Is success in life a foot race or a state lottery?
By James Lebakken
In last year’s Daily Bruin the chancellor took a stance
supporting affirmative action. But I’m with Regent Ward Connerly on
this one. The time for this policy, if indeed there ever was, is in
the past. And that’s because affirmative action in the ’90s is
simply a perpetuation of racism.
I declined to answer the UC application question on racial
identity. My minority friend also took that option. But if you find
yourself arguing that we had different reasons, you’re mostly
wrong. Our one, significant motive was that neither one of us
wanted race to play any part in the application process.
Now, I’m not about to pen any wholly original ideas here. In
fact, much of what I’m saying parallels Lance Morrow’s Dec. 5 Time
magazine editorial on the same topic.
Affirmative action, much like welfare, is another case of the
proposed response being absorbed into the problem instead of
acting, as a solution to that problem.
Racism by any other name (e.g. affirmative action, architectured
cultural diversity) is still racism. If that means looking at
someone and, on the basis of his or her race, deciding that they
are prone to be better off than you, to have come from a more
stable home environment or to have more opportunities, then you
have committed an act of racism no different than if you assume
that some person is more apt to have committed a crime because of
his or her skin color.
The assertion supported by sociologists is that non-minorities,
on average, have better opportunities. This is the foundation of
affirmative action, and a faulty application of those theories.
The notion behind affirmative action, at least as practiced, is
that by elevating a lucky few lottery winners, the group standard
is then elevated. I don’t buy that primarily because the cost does
not measure up to the supposed benefits. There are still a great
number of impoverished minority people and reverse discrimination
is only fueling racial tensions.
I’d like to know how long we intend to play games with the job
market and higher education? Quite frankly I don’t see these
policies leading the tribes of Israel to the promised land. And
perhaps therein the answer lies.
Who says there is any such promise? The Bill of Rights
principally protects Americans against abuses from the government.
Nowhere, however, is there a contract with the public which states,
"customer satisfaction guaranteed." We are only assured of a right
to succeed or, and I stress this, fail as a result of our own
actions.
Leon Wynter’s Wall Street Journal article "Diversity Is Often
All Talk, No Affirmative Action" (Dec. 21, 1994) as the title would
indicate, concerns a decrease in affirmative action. But he never
acknowledges a possibility that to "prefer minorities and women in
hiring" is bad or outdated practice to begin with.
What’s more, even if you rationalize such measures of vindictive
discrimination, there’s still the problematic, unquestioned region
of belief into which Wynter has guided his readers  that
hazardous region called "feelings of entitlement."
All Americans need to face up to the reality that success is
defined by failure and that we’re not all cast by Chance to be the
hero of that longest running Broadway show called Life.
I can imagine myself as the King of Persia all day long but that
will never make it so. I’d also like to see myself slam dunking
that ball in the Coke ad, wouldn’t we all.
Maybe every NBA team should have to hire a Muggsy-sized white
guy who can’t even hit four of 10 free throws at a multi-year,
megabuck salary just to give so many of the armchair hoopsters a
fair shot at realizing their narcissistic fantasies.
But that will never happen because in the world of sports the
governing principle is being the best at all unreasonable cost, and
for what? The highest score at the end of regulation time! A
championship ring!
So why should there be a different standard in a world where
outcomes really matter? Now if you read my sports metaphor as
socio-illogical rhetoric, believing that I’m stating that African
Americans are superior athletes, you are missing the point once
again. Those athletes are the rare, few individuals who get to play
a game for astronomical salaries not only because they were born
with certain abilities but because they have toiled since youth
with the sweat of relentless determination on their brows.
And what that means for the Micky, Minnie and Anonymouses of the
world is that if you don’t get picked for one team, try out for
another. Most of all, though, play the cards that you are dealt and
stop adding to this off key chorus of moans which winds, "I deserve
better. I’ve been screwed over. Give me more." More, the hopeless
addict will tell you, is never enough.
