The Legacies Of Confusion

James Traub, a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, contributes another dose of confusion today to the ongoing discussion of the relationship of preferences based on race and preferences based on legacy status.

Traub begins his column with the unfortunate conceit that the history of his feelings on the issue (as opposed to his arguments) have some relevance or interest. Traub wants us to know that he was a legacy admittee to Harvard and feels (or at any rate long felt) fine about it, thank you very much.

I don’t recall experiencing any stigma, and I certainly didn’t feel that I deserved my diploma any less than all those physics geniuses admitted strictly on the basis of their intellect. In fact, I never thought of myself as the beneficiary of any special treatment until the recent debate over ”legacy admissions.”

Now unless Traub means to argue that no unearned preferences of any kind ever produce stigma — an argument that is too silly even for the New York Times — his clueless and untroubled self-satisfaction is quite beside the point.

Moving on, Traub describes Senator John Edwards’ well-known opposition to legacies in a manner that makes Edwards seem unusually obtuse. Edwards, he writes,

supports affirmative action but argues that legacy admissions violate a public good so fundamental — equal opportunity — that universities should voluntarily get rid of the practice no matter what institutional benefit it confers. Affirmative action is good social engineering, while legacy admission is bad social engineering.

Does Edwards really believe — or perhaps the question is, does Traub really believe Edwards believes — that affirmative action, a policy whose essence is treating whites and blacks differently because of their race, does not violate the principle of equal opportunity? One can argue, it seems to me, that the violation is necessary or even just but not that it doesn’t exist. Traub at least does recognize that the magnitude of the violation is quite different, noting that Michigan gave a 20 point bonus for race but only 4 points for legacy status. “People like Senator Edwards,” he points out, “are thus defending a big intrusion on meritocratic principles and opposing a small one.”

Oops! There it was. Just when you thought Traub might have something to add to this tired debate, he takes the terrible, predictable, seemingly inevitable tumble, slipping on the ubiquitous banana peel of “meritocratic principles.” The slide continues:

You could make the case in favor of affirmative action, and against legacy preferences, if you felt that college admissions offices should concern themselves as much with expanding opportunity as with rewarding academic merit. This is a serious argument, but it would be more persuasive if admissions offices based their preferences on actual disadvantage, not skin color. As for the opposite case, maybe there’s some rationale that would justify giving a break to me but not to a black or Hispanic kid, but I wouldn’t want to recite it in a crowded bar.

This argument mistakenly assumes that the only argument against affirmative action is that it violates merit, and it thus sets up a totally arbitrary, and false, dichotomy: expand opportunity or reward merit. On the contrary, the fundamental offense of affirmative action is that it violates the principle that condemns discrimination on the basis of race. Any preference — for athletic or musical talent, geographical diversity, interest in off-beat subjects, etc., etc. — will involve some compromise with pure merit, but merit is not a bedrock value enshrouded in constitutional protection.

The “opposite case” thus isn’t opposite at all: giving a legacy preference to Traub does not violate anyone’s rights or any fundamental value of our society (though it may well have been a dumb move for any number of reasons); but giving a preference “to a black or Hispanic kid,” because that kid is black or Hispanic, violates both the individual rights of kids who were unpreferred because of their race and the fundamental social value against racial discrimination. Those applicants whose races are not preferred do not have a right to attend the college of their choice, but they do (or should) have a right not to be kept out because of their race.

Reading articles like Traub’s always leaves me with a depressing thought: one of the most corrosive effects of racial preference is that defending it has led a wide swath of well-meaning Americans to forget that racial equality is a fundamental principle. It is an insult to that principle to talk as though violating it is on a par with athletic scholarships or tips on the admissions scale to the sons and daughters of alumni.