Multiculturalism is driving us apart

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 1996 by Linda Chavez

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IN THE NAME of eliminating discrimination, we continue to pursue policies that define people by color. In schools and universities, at work, at the polling place, even in the courts, race is an important, sometimes deciding, factor in admitting students or devising curricula, hiring or promoting employees, determining political representation, and selecting a jury. It is not only a few white supremacists who promote such policies, but mainstream civil rights advocates as well.

The crux of the complaint against quotas or other forms of racial or ethnic preferences is that they force both benefactors and beneficiaries to elevate race and ethnicity in importance, which is fundamentally incompatible with reducing racism. It is not possible to argue that race or ethnicity alone entitles individuals to special consideration without also accepting that such characteristics are intrinsically significant.

Those who promote preferential affirmative action programs argue that race and ethnicity are important because they are the basis on which individuals have been, and continue to be, discriminated against. Setting employment or college admission quotas, by this reasoning, simply is a way of compensating for the discrimination that blacks, Hispanics, and some other minority groups face on the basis of their skin color.

However, most programs that confer special benefits to racial and ethnic minorities make no effort at all to determine whether the individuals who will receive them ever have been victims of discrimination. Indeed, the government regulations that govern Federal contractors state explicitly: "Individuals who certify that they are members of named groups (Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Pacific Americans, Subcontinental Asian Americans) are to be considered socially and economically disadvantaged."

Such programs are not compensatory, but presumptive; they assume that race equals disadvantage. While there are many blacks, Hispanics, and Asians who have been discriminated against on the basis of their race or ethnicity, there are many others who have not, and still others for whom the discrimination either was trivial or, even if more serious, had no lasting consequences.

In 1995, at Indiana University following a debate in which I opposed affirmative action, a group of black and Hispanic students approached me to complain that I was not sensitive enough to the discrimination they said they faced daily on campus. I asked them to give me some examples. Only two spoke. The first, a young black woman, told me her father was a surgeon who makes more than $300,000 a year, but that her economic status doesn't protect her from the prejudice of her teachers. When I asked her to describe how that prejudice manifested itself, she said none of her professors would give above a "B" to any minority student. I pushed her a little further, asking whether that meant that a student who scored 98% on an exam would be given a "B" rather than a deserved "A." At that point, she dropped the issue with a dismissive, "You just don't understand."

A second student, a Mexican-American woman, said that she has to deal with discrimination every day. She cited as an example that her Spanish teacher expects her to do better than the other students because she is presumed to know Spanish. I was sympathetic with her frustration, since I am aware that most third-generation Hispanics speak only English--like third-generation Italians, Jews, Germans, and other ethnic groups in the U.S. Nevertheless, although being presumed to speak your ancestral language may be annoying, it hardly constitutes pernicious discrimination.

In fact, what ethnic or religious minority has not suffered its share of slights and prejudices? Certainly, Jews and Asians have faced significant levels of bigotry at certain points in their history in the U.S. Jews often were the victims of private discriminatory actions, and Asians historically were the target of both private and state-sponsored exclusion and bias. The Chinese, for instance, were not allowed to become citizens, own property, or enter certain professions, or even to immigrate at all for certain periods of time. During World War II, Japanese-Americans had their property confiscated and were removed forcibly from their homes and interned in camps in the West. Nonetheless, despite persistent discrimination, these groups, on average, have excelled in this society, and it is difficult to argue that they are entitled to compensatory, preferential affirmative action on the basis of any current disadvantage.

It is true that blacks and, to a lesser degree, Hispanics are far more likely to face present disadvantage, some of it (though a declining share) the result of past discrimination. Again, though, many affirmative action programs make little effort to distinguish among potential beneficiaries on the basis of actual disadvantage, preferring instead to rely on race or ethnicity per se in awarding benefits.