To the Editor:

Arch Puddington’s article, “What To Do About Affirmative Action” [June], rightly says that any reform of affirmative-action programs must rule out racial preference altogether. The Supreme Court has since ratified this view as it applies to federal programs, holding that race-based set-asides in the construction business generally run contrary to the equal-protection clause of the Constitution, as well as to the original civil-rights goal of creating a color-blind society.

As former presidents of an institution that has played a central role in the civil-rights movement, and which, as do we, remains dedicated to the idea of the equality of all citizens, we cannot help wondering if the time has come for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), as well as other Jewish and non-Jewish community organizations, to reexamine, along the lines set out in Mr. Puddington’s article, their position in support of racial preferences—a position the AJC has held since 1977.

In the eighteen years since the AJC embraced goals and timetables as central to affirmative action, we have witnessed the unintended consequences of these programs. Our colleague and fellow honorary president, Alfred H. Moses, summed it up well at the AJC’s annual meeting last May:

Racial preferences mandated by law have created voting districts, goals, and timetables that in practice have become quotas. The result is a spirit of disillusionment among black and white Americans alike. Rather than bringing us together on issues of common concern, we are separated. The failure to see where our nation is headed on this issue of race will, I fear, haunt us for generations.

Racial bitterness and self-segregation were not the ends envisioned by Frederick Douglass, Hubert Humphrey, or Martin Luther King, Jr., and the other leaders and visionaries of the civil-rights movement. Nor do their past words and deeds suggest that they would defend what affirmative action has today become. Douglass, for one, derided quotas, mocking the idea of a racial Utopia in which “colored” people “should constitute one-eighth of the poets, statesmen, scholars, and philosophers of the country.” And none other than Justice Benjamin Cardozo commented that “competition is useless if favor may reverse the verdict.”

Hubert Humphrey, the floor manager of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, championed that historic law not as ensuring “some group’s power . . . but an equal opportunity of persons.” And as to the final version of the Act, Humphrey, as Mr. Puddington notes, promised to “start eating the pages one after another” if anyone could discover language “which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. asked that black Americans, as all Americans, be judged “by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”

Douglass, Humphrey, and King allied themselves with the American tradition of individual liberty, seeking to extend liberty to those to whom it was denied. And they would all likely agree that there is no reason in simple justice why a poor Appalachian white struggling with poverty should be denied an opportunity bestowed upon an upper-income black merely because of the accident of the latter’s birth in a more pigmented group.

Despite failures, the U.S. has been the best example of a working amalgam of race, color, creed, and ethnicity. The guiding star has been the equal treatment of persons as individuals. But in the last twenty years the pledge of equality for the individual has been undermined through a subterfuge by which goals and timetables function as de-facto quotas and attempt to achieve group results.

After a costly detour away from the principles of individual equality and toward group rights, America now seems prepared to reassert the tradition upheld by these men. We see this trend in recent Supreme Court rulings, in the growing popularity of the California Civil Rights Initiative, and in the thinking of estimable writers like Arch Puddington and a galaxy of independent-minded black thinkers like Stephen L. Carter, Thomas Sowell, and Shelby Steele. We hope that we will see it, as well, among our friends in human-rights institutions. It is not too late to recapture the first principle of American government and society.

Morris B. Abram
Howard I. Friedman
Honorary Presidents
American Jewish Committee
New York City

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To the Editor:

Dismantling what has become an article of faith such as affirmative action will not occur without a fatal blow from either the executive or legislative branches similar to the jolt that the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education dealt to de-jure segregation. . . . Unless a frontal political assault is made with unvarnished and unapologetic arguments marshaled in support of its demise, as Arch Puddington does in his timely article, affirmative action will remain an accepted and divisive practice.

Tinkering with affirmative action to perfect it, as some suggest to ensure that only those truly in need benefit, is not a realistic solution, either. Mr. Puddington alludes to this in his discussion of the alternatives to race-based affirmative action, such as relying on social or economic factors. These criteria must be rejected as well. Basing preferences upon socioeconomic classifications is still an artificial means of dividing otherwise equal people. If two candidates are equally qualified for a position in either a school or job, it is wrong to punish one for the success of his forebears. Is it not the dream of all parents to provide a better life for their children? . . . We have not, I hope, reached a point where success is now a criterion for punishment. . . .

Equally in need of reform is the legal basis for determining unlawful discrimination. There must be an end to adjudicating disparate-impact claims based upon numbers alone. Claimants of unlawful discrimination will need to prove that there is an unlawful intent behind the numbers and not that the numbers are sufficient evidence of unlawful intent.

Mr. Puddington . . . merely alludes to this principle in his discussion of standardized testing and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Griggs v. Duke Power, Inc. Griggs warrants more than a passing comment because it establishes the proposition that an examination of numbers alone can legally establish that unlawful discrimination is afoot. Affirmative action is the logical result of such reasoning. If the absence of a group in a particular position or institution is evidence of unlawful discrimination, then the presence of such a group in the appropriate numbers is a valid defense. Hence it all becomes a numbers game or, more precisely, the apportioning of benefits on the basis of immutable characteristics.

The history of affirmative action is evidence of the American people’s generosity; they viewed it as a means to rectify a wrong. They saw no injustice in taking affirmative steps to encourage the participation of people who were previously denied access to the American dream. But now they see that the experiment did not work as intended and is creating exactly the opposite result, namely, otherwise qualified and hard-working people striving to succeed are stopped . . . because they are not the right race or sex. Institutions and employers are preyed upon by government and private claimants because they do not have the right mix of the right classes of people. In an effort to defend themselves against being labeled racist or sexist or against unbearable costs of litigation and potential damages, institutions preemptively create elaborate affirmative-action bureaucracies to practice what they purport to abhor: discrimination on the basis of race and sex.

