Speech Regarding Affirmative Action

I recently attended a forum at UCLA regarding affirmative action. The three speakers present included Ward Connerly (founder and Chairman of ACRI), Richard Sander (faculty member of UCLA School of Law), and Peter Schwartz (former Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Institute). The forum was mostly a discussion against affirmative action as it currently stands.

All three speakers argued in favor of California proposition 209, which banned state-sponsored discrimination based on race. Sander used statistics and findings from personal research to demonstrate that affirmative action is counter-productive in the battle against racism. He also argued that a comprehensive review of the affects of proposition 209 needs to be performed.

Connerly argued against the case Grutter v. Bollinger which allows universities to favor under represented groups in order to ensure diversity. Connerly argued that if this policy was enforced at UCLA then Asians could potentially be discriminated against due to their large over representation here.

Sander's arguments were very well formed, but I disagreed strongly with Sander's view that the wealthy kids could be discriminated against as a form of socio-economic justice. I respect Sander for the research he has done and for his immense patience during the brutal question and answer session at the end of the speech, but I think he is wrong in assuming that discrimination against anyone wealthy is justified.

Schwartz had the most capitalistic arguments of the night. Some of his statements were also somewhat accusatory towards audience members and people who support affirmative action. Although Schwartz expressed his views in a somewhat extreme fashion, I agreed with his views more than the other two speakers present. Schwartz brought up many points that the other two candidates did not. The most important point Schwartz brought up was in response to a question about how to solve the root of this problem of classism and racism. Schwartz's response was a simple one: give children a better education and ensure everyone has the education they deserve. I have argued this solution to the problem of racist and classist discrimination before.

The thing that surprised my the most about this speech was the demeanor of the protesters present. I honestly was not very surprised by the large number of protesters because so much controversy surrounds this issue. The protesters that spoke up, there were many that did, used circular logic or attacked the speakers with very outlandish accusations. Little respect was shown for the speakers while the speakers seemed to have nothing but good intentions.

Battling Racism through Education

This post is not about whether or not affirmative action is justified (See Racism and the Reverse). I may criticize affirmative action in this post, but that is only because I believe there is a more important and more effective way to battle racism. I look at affirmative action as attempting to treating the symptoms of a disease rather than attempting to cure the disease. The disease of racism may always be present in our society, but there are things we can do to help prevent the seeds of racism to grow in the next generation.

There is one goal that all affirmative action advocates have that I personally believe in. This goal is the to "level the playing field" for all races. I believe the goal is best attainable by starting children off on the "same level" by ensuring they have the same opportunities to obtain an education. In my opinion, the two key aspects of this unleveled playing field are lack of education and unhealthy family relations. In the United States today social standing, wealth, and skin color probably matter much less as a child than education and family relations do when speaking of giving a child the opportunity to succeed in life. These other factors do matter, but they play minor roles in giving a child an opportunity to succeed.

Education is the ultimate tool. It is my opinion that regardless of whether someone is poor or rich, if they are educated their potential to succeed in life is increased greatly. One problem for lower-class minorities today is that it is often very difficult to receive a good education in a low-income area. Low-income areas tend to have very poor public schools with little funding and ineffective teachers. This problem needs to be solved by raising the money to do whatever needs to be done to get really good teachers and really good programs set in place in these lower-class schools.

Every child is shaped by the family they grow up with. Families influence their children in both positive and negative ways. The negative ways in which families can influence children include not supporting their goals and dreams, convincing them that they do not need an education, and guilt-tripping them into making decisions that may affect them negatively. Families may not push their children to obtain an education, they may force them to drop out of school to support them, or they may tell them they should not pursue a college education. In my opinion, negative family influence is the one big road block that may keep the educational playing field unleveled for longer than expected.

Lower-class families need to be encouraged to support their children in their educational endeavors. Giving children the chance to receive a good education and prove their intelligence is the most important step the government can take in combating racism at a legal level. The argument that leeway must be given to minorities applying for jobs and college is based on the idea that minorities currently do not receive the same education and opportunities as everyone else.
Ensuring that everyone, minorities included, have easy access to education will allow everyone the opportunity to succeed.

Official Languages

People often propose making English the official language of the United States. Even discounting the many different varieties of English, this is an awful proposal. Laws that are like this are either useless, or racist.

First, let's consider what this would mean. The weak version is that all official documents have to be at least in English. I must ask the question, why? What good will be gained from this? All government documents are already in English, so the only place this would apply is in contracts (and personally, I'm not sure if contracts in different languages would be enforced). But contracts are a matter of civil courts, and thus, not strictly law-enforced. Besides, if two people want a contract in Spanish, why shouldn't they get one? This is the useless version.

A stronger version is that official documents should not be in a language other than English. And same for store signs, etc. Now, suppose that for some reason or another, 90% of the population now spoke Spanish, or some language other than English, as their first language. This would seem like a pretty silly law. This also applies to the first weaker version too. So, the law is either useless, or it forces a percentage of the population to learn a language they don't want to. If the latter is true, it is racist. Think about it like this, would you force an immigrant to take an accent coach and learn the precise "proper" way to pronounce the words? Why not? It's the same idea, taken just a bit further. Possibly, you'd say they can make it with just the English language, and they can make themselves understood. In the first case, there are plenty of economic reasons to learn English. If they can make it without using English, that's just fine for them. They can decide whether they need English or not, better than you can. Why is it O.K. to force a minority to do something and not a majority? Well, traditionally it's considered not O.K. and this should not be an exception.

So, the law is useless unless it's racist. And thus it shouldn't exist.

"Racism and the Reverse" Response

This post is a response to Racism and the Reverse. In the previous post George defended the "current approach" for dealing with racism. The current approach often comes in the form of affirmative action and is meant to reverse the effects of racism. I disagree with George's defense of this approach to battle racism and I disagree with the idea of affirmative action.

