About two weeks ago I criticized a letter in the Chronicle of Higher Education from David Dixon, a Stanford graduate student. Dixon, who identifies himself as “an active member of the Choctaw Nation,” pointed out that in order to receive preferential treatment Native Americans must prove that they “maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment” and wrote that it would be a good thing if universities “required all minorities to demonstrate that they were serving in their racial communities before they received special consideration for admissions and scholarships.”
I was not kind to this suggestion, questioning the relevance or even existence of “racial communities” of Hispanics and Asians and raising the specter of “Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al. sitting as tribal elders deciding who qualifies for officially sanctioned membership in the black ‘racial community.’”
Mr. Dixon emailed, very politely, that I (and I think others) had misunderstood his position. His email, with permission:
Many students receive scholarships, admission to to schools, and jobs based solely on their minority status, and I think this is wrong. But, since the supreme court has authorized this sort of affirmative action (Grutter v Bollinger among others) — then this is the reality in America. My point is that if a university is going to give a scholarship to a person b/c they are a minority, then at least ensure that person will take that scholarship and reinvest it in their ethnic community (through mentoring, volunteering, etc.) in order to help bring that community out of poverty. Ultimately, this could help end affirmative action all together.
I ate dinner with Shelby Steele last week and I believe his essay “The Age of White Guilt” captures many of my thoughts and feelings on this issue.
http://www.cir-usa.org/articles/156.html
Also, please check out my Op Ed that I wrote in the Crimson on Diversity la st year while getting my first masters. I think you will concur with some of my thoughts. Either way, glad to help spur a discussion
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/4/22/diversity-harvard-students-political/
In a still friendly follow-up email Mr. Dixon, whom I now know is a Marine combat veteran being sponsored by the Marine Corps at Stanford and returning to Quantico this summer, explains further:
Just to be clear, I only recommend universities using “active community involvement” for admissions and scholarships, not to determine whether a person is actually black or hispanic. Most minorities admitted to top schools are from rich educated families. Unless those rich minorities take that gift of admission and scholarship and reinvest in their communities, then I fear we will never break the generational poverty and be stuck with these ineffective affirmative action policies forever.
Mr. Dixon is, quite clearly, much more critical of affirmative action than his original letter in the Chronicle suggested. Shelby Steele’s article is indeed a classic (read it immediately if you haven’t, and re-read it if you have), and I also encourage you to read Mr. Dixon’s Harvard Crimson piece, which is indeed devastating on affirmative action as practiced at Harvard. “In a recent class,” he wrote,
my professor took a blind poll of all the students’ political affiliations. Of the 40 students polled, I was the only conservative Republican. The vast majority of the class was liberal, including the professor — he had served in the Clinton administration. In my short time at Harvard I have taken courses at the law, business, government, and education schools, and every class has had a similar make-up.
I felt alienated as usual, but I had to laugh as I looked around the room. Thirty of the 40 students were female, and almost 50 percent, including myself, were “students of color.” President Faust would have been overcome with euphoria to walk into our lecture and observe the “diversity.” As I sat alone in a classroom of peers, I realized that diversity at Harvard is an intellectual joke.
It’s clear, in short, that Mr. Dixon is no fan of affirmative action, but I’m afraid that commendable lack of enthusiasm — and, indeed, often penetrating criticism — still does not make his proposal of required service to “racial communities” for beneficiaries of racial or ethnic preference any more appealing.
There is of course nothing novel or objectionable about requiring service of grant recipients — medical students who receive financial support from the armed forces are required to serve as many years as they receive support; recipients of public health scholarships must serve in “a federally-designated underserved area,” etc. — but these requirements should never be race-based. In the past, it is true, I have suggested affirmatively requiring racial minorities to provide the “diversity” for which they were given preferences — by requiring them to take classes or even enroll in majors where minorities are underrepresented, even drafting them and sending them to schools where they’re needed — but this was more in the manner of a reductio ad absurdum than a serious proposal.
Mr. Dixon relies on Grutter — “this is the reality in America,” he writes — to justify race-based service requirements of those who receive race-based preferences, but fortunately Grutter cannot be stretched that far, relying as it does only on the need in higher education for an ephemeral and undefined “diversity” to justify the racial favoritism and discrimination it protects. In fact, he gives far, far more deference to Grutter than it deserves, writing as he does in his Harvard Crimson piece:
Is there some value to giving special treatment to race, culture, and gender? The Supreme Court thinks so (Grutter v. Bollinger), and I completely agree.
I’m not sure about “culture” (is anybody?), but I definitely do not agree to special treatment based on race or gender, and I’m certain that all the things that Mr. Dixon obviously does not like about how affirmative action is currently practiced will continue as long as special treatment based on race, ethnicity, or gender is allowed.
