Washington: The University of California regents have voted, President Clinton has spoken, Jesse Jackson has protested, and yet the debate on affirmative action is hardly any clearer now than before the tumultuous even’s of the past week. The regents moved to end the practice of taking race and gender into account in admissions and hiring, that much is clear.
But to many, what emerged most vividly from the debate leading up to last Thursday’s landmark vote is that, while it remains an intensely emotional issue, there is rampant confusion and disagreement about the very words “affirmative action.” Everyone is talking to each other or should in gat each other—but not necessarily ‘about the same thing. And the rhetoric, however inspired and passionate, did little to bring the prestigious university system, the stale or the nation closer to conscnsuson an issue that touches at the heart of race and gender relations in the United states.
“This debate is characterized by sound bites and out of context anecdotes,” said Troy Duster, a sociologist at UC Berkeley. “It is all one big mush, which comes out in an incoherent babble. Unhappily, those who have the crisp, clear sound bites are winning.”
On both sides of the debate are analysts who echo Duster, worrying that as affirmative action is drawn into the sphere of presidential politics and mass media attention, the debate is being oversimplified, with sweeping generalizations and inflamed passions overtaking more coolly reasoned analysis. The White House acknowledged as much last week, on the first page of an 85pagercport. Affirmative action “enjoys no clear and widely shared definition,” the administration said, and that “contributes to the confusion and miscommunication.”
While the term is broad and inexact, its symbolic meaning is potent. For Governor Wilson, it is reverse discrimination and “the deadly virus of tribalism”; for Jackson, it is opportunity, hope, an “even playing field”; for Clinton, it is a flawed but essential tool that should be mended, not ended.
‘Avother times in the debate, “affirmative action” seems to have a shifting meaning: It might be a simple minority recruitment program, or race and gender goals in hiring. It might be minority set-aside provisions in state and federal contracting, or the quotas that are often cited but rarely used.
Scholars and other observers say that because of how the debate is being conducted, those crucial distinctions are often ignored.
is a very complex issue, and we have a very complex society, yet the dominant means of talking about it (affirmative action) is as a black white issue,” said Frederick Lynch, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and author of “Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action.” “What gets glossed over are all the other groups we are talking about, and what forms of affirmative action we are talking about,” Lynch said.
A host of factors conspire to reduce the complexities and mute the subtleties of the affirmative action debate.
For the most part, the discussion has been couched in simple yes or no, up or down terms: Are you for affirmative action or against it? Few who speak publicly about the subject specify what kind of affirmative action program they are referring to: whether admissions, hiring or awarding of contracts. Nor do they identify what groups are targeted by the programs, whether U.S. born minorities, foreign-born minorities, women, the disabled or military veterans. Rarely is it acknowledged that different problems may require different solutions. For example achieving equality in college admissions may require admitting some students with lower test scores, which are known to be highly correlated with socioeconomic background and quality of schooling. Once those students are admitted, college officials expect them to perform as well as many students with higher scores.
In contrast, few would argue that an applicant who lacks the necessary skills should be hired for a job. In hiring, they would argue, affirmative action might consist of doing outreach to ensure that qualified minorities and women are adequately represented in the pool of job applicants. ‘ In California, the discourse has been further corroded by compressing an enormously complex issue into a 53word initiative that will go to voters in the fall of 1996 —a measure that calls for the end of race and gender preferences in state programs, but never ‘mentions the words “affirmative action.” ‘The problem, said John Bunzcl, a scholar at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is that the initiative process is too blunt an instrument to get at a lot of complicated questions.”
“When people ask me if I am for or against affirmative action, I can’t answer that in a ‘yes or no’ way,” said the former president of San Jose State University. “It depends on what you mean, and in what context you are using it. The fact is, this is an issue that is full of potholes.”
For example, Bunzel said, at San Jose State he issued a memo to department heads telling them that they would not be allowed to fill vacant positions unless they reached out to minority and female candidates. At the same time, he specified race or ‘gender should not be the predominant factor in hiring.
Despite that restriction, Bunzel said, more women and minorities were hired to the university’s administration than at any time in its history.
Even so, he said, racial preferences can at times be justified. “If 1 am a police chief and want to hire an undercover agent in East Oakland, I don’t ‘want someone to tell me I can’t take race into account,” he said. “but when choosing a backup quarterback to Steve Young or a brain surgeon, I don’t think race should matter.
Like the proverbial onion, you peel back one layer of complexity and you end up peeling up another one, and another.” But presidential politics and television coverage do not often lend themselves to the important but tedious process of peeling onions.
Attorney Eva Paterson, an outspoken advocate of affirmative action, believes that some of her opponents are seeking a thoughtful debate on the issue —although they, 100, are being swept aside BY political rhetoric.
“There is an ‘element about this that is about raw power and raw politics,” said Paterson, executive director of the Lawyers Committee, Homan Rights in San Francisco. “It is playing the race card.
Although some politicians complain that white men are victims of systematic discrimination Paterson stresses: that affirmative action programs must meet strict constitutional standards guaranteeing ‘equal protection under the law.
“These programs can’t unduly trammel the rights of white men,” she said. But there is an emotional component to this that leads people to believe affirmative action is the senseless denial of rights to white men.”
In response to the fierce attacks, many of the staunchest defenders of affirmative action have been put on the defensive—and that, 100, has contributed to the polarization. Many feel they must defend all programs, with ‘out conceding that reforms might be necessary.
Jackson, for example, insisted in a recent interview that the government needs to push affirmative action even more aggressively. “There is substantial evidence that affirmative action is inadequately enforced and too narrowly applied now,” he said.
The debate has also been skewed by the lack of objective analysis of affirmative action programs and their impact. Clinton’s exhaustive review, issued recently, represents one of the first real steps in that direction. Based on that report, Clinton proposed eliminating or reforming programs that create quotas extend preferences to “unqualified people” and promote “reverse discrimination.”
In an ideal world, the Clinton review could help clarify the debate. But it remains to be seen whether it will have a lasting impact, or whether it will be dismissed as posturing by a weak president trying to shore up his political base. In his speech recently, Clinton asked Americans “to reach beyond their fears and divisions” to address the problems posed by affirmative action To bring our people together,” he said.
“we must openly discuss the issues that divide us.” Many of those involved in the discussion worry that there is so little shared understanding about affirmative action that finding common ground may not be possible. Instead of creating clarity and consensus, they fear, the debate will further divide the nation, even as minorities and women enter the mainstream of society in record numbers.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 4, 1995