But if I’m still wrong, then ask yourself why some of the most
accomplished minorities find themselves in opposition to quotas.
For the very reason that I argue. They want to be judged on their
merits alone, and not be left to wondering if the accomplishments
for which they strived so hard to achieve are overlooked and
undercut in favor of their suitability for filling a quota.
An individual’s demonstrated ability should be the only basis
for evaluating that person’s caliber. A majority of less capable
medical students, for instance, does not get the opportunity to
intern in surgical programs.
Why? Let me ask this, Professor Guinea Pig: Do you want the
doctor standing over you with a laser scalpel about to excise your
brain tumor to be from the bottom half of his med class? Tell me
that you want to be part of that experiment without any doubts in
your mind and I’ll show you a liar the next time you look in the
mirror, Professor Pig.
And now I have to listen to some women pule about how the fire
department discriminates against them, get this, because they have
to take the same test as everyone else. Well guess what, Mighty
Mouse, if you didn’t eat your Wheaties and can’t get over that wall
I don’t want you to be the one who’s supposed to be pulling me out
of a smoke filled second story, either.
Is that sexist? No. Because the test is a practical measure of
required ability.
So if you can pass the test with the rest, I’ll be glad to see
you at the top end of that ladder climbing through my burning
window. I have no problem with qualified individuals doing any
job.
And how about that Disney classic playing down at the court
house: O.J. and the Seven Defense Attorneys? Johnnie Cochran is no
token filling a quota. I have heard him speak on a number of
occasions in court and to the press and he is an articulate and
accomplished criminal defense attorney who commands his large fee
on the basis of his legal knowledge.
And if you were O.J. you wouldn’t be exercising affirmative
action in your hiring practices as surely as he is not with a
predominance of white, male lawyers on his side of the court
room.
Whether he’s willing to admit the fact himself, Cochran is not
an exception though, just one of a team of outstanding lawyers (all
outstanding in front of TV news cameras, but that’s another
editorial entirely).
But you’ll say that he is where he is because of opportunities
afforded him; that affirmative action is about an "equality of
opportunities." But isn’t it more a matter of what he did with
those opportunities long before he ever took the LSAT?
And if so, when does that stop? Eventually you are arguing for
an "equality of outcomes" and that, as stated before, is not what
democracy, capitalism or humanity is really about.
What’s worse, your philosophy is governed by what Mill termed
the politics of a "collective mediocrity." Which is to say, let’s
not allow the eagles to soar, let’s regulate them so they must
flutter with the sparrows. And if Americans practice policies of
such ruinous nonsense when others do not, this nation will never be
able to seriously compete in a global economy.
But you’ll dismiss all of this because of my race, and maybe
you’d be more than half right. Consider though, the underprivileged
Latino gent who raised this topic of discussion. I let him speak
uninterrupted and he voiced all of these same ideas.
And in Dwight Andrews’ CBS "Eye on America" report (Jan. 16) the
Chinese-American head of personnel who lost his job for hiring a
non-minority stated simply, "discrimination cannot be used to fight
discrimination" and argued for "a color-blind America" as the
solution and the goal.
There’s just one idea at the foundation of my argument, in
educating, hiring and promoting  we must advance the concept
of the individual and break from quotas and the generalizations put
forth by sociologists’ charts and groupings so that they may "not
be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character."
These are Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, not my own. How do
you propose we make his dream speech reality in the context of
affirmative action?
Trick question. It can’t be done. We’ll never drop that bad
habit of racial discrimination until we quit, cold turkey. Is today
that day, or Annie, are you willing to wait until tomorrow?
So in this double standard world where affirmative action
amounts to an excuse for personal and political failure, I have to
run. You see, the track team is holding try-outs and I hear they’re
giving a 50-meter head start to any past-your-prime, lead butts in
the 100-meter sprint event. But if you have a problem with that you
can send your disgruntled rebuttals to me directly on the Internet
at MAYF11A@prodigy.com.
Lebakken is a junior English student.