I’ve written about affirmative action for more than 20 years. That is, if you start the clock back in high school when I felt compelled to write a term paper on the topic after classmates with poorer grades than mine suggested that I wouldn’t have been accepted by Ivy League universities “if (I) hadn’t been Mexican.”
Back then, I supported affirmative action and even more-direct racial preferences because I bought the reasoning advanced by Justice Harry Blackmun – in his dissent in the landmark 1978 case,
Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke – that “in order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race.”
Affirmative action could mean something as harmless as government agencies or private companies recruiting at minority career fairs or placing ads in minority publications. Racial preferences come into play when those government agencies or private companies go further and choose a minority applicant over an equally qualified, or seemingly better-qualified, white candidate based largely on race.
Today, I still support those milder forms of affirmative action. But I’ve come around to opposing racial preferences. It’s not because I buy the fairy tale that white males are cast as the new victims, systematically suffering a “reverse discrimination” that compares to the discrimination that minorities have suffered. Show me a white male who insists that he would have been admitted to medical school if an African-American or Latino hadn’t taken his place, and I’ll show you 50 other white males who were admitted ahead of him. People need to come up with more credible excuses for their shortcomings.
I oppose racial preferences because they hurt the very people they claim to be helping by lowering standards, stigmatizing beneficiaries, perpetuating notions of inferiority, and masking educational failures at the crucial K-12 level. Besides, if their goal is to aid the disadvantaged, they miss the target because – in today’s world – such disadvantage is often based not on race but on class. And lastly, these preferences are too often considered a reparation for past injustices, leading people to wonder why they are offered to college-age kids who weren’t even alive in the 1980s – let alone the 1960s.
I would have liked for Sen. John McCain to have said something along those lines when he was asked recently by George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s “This Week,” if he supports a ballot initiative in his home state of Arizona that would end race- and gender-based preferences. McCain responded that, yes, he supports the initiative because – how’s this for a sound bite? – “I do not believe in quotas.”
Ten years ago, while speaking to a Latino group in Washington, D.C., McCain dismissed a similar ballot measure as “divisive.”
Sen. Barack Obama and his disciples in the media have criticized McCain for what seems like yet another flip-flop born of a lurch to the right. (See also: tax cuts, offshore drilling, immigration, etc.) The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told minority journalists attending the Unity conference in Chicago that he was “disappointed . . . that John McCain flipped and changed his position” on such ballot initiatives.
But the apparent flip-flop isn’t even the worst part. What we should be talking about is McCain’s real faux pas – not inconsistency but impreciseness.
Stephanopoulos was just as imprecise. In phrasing his question to McCain, the host said that the Arizona initiative would “do away with affirmative action.”
It would do no such thing. Even if the initiative is approved, it won’t prohibit some of the milder forms of affirmative action – only outright preferences.
McCain says he is on board with the initiative because he opposes quotas. So what? He wasn’t asked about quotas, which typically refer to a predetermined number of slots set aside for minority candidates. Besides, quotas are illegal anyway.
The McCain campaign continued the drumbeat, saying in a statement: “John McCain has always been opposed to government-mandated hiring quotas, because he believes that regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, the law should be equally applied.”
Again, the issue here isn’t quotas or affirmative action, but racial preferences. Let’s at least respect the complexity of the issue.
By the way, Obama has also said that he opposes quotas and suggested that his own daughters shouldn’t benefit from a racial preference because they are far from disadvantaged. That’s a nuanced position that suggests Obama has given the subject some thought. On this issue and others, McCain should ditch the sound bites and take notes.
RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR. is a San Diego Union-Tribune columnist.