Notwithstanding its good intentions, the experiment has failed. The generosity that permitted affirmative action to flourish in the first place is now being replaced with principled opposition, such as Mr. Puddington’s article.

Robert S. Nayberg
Flushing, New York

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To the Editor:

There is no one public issue more responsible for my own ideological move rightward than affirmative action, which Arch Puddington so ably analyzes in his article. . . . But permit me to add a more personal note to the discussion; my experience, I suspect, is one that is shared by a good many other Americans.

I had the good fortune to grow up in one of the least racist or race-conscious environments possible. We were diverse when diversity wasn’t cool. I lived in an integrated neighborhood in Englewood, New Jersey, from the time I was five years old (circa the mid-1960’s), and attended integrated schools which were majority, though not overwhelmingly, black . . . from kindergarten through sixth grade. In this environment I saw smart whites and smart blacks, dumb whites and dumb blacks. It never would have occurred to me that blacks as a group needed special treatment or privileges or set-asides. Not only did my parents and others in authority tell me that race did not and should not matter in judging individuals, they operated on this principle as well.

These days, although I fight the impulse, I catch myself more and more often making judgments about people based solely on race. For example, whenever I encounter a black professional or manager, the thought that almost immediately comes to mind is that the person has obtained his position or success by way of quotas and set-asides, not individual merit or effort. . . .

Of course ours is still not a colorblind society, but the issue is whether affirmative-action programs have been moving us in that direction. It should by now be obvious that they have not, and that our government and other institutions should not tell us that it is wrong to make decisions about people based on race and then turn around and do exactly that. . . .

Joseph W. Pueschner
Houston, Texas

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To the Editor:

Arch Puddington writes that an “unusual amount of political determination” will be required to end racial preference in hiring and promotion. I am pleased to inform readers of COMMENTARY that here in Canada’s largest province, Ontario, we are witnessing such determination under a newly elected Conservative government.

Ontario has just gone through a tragic era of socialist governance which put in place, among other things, race- and gender-conscious hiring laws. In fact, government-mandated quotas were so intrusive that even private companies which had payrolls in excess of 50 employees were required to adhere to “numerical goals.” . . . The consequence of such policies was the massive defeat of Ontario’s socialist party, the New Democrats.

Now it is time for Premier-elect Mike Harris to follow through with his election commitment to fair hiring and the triumph of merit over any form of discrimination.

Richard Simson
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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Arch Puddington writes:

Many thanks to Morris B. Abram and Howard I. Friedman for their generous words of support. I must say that I have always regarded Jewish organizational endorsement of racial-preference programs with some astonishment. After all, although there is no hard evidence on the effect of preferential policies on Jews, it would seem logical to assume that Jewish students seeking admission to elite universities and Jewish scholars denied college-teaching positions reserved for “diversity” appointments rank among the chief victims of these policies. Moreover, Jews have been the targets of a kind of intellectual intimidation exercised by supporters of affirmative action who claim that black anti-Semitism is a justifiable reaction to the opposition to preference expressed by some intellectuals who happen to be Jewish and, occasionally, by Jewish agencies. As a non-Jew, I say all this with some hesitation. But it does not seem out of place for me to note that Jews have never benefited from social policies which select winners and losers on the basis of race, nationality, or religion, and that in some instances such policies, and the emotions they generate, have had catastrophic consequences.

Robert S. Nayberg makes an important point in reminding us of the critical role played by the disparate-impact theory in promoting the spread of racial preference. It is, therefore, unfortunate that much of the discussion about “reforming” federal affirmative-action programs has concentrated on the various set-aside schemes that give minority- or female-owned businesses an advantage in securing federal contracts. Although more blatant in their promotion of racial and gender preferences than other preferential programs, set-asides have affected a relatively narrow segment of the population. By contrast, disparate-impact theory affects every major employer and thus a substantial proportion of the workforce. And by placing in jeopardy any employment criterion that leads to a racially “unbalanced” workforce, the notion of disparate impact has greatly contributed to the perception that the civil-rights agenda is the adversary of standards.

Mr. Nayberg is also right in asserting that a political response, rather than judicial action, will be required to resolve the affirmative-action controversy. To be sure, the most recent Supreme Court decisions have clearly made preferential policies more difficult for the federal government to justify. But these decisions have been cautiously drafted and narrowly applied, thus making it likely that we will see a further flood of litigation brought by alleged victims of both discrimination and reverse discrimination.

In addition, opponents of affirmative action who are tempted to let matters be resolved by the Courts should keep in mind that the unpopularity of racial preference derives in part from its having been imposed by the judicial system, the least democratic branch of government. A thoroughgoing public discussion of racial preference will not be pleasant, but clearly a decision made through the normal democratic process of debate and legislative action will be more acceptable, possibly even to affirmative-action supporters, than one handed down by unelected judges.

Joseph W. Pueschner’s experience is significant. My impression, based both on personal experience and on anecdotal evidence, is that young white people today tend to be less supportive of affirmative action than their parents while at the same time enjoying friendlier, more natural relations with young people of other races and cultures. They are not bigots, nor are they responding to an environment of envy and greed. They are well aware of the ugly facts of American racial history, having spent many hours learning about them in school. But they regard the idea of handing out social benefits on the basis of race as monumentally unfair and unwarranted. While commentators have viewed the reactions of so-called “angry white males” as the driving force behind the anti-affirmative-action movement, it is this younger generation’s hostility to preference, based not on anger but on common sense and notions of fair play, which may in the end prove crucial.