Convoluted Bloomberg News Edit Supports And Opposes Affirmative Action

As I read this Bloomberg News editorial, Affirmative Action Is Still Necessary, the editors are more critical than supportive of the University of Texas’s affirmative action policy at issue in Fisher, and hence more critical than supportive of the administration’s brief in support of UT, the edit is so opaque and even contradictory that you may read it entirely differently.

The edit recognizes, for example, that “holistic review” where race is allegedly “only one factor among many” in practice leads to “no difference in outcome” from more honest approaches where applicants are given a certain number of points based on race. “In both,” it recognizes, “a white person is denied a slot and a minority gets a slot, when if there were no favoritism, it would be the other way around.”

Despite recognizing the discrimination at the core of “diversity,” the edit nevertheless concludes that “we still need affirmative action.” Its argument depends on a meretricious definition of merit.

The purpose of affirmative action is not, if it ever was, reparations for wrongs done to a student’s ancestors. Nor is it intended primarily for the benefit of the minority students who do, in fact, benefit.

The purpose of affirmative action programs is to provide and promote diversity. This much-abused notion has a legitimate core: In a multicultural society, a state university (or any university) ought to reflect as many of the strands of society as possible. This is part of the education it offers its students and part of the service it performs for the state. And — here is the part many people find hard to swallow — no one has the right to attend a state university, based on intelligence or merit or whatever point system the admissions office develops. Being Hispanic is itself merit if Hispanics are needed to serve diversity.

True, “no one has the right to attend a state university,” but unless we repeal our civil rights laws (or the courts continue to ignore them) everyone does have a right not to be excluded because of race or ethnicity.