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Affirmative Action without Race

Many people consider affirmative action to be racist. They seek a color-blind society and think that the way to end racial discrimination is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. The greatest problem with this view is that, as explained in a previous blog post, racial discrimination exists whether or not we use affirmative action to try to lessen its negative impacts. Nevertheless, it’s worth looking at alternatives to racially-based affirmative action.


Socio-economic bases would be the most reasonable alternative. Many people of all races have been disadvantaged by poverty. They and their children have inadequate nutrition, poor housing, and failing schools. Low wages require parents to spend more time away from their children than is best for child development. Parents often work more than one job and use unreliable or time-consuming transportation to get to work (as they drive older cars or use public transportation), which further impairs their ability to attend to their children.


These conditions impair the chances of children succeeding in our society’s culture of advantage. Imagine that you grew up in a neighborhood, town, or region where few people ever went to college or received the technical training to get a job that pays well. Think of a coal-mining region in West Virginia. Mining coal is part of the region’s cultural heritage. People are proud that their ancestors mined coal under dangerous circumstances, replacing reliance on human and animal force with access to powerful machines that make our lives easier.


I can imagine that if I were raised in such a cultural environment, I would want to follow in the footsteps of my forbearers and mine coal myself. I would resent the claim that using coal will harm future generations through climate change. I would question whether global warming is truly occurring. I wouldn’t want to move away from home to make a life among strangers who don’t respect my heritage.


Insofar as this is my culture and my attitude, I’m at a disadvantage in competitions for training in skills that are currently needed and in education for professions that are currently flourishing. I didn’t see the point of reading “Romeo and Juliet” or studying trigonometry in high school. To get high-level training or education, I’m going to need some extra help to overcome the effects of my background which rejects taking the steps needed for success. My peers at home may reject me, and I may feel like a traitor.


The coal mining culture isn’t unique. There are people in rural farming communities who have been left behind by the increasing mechanization and consolidation in agriculture where there are diminished opportunities to own a farm and make a decent living from it. Yet, the impulse to farm remains, as does rejection of alternatives similar to that in coal-mining areas. Similar obstacles face people in urban settings where many families have never had a college graduate, and where such education among men is looked down upon as unmanly and among women as a desertion of their role as mothers who hold the family together, because men in despair tend to abuse drugs and provide little family support.


Individuals can escape all of these situations, and some have done so in every generation. But they have done so through extraordinary intelligence, talent, and persistence, and withstanding self-criticism and criticism by others for abandoning the culture of their origins. We salute these individuals, but shouldn’t think that their success means that in America success results from fair equality of opportunity.


People from the culture of my origins have advantages. My family wasn’t rich; my father owned and operated a small hardware store during my formative years and we squeaked by. But a university education was culturally required. Professional attainment was respected. I didn’t have to leave behind any of my cultural heritage in order to compete professionally. So I (and my peers) didn’t need extraordinary talent, intelligence, or persistence to go to college or succeed.


If we’re going to have real equality of opportunity in our society, thereby tapping all the talent that our society contains and rewarding people appropriately for their contributions, we need to promote the success of people with ordinary talent, intelligence, and persistence. Extraordinary qualities shouldn’t be needed.


Affirmative action that provides extra benefits to aspirants from cultures that make success in the wider society more difficult is just leveling the playing field. Some of those helped by such affirmative action programs will be non-Latino whites, other will be Latino, black, Asian, or Native American. But they won’t be chosen by race for extra consideration at elite schools or training programs. They’ll be chosen in accordance with their need for extra help because they face extraordinary cultural obstacles to success.


You can reply to this post by e-mailing wenz.peter@uis.edu

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