January 30, 2003
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A vaguely incoherent Jurisprudence article at Slate, in which Elise Boddie argues that those who oppose affirmative action plans because they disadvantage whites are flat-wrong.
In other words, although there is a widespread perception that masses of white students are losing their seats because of affirmative action, in reality, race-conscious policies have a negligible impact on whites.
She argues, essentially, that because whites are the overwhelming majority, that significant percentage decreases in minority admissions lead to insignificant percentage increases for whites. Well, yes. But percentages can be misleading in some cases, like this one. Assuming a relatively hard limit to the size of Michigan's incoming class (more realistic for the law school than the college), then every minority student admitted is one fewer white student admitted. It is indeed a zero sum game. I'm not always against affirmative action, expecially when employed by universities and private companies rather than police forces or Supreme Courts, but Boddie's argument, such as it is, is misleading. Even though the percentage of white students remains relatively stable while the percentage of black students fluctuates immensely, the total numbers of minorities and whites trade one to one.
Boddie rejects the analogy of "reverse discrimination" by saying that comparing affirmative action to southern segregation is not "an honest comparison." Now, I'm wary of argument by analogy to segregation (and by analogy of segregation to Hitler; if the world were as bad as analogists say it is, it would be hard to believe any human progress has been made in two centuries), but the analogy needs to be refuted, not simply dismissed. Why is it better to discriminate in favor of diversity than against it?
For much more on the topic, read this:
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Beam Me up, Scotty ...
A long way from Star Trek, but this is just cool.
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