To the Editor:

In response to Carl Cohen’s “Race, Lies, and Hopwood” [June], let me say that as a liberal African-American professional I am more than a little angered by the charge that affirmative-action programs are responsible for bad relations between the races on campus. Colleges and universities have for decades been using various programs to achieve “diversity” on campus. Why is it that when colleges look for geographic diversity, no one raises the alarm, and when the children of alumni get special treatment, no one cries foul? The belief that blacks are inferior to whites existed before affirmative action. This belief has prejudiced relations between the races for well over 300 years. . . .

I am not in favor of any system that is racist, and affirmative action is not, as Mr. Cohen and others would like us to believe, a racist policy. Let us be truthful: by every socioeconomic measure the average black is at a distinct disadvantage compared to the average white. Does this mean there are not some blacks doing better than some whites? Yes, if you are comparing an upper-middle-class black with a lower-class white. If you compare upper-middle-class blacks with upper-middle-class whites, you will see that, in most cases, it still pays to be white. The picture for lower-class whites and lower-class blacks is not as clear, but, overall, poor whites still hold the trump card of race. . . .

Colleges and universities have used various means to discriminate against every group at one time or another, but when it looks as if blacks might be getting a little boost over whites, then it is an outrage.

Vincent M. Singleton
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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To the Editor:

Carl Cohen always refers to affirmative action with a qualified locution like “affirmative action, as it has come to be defined.” This is odd in two respects.

First, there never was a time when affirmative action did not mean naked racial preferences. There was a time when the preferences contemplated (by some) were “merely” special search and recruitment, a slight edge in selection, remedial training, and financial aid. But searching, sorting, training, and other transaction costs—not to mention below-market credit—are not free goods. From the beginning, these goods were to be distributed by race alone, not by disadvantage, . . . still less by “diversity.”. . .

Second, suppose, arguendo, that “affirmative action” once meant something truly different from, and less malignant than, naked racial preferences. What is accomplished by the qualifying phrase “as now defined”? Admittedly, in language as elsewhere, a good loser is apt to be a frequent loser. I admire Friedrich Hayek and Herbert Hoover for resisting the kidnapping of the word “liberal” by socialists. But after enough time the battle is over and lost. . . .

Whatever it may once have meant, “affirmative action” now means anti-white racial discrimination, anti-male sexual discrimination, and preferential treatment for members of American-Indian tribal associations, homosexuals, and persons with Spanish surnames. The more clearly that is understood, and rejected, the better. . . .

Opposing “affirmative action, as now defined” inevitably suggests support for “original affirmative action,” the latter inevitably understood as affirmative action “lite.” Since (I hope) that is not what Mr. Cohen means, the usage is bad rhetoric.

Roberto Alazar
Irvine, California

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Carl Cohen writes:

The anger expressed by Vincent M. Singleton is rooted in a common mistake that needs to be understood and avoided. Preference for the children of alumni, the quest for geographic diversity, and other such devices of university admissions offices cause little public dismay, he points out—but when blacks are given special preferences we hold these to blame for troubled race relations on campus. This shows, he suggests, that our present concern is due to “the belief that blacks are inferior to whites.”

It shows no such thing. The belief that one is inferior because he is black is false, a canard engendered by preferences. Any group given preference, in work or study, because of race (or any other characteristic that is not relevant to the doing of that work or the pursuit of that study) will perform (statistically) in an inferior manner. This has nothing to do with race or ethnicity; it has everything to do with the use of inappropriate criteria for selection. Whites chosen preferentially for some athletic team simply in order to achieve diversity will also tend to do poorly—not because they are white, obviously, but because they have been selected by a process that has been corrupted.

Blacks are a prominently visible minority; the children of alumni (and applicants from geographically remote regions) are not visually identifiable as such. If they were, and if special preferences were given to them as preferences are given to blacks, thus forging links between them and inferior performance, the relations between those minorities and the majority would also sour. If short people—also visibly identifiable—were given systematic preferences as applicants to medical school, a widespread distrust of short doctors would soon arise. Some “shorts” would perform magnificently, of course; but once “shorts” were known to be the recipients of special favor, none would escape suspicion.

Those who suppose that the well-being of blacks can be advanced by giving them preference in admissions and appointments in this way reinforce the vicious stereotype of inferiority. Short people may be thankful that universities have not done to them what they have done to blacks and Hispanics. Mr. Singleton is right to be angry; the the proper targets of his anger, however, are the designers and executors of racially preferential programs.

Roberto Alazar contends that all affirmative action, including even slight advantages and mild favors, is a form of naked racial preference. Why object only to affirmative action “as it has come to be defined,” he asks, and not to the whole kettle of fish?

The reason is that there really is a difference, moral as well as legal, between affirmative action that is racially preferential and affirmative action that is not. Mild preference is preference still; Mr. Alazar is right about that. But if, to eliminate racial preferences that may have been enjoyed earlier by whites, we take steps to uproot habitual unfair practices, seeking to recruit and appoint fairly, and so on, we engage in a form of affirmative action that is entirely honorable, fully in accord with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and with the Constitution.

The term “affirmative action” has been kidnapped, Mr. Alazar observes, the lexical battle lost. Why not recognize that “affirmative action” now means preference—and abandon the effort to distinguish between affirmative action as it is and as it was?

We ought not do that for two very good reasons. First, because the honorable varieties of affirmative action deserve recognition and support. Second, because if we confound the honorable and the dishonorable by assigning the same name to both, “affirmative action” will be defended, craftily, by pointing to instances of its meritorious practice. Then we, having ourselves obscured the needed distinctions, will seem obliged to reject what we ought to support, or to support what we ought to reject.

The distinction between affirmative action that involves racial preference and affirmative action that does not is of the first importance. Maintaining that distinction is unavoidably cumbersome, but there is no other way to be fair and to win the support of balanced minds.