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Men talk of the Negro problem. There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own Constitution

-- Frederick Douglass, August 1893

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I just found this. Wow.

If merit is absolute standards and people are essentially individuals, racial politics and exploitation are wrong because essential individuals receive benefits or burdens for reasons other than merit. Merit should determine the distribution of benefits and burdens. Racial politics are wrong because they ignore these standards in distributing goods to particular political interest groups, all the while masquerading as civil rights that benefit society as a whole. Individuality dictates the level at which to look for harms and benefits. Thus, the harms are to Allan Bakke, Wendy Wygant, and Brian Weber; the beneficiaries are Carl Stotts, and Philip Paradise, Jr. "Innocent whites" are the victims of these politics. 

The exploitation argument parallels the racial politics argument, except the context is the African-American community rather than society as a whole. According to this argument, exploitation is wrong because middle-class African- Americans do not automatically deserve more than middle-class Euro-Americans. Affirmative action distributes goods to individuals who do not need the help, under the guise of helping individuals that do. These poorer African- Americans are the innocent victims of this exploitation. 

More intriguing than how individuality and merit work together, though, is the tension between these arguments and the other primary term, colorblindness. The "innocent whites" form of the argument exposes the tension by its reference to the adversely affected party's race. This argument acknowledges that race is real, that it does have a stable meaning within our culture. Such an acknowledgement is catastrophic for colorblindness, which has as its major premise that race is not stable enough to use in judicial decision making. Most opponents of affirmative action, however, avoid this tension by using the rhetoric of individuality to remove the explicit reference to racial groups. They simply refer to the alleged victims as innocent "others." . . . . The racial politics argument could violate colorblindness in the same way the term "innocent whites" does. For example, the concern only about African-Americans taking over a specific polity. The racial politics argument conflicts with colorblindness in a more fundamental way, however. For racial politics even to be possible, race must be something more than an arbitrary, meaningless grouping. Many of the opponents of affirmative action believe politics is nothing more than special interest groups competing for scarce political resources. These interest groups require some form of group identity and similarity of interest. Therefore, if racial politics are possible, race must be something more than arbitrary groupings. The races must have meaningful identities. 

The exploitation argument conflicts with colorblindness for the same reasons. Arguing that some African-Americans exploit affirmative action programs requires a definition of the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action. Any such definition necessarily will be a definition of what it means to be an African-American, or a member of some other racially defined group. The assumption behind the exploitation argument is that middle-class African- Americans are not really African-Americans because they are not disadvantaged enough. Making this argument, however, admits the possibility of accurately defining racial groups. Exploitation, like racial politics, can occur only if racial categories have meaning. This admission directly conflicts with the idea of colorblindness, which argues that race is inherently arbitrary. A slightly more sophisticated version of the racial politics argument implicitly acknowledges the societal existence of different races. In this version, opponents of affirmative action argue that although race socially exists, it evades legal definition. Therefore, legal acknowledgement would lead to intractable political battles and further racial strife. This argument is ultimately self-defeating, because colorblindness draws just as much attention to race as does race- consciousness. If courts cannot define race, they can neither follow racial divisions nor ignore them because they do not know what to follow or ignore. If "African-American" is too unstable to use in an affirmative action plan because it means too many things, it is equally unstable to determine whether or not the term falls within a particular category of prohibited terms. The only way for colorblindness to function is for it to adopt an implicit definition of race. Thus, acknowledging race and not acknowledging race equally exacerbate racial tensions by asking the same questions: What are the race words? By what test do we know they are race words? How can we legally use these words? Moreover, admitting the existence of race, while denying its importance, is likely to be counterproductive. There is no particular reason to believe that if the law ignores race, race will go away. Instead, ignoring the social importance of race ensures its perpetuation because courts could not intervene in racial politics unless the victor erred and used a prohibited racial classification. Acknowledging that racial classifications do not create race or racial politics leaves the law in a precarious position. If race is a problem that exists beyond racial classifications, and if the courts can police only for racial classifications, courts are impotent to directly address racial problems. 

12:23:42 AM    comment []