affirmative action and ward connerly and gil carrasco and willamette university

Tonight's symposium was billed as an "affirmative action debate," sponsored by the Young Republicans of Willamette University. These Republicans must surely feel like a minority at Willamette, though how beleaguered they are is not readily apparent. The atmosphere around the undergraduate college is dominated by a genial liberalism that is not too self-reflective, and so it is probably good to have discussions of this kind, even if they shed more light on the two speakers than on the topic itself. Oh, by the way, the two speakers were: (1) Mr. Ward Connerly, former regent of the University of California and a lightning rod for criticism over the past decade as an African-American who wanted systematically to undo the university's racial preference system in admissions and (2) Prof. Gil Carrasco, one of the more accomplished and visible Latino law professors in America, who has made substantial contributions to civil rights and immigration law. The debate was hosted by a genial, if overly voluble, political science professor. As I reflected on the debate, it seemed that there were a few talking points, where the two debaters mostly agreed to disagree, but one or two significant points which were true lasers into the hearts of the participants. These latter points are more interesting to me, but a few words first about the "official" debate.

Talking Points

Both Connerly and Carrasco had their expected approaches. For Connerly any kind of discrimination was bad, but racial prefernces or quotas were equally bad. The Civil Rights movement was a good thing because it wed the reality of freedom, acquired by Blacks in the Civil War, with the importance of equality, gained through statutory advances such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His particular objection, however, was to a system, formerly in place at UC Berkely, of granting up to 1200 "points" toward admission (on an 8000) point scale for being a member of a racial minority. Connerly felt strongly that this kind of point game was really discrimination in reverse or discrimination in favor of minorities. Eliminate all these things, even using race as a "factor" to consider in admissions decisions, and we would thus have a system of admissions based on merit alone. Connerly was never very specific when describing what merit consisted of: he only kept intoning the mantra of "comprehensive" admissions criteria.

Carraso was the defender of affirmative action, though he wanted to distance himself from a quota or set-aside system. He seemingly was on all fours with the 2003 US Supreme Court decision (Bollinger), which held that granting "points" toward admission because one was a racial minority was impermissible but making race a "factor" was constitutional. Carrasco believed that some progress had been made in promoting diversity in the 40 years since the CRA of 1964, but much more needed to be done. Therefore, to proclaim the end of affirmative action was far too premature.

In many ways this debate covered hackneyed themes which may have been fresh to the undergraduate students for whom this was a "first-time" exposure to these issues, but was a predictable rehash of the current debate. What was more interesting to me, however, were statements made by each man about what shaped his perspective. They weren't necessarily intended to add to the debate. However, their comments were not therefore the less valuable.

Lasers to the Heart

Why was/is Ward Connerly so opposed to any kind of racial designations, so opposed to preferences as well as quotas? Not necessarily because it might "stigmatize" the minority race or only because it was an example of discrimination itself. Rather, Connerly suggested something very interesting. He objects, I believe, to categorizations of race per se, because race classification was once used to buttress the system of slavery. For him, then, classification is fatally flawed because it was associated with a system that was so repugnant to him (and to almost all African Americans). Thus, he emphasized that now, in CA, it almost makes little sense to mention even what race you are. "Mixed race" people are so common that traditional race-based designations really mean nothing. At the heart of Ward Connerly, I think, is the feeling that any classification by race was permanently vitiated because of the connection of racial classification to slavery. Thus, he uses terms like "merit" rather than "color" to describe his goal, even though he would include a factor in college admissions such as socio-economic status, which has nothing to do with any concept of merit with which I am familiar.

For Gil Carrasco, the laser was different. At one point he defended affirmative action by saying that unless it was for racial preferences neither he nor many of his friends would have made such significant strides in American intellectual life. That is, he is "living proof" of the value of affirmative action. And, since it was a good thing for him, he felt that such a system ought not to be discontinued. America is still quite far away from the time where Dr. King's aspiration, that his children would be judged not by the color of their skins but by the content of their characters, would become fulfilled.

Conclusion

Ultimately, for me, it was a rather ho-hum evening of many cliches and soft punches rather than hard-hitting jabs or rights to the jaw. There were very few people of color in the audience, and no students of color that I could see. Does that mean that such a debate is irrelevant for them? Perhaps it does. The debate probably needs to be recast into the language that minority students speak today in order to find a ready reception among them. America seems relatively comfortable, by and large, with the "race as factor" type of approach to college admissions these days, and perhaps even to employment. It is a non-specific quota (and quotas are bad things today), but it still recognizes the legacy of discrimination. But Connerly's approach has the virtue of apparent simplicity and clarity, even though the simplicity and clarity are deceptive. The question, though, will not go away--should the employment force, in general, or the public employment force, in particular, be representative, in numbers of the groups it seeks to serve? I believe it should. How to get there? I have no clue. Ward Connerly's simple philosophy is certainly no help. I am also not sure if Gil Carrasco's is either. It probably comes down to the values of people responsible for making hiring decisions. What do they favor? In this connection, I think that the "workers as reflective of America" has an intuitive appeal to most people. It is just hard to implement it, for some reason...