I agree with George that racism is most certainly still a problem in the United States. I do not believe affirmative action is the correct way to counter current discrimination problems. George raised three arguments that support the use of affirmative action today. I believe these are valid points but each of these points can be solved by means other than affirmative action.

George's first point brings up the idea of battling racism at the individual level. This point is applicable when an admissions, recruitment, or hiring officer of a school or business is racist. The problem with assuming affirmative action can fix racism at the individual level is that more than half of the hiring officers need to be racist for this method to be beneficial at all. If less than half of the hiring officers are racist then the extra leeway given in favor of one race will statistically allow less qualified employees of that race to be hired.* This creates a flaw in the system in favor of one race, just as racism itself does and the problem then exists in the reverse. Instead of using affirmative action, this "individual racism" problem can be battled by administering tests to ensure these hiring officers are racially unbiased to a reasonable means.

The second point George made was that flaws in the hiring or admissions system of a company/university may encourage racism. The example given in the previous post was a test biased against minorities. I think systems that encourage racism are special cases that need to be fixed on a case-to-case basis. Most of these systems are probably due to minorities not receiving the opportunity to seek the education or credentials they need. This situation cannot be helped by lowering the bar slightly for certain minorities that tend to lack the opportunity to seek the qualifications needed for a certain job.

Any non-discriminatory system should ensure that everyone is given the opportunity to learn, especially poor inner-city children whose school systems may be of a poor caliber. This problem of uneven education opportunities is the root of the racism problem and it is the major reason that a low number of minorities are admitted into colleges. If affirmative action were used to solve this problem instead, employers would be required by law to hire potentially under-educated people. This could lead to people making the assumption that employees of that particular minority are not up to par and de facto racism will occur.

The third point brought up was that minorities may not be hired because customers and statistics are biased against them. This point is strongly linked to the second point of flaws in a system that encourage racism. This problem can only be solved over time by ensuring that all minorities have the same opportunity for an education as the majority has. Once this is true the average education levels of minorities will increase and reverse this trend of racist thinking. An opportunity for education is the most important factor to ensure equality among all demographics of people and it is the only way to properly combat racism.

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* Explanation: Imagine a scenario where three out of ten admissions officers at a college are racist. Affirmative action is practiced at this school so being a minority boosts your chance of getting in slightly. This may help counter racism of the three racist officers but the other seven officers will also be letting in more minorities than they would have without affirmative action. Assuming each official evaluates an approximately equal number of minorities, this system will ensure that seven out of every ten minorities that entered the school had too much preferential treatment.

Racism and the Reverse

In the 1950s, a decision by the Supreme Court declared segregation in schools illegal. The case Brown v. Board of Education is probably the most famous court case in the United States. But, the Supreme Court based its unanimous decision on the fact that separate was inherently unequal. Thus it did not simply declare de jure (by law) segregation illegal, it declared de facto (in fact) segregation illegal as well.

This is the reason busing was used. Communities were typically divided by race. Thus, the school districts were also divided by race, and would now be illegal.

Here, it is necessary to know a little about the difference between criminal and civil cases. That link is useful though somewhat biased. Basically, to have a criminal case one needs to break a law that was passed by a legislature and can go to prison, whereas in a civil case, one only needs to hurt another, but cannot go to prison. So, when I say illegal, I do not mean that this is criminal, but doing so would make them lose civil cases.

Since then, the idea of forced desegregation has spread from the schools, to the universities, and even the workplace. Many people reject this notion of forced desegregation. Some call it reverse racism. Some go so far as to say that it is unnecessary because racism no longer exist. But that is simply not true as numerous studies show.

I will defend the current approach to dealing with racism. First, there is the fact that people are racist. Some even unconsciously so. Second, the system may be racist in itself (such as a biased test). Thus giving a boost to minorities does not necessarily let in people of a lower caliber.

Third, there is a simple situation to show why even someone that's not racist would make a bias against minorities. Suppose you have two resumes in front of you. They are functionally equivalent, except one person is white, the other is black. Which one do you pick? There are two reasons to pick the white person over the black one, even if you're not racist. First, you'd realize that some people are racist, which means that by having to make them deal with a black person, you could be losing customers. The second reason, though a misuse of statistics, is that a black person is more likely to be a criminal. Thus, you would hire the white person as good business practice.

So, there are at least the three ways above that minorities get discriminated against on a regular basis. What's wrong with giving the minorities a boost to counter these ways?

One counterargument goes like this: Racism exists and it is bad. But it is even worse when the government starts being racist to correct it. The way to end racism is not more racism. This seems like a valid point, but I believe history has shown it to be untrue, though this is hardly undisputed. This brings me back to Brown v. Board of Education. During the late fifties and early sixties the government forced different races to interact and mix together, and although it is impossible to trace the cause of the improved race relations today, I would say that the government actions had a hand in it.

Another counterargument is that the government should not be involved in such things in the first place. This is a harder belief to refute and perhaps has some validity. But I would like to point out that the government is not as involved as is commonly believed. The days of affirmative action are largely in the past. The government does not actively seek out racists and racist companies. Instead people who feel wronged sue the company or university that acted racists towards them in a civil case. And often, they lose. No one goes to prison for being racist. Moreover, many of the "reverse racism" policies are issued by the government only when it acts as an employer. Things that private employers would be able to do, if you believe the government shouldn't interfere. And many private employers, and universities, use these policies even though no one is forcing them to.

I think that our current system of dealing with racism works fairly well, and that the "reverse racism" policies are fair because, well, quite simply, if we don't have reverse racism, we will have only plain racism.