Affirmative action will create superficial sense of diversity

Teti is a graduate student of philosophy.

By Trent Teti

I believe that affirmative action is unjustified and that it
produces a shallow, artificial sense of diversity. Hence, I am
against the repeal of SP-1. I’m aware that disclosing this
fact will make me rather unpopular in the current political climate
and I am willing to receive the violent reactions I’m sure
this article will inspire. I ask only that my reasons be considered
before dismissing me as yet another culturally naive member of the
white hegemony.

It’s clear that affirmative action treats race as a
criterion for admission. But the justification for this policy is
far less clear. Some say it is an attempt to compensate entire
races for past injustices by giving their members an advantage in
admissions. This justification seems poor to me for a number of
reasons.

First, the compensation does not appear either related to or
proportionate with the crimes committed against these groups.
Affirmative action does not speak to the specific harms suffered by
these races and certainly does not offer enough to expiate the
guilt for the specific injustices that were committed.

Second, this justification leaves out many groups which have
been treated savagely by white domination. The Japanese internment
camps of World War II and the routine anti-Semitism suffered by
American Jews come immediately to mind, and these are certainly not
the only examples.

  Illustration by JARRETT QUON/Daily Bruin Others say the
justification for affirmative action is that it serves as a
leveling measure to infuse more people from historically
disadvantaged groups into the American corporate power structure by
giving them a head start in the admissions process to college. But
again, the same problems appear. It is unclear why we would help
only these groups and not other equally deserving groups.

Also, new difficulties arise for this justification. First, is
affirmative action really an effective measure for enabling members
of these groups to attain these offices? And, if SP-2 were repealed
and we gave members of certain groups additional consideration in
hiring at the university, wouldn’t we be compensating the
same groups twice?

Would this be too much compensation, or would it even be enough?
What measure do we use to decide?

When I ask proponents of affirmative action these questions, I
am struck by many of the incompatible answers I receive, which
reinforces what we all seem to know: that there is no grand design
for equalizing the American economic market.

There is no clear unified statement of what the problem is that
we are trying to solve, just a violent accusation that all who
disagree with this policy are racists. This forces almost everyone
who doesn’t want this label applied to them to remain silent
or loudly claim they are in favor of diversity. But when you
inquire further, they don’t really have any idea why they
favor diversity. The case then begins to eerily resemble
McCarthyism.

I think the best case for justifying affirmative action is that
we are compensating individuals, not entire races, for their
disadvantage. Even this case, I believe, fails for the following
reason.

Let’s agree that, if a person has faced a certain sort of
disadvantage that has made it more difficult for them to excel in
educational settings, then they should be given commensurate
assistance in the admissions process to college. As a matter of
empirical fact, it is not true that all of the members of a certain
race have been seriously disadvantaged from an educational
standpoint, nor is it true that no members of a certain race (say
white) have been similarly disadvantaged.

Thus, using race as a principle criterion to identify people who
are disadvantaged will intrinsically miss the point in two ways. It
will treat certain people as disadvantaged even though they are
not, and it will exclude other people from being considered
disadvantaged, when in fact they are.

In the process, though we are promised diversity, we are left
only with its hollow veneer. The campus appears more diverse,
because there are more skin tones, but the socio-economic
backgrounds are largely the same as they always have been.

As an undergraduate at Berkeley before Proposition 209, I saw
affirmative action help some friends of mine, one of whom was an
African American who grew up in Bel-Air and another who was a son
of one of the richest families in Mexico.

The yearbook changed from an Abercrombie and Fitch to a Benetton
advertisement. The problem is that the same demographic shops at
both stores. They are from the same socio-economic class ““
the latter merely assumes the facade of diversity.

Still without help are the poor white farmers’ sons and
daughters, and the Asian immigrant who arrived in America
penniless. Affirmative action is blind to them; it has yielded only
a pseudo-diversity because it misses many of the people who are
actually disadvantaged.

But even beginning a dialogue about these issues is impossible
amid the cacophony surrounding affirmative action.

People are asking whether repealing SP-1 will send a message to
the legislature, when they should be thinking hard about whether
the “diversity” afforded by affirmative action is a
good thing. Those who agree with what is written here will likely
not advertise this fact. It is more likely that they will not want
to be caught even reading these words, and, when asked if they
favor diversity, they will fervently agree and hope you do not ask
why.

And if I’m right, then the cost of our quest for diversity
has been our liberalism, which is a raw deal if ever there was
one.