lawyers Division (YLD) liaison member of the Council of the American Bar Association (ABA) Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities (IRR), I queried visiting civil rights lawyers about their cabined definition of "affirmative action." I did so several times, during 1989-1991.
Instead of helping poor kids get into college, they were advocating divisive, racist "race-based accounting" (a term I just borrowed from the academic literature on annexations in the south and southwest).
People resent that version of "affirmative action," and they have a right to do so. These civil rights lawyers' notion of "affirmative action" policies was focused exclusively on epidermal pigmentation. "How trite,"as my mother would say,
I often said "affirmative action" needs to target survivors of poverty.
Today's U.S. Supreme Court decision shows, sadly, that I was right.
It affirms a Michigan voter initiative banning racial considerations in college admissions.
Answer this hypothetical: Assume that there are two equally qualified applicants to a college or graduate school:
1. An African-American daughter of a millionaire New York physician.
2. A low-income daughter of an out-of-work rural Appalachian coal miner.
Pick one.
Now.
Which one would promote diversity on a college campus?
Not the rich kid.
The poor kid.
The one from Appalachia.
Who speaks for her?
Who in politics or journalism ever talks about poverty in America?
No one is speaking out for the poor, with few exceptions like Representative Alan Grayson.
Senator John Edwards talked about "Two Americas."
Who else?
Thank long and hard.
Today's colleges and universities are reportedly becoming bastions of the wealthy once again.
Full of rich kids -- white collar professonals, or "symbolic analysts" as Robert Reich called them in his book, The Work of Nations, are likely to be the children and grandchildren of symbolic analysts.
"Affirmative action" does nothing to change that fact.
If civil rights advocates weren't such uptight, stiff-necked, ideologues, they would have included parental income as a factor in "affirmative action."
Then it would have been popular.
Instead, they promoted "affirmative action" as a racial entitlement, not to remedy poverty.
They were selfish.
They were self-serving.
They were wrong.
Sadly, by leaving out parental income from "affirmative action" calculus and generally focusing exclusively on race, civil rights lawyers hurt true "affirmative action." They created a wedge issue. They hurt progress.
These civil rights lawyers didn't listen to logic.
I won't call them racists.
They are good people.
But they were narrow-minded and deeply insensitive to poverty, preferring to be interest group advocates for rote racial quotas, in effect, rather than remedying true disadvantages.
Sorry to have been so right so long ago, but these well-heeled, well-dressed, well-rehearsed civil rights advocates just did not listen to reason.
They thought they knew it all.
Well, apparently not.
It appears they did not read the Supreme Court's precedents, as I did, or count to five.
"Five votes."
That's what Justice William Brennan told his law clerks was "the most important thing about constitutional law."
The vote in this case was 6-2 (Justice Kagan recused herself).
Back to the drawing board, folks -- let's draft "affirmative action" policies that allow consideration and respect for people who overcome disadvantages -- poor and working class kids.
What do you reckon?
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