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Americans Have a Cool Debate About a Hot-Button Topic
By BRENT STAPLES The debate about race-sensitive college admissions policies has been raging for more than 25 years, long enough for some of the most visible protagonists to switch sides. What started as a high-volume fistfight has evolved into a sophisticated discussion in which those who oppose affirmative action often do so by degrees - viewing it as right for, say, the fire department or the state college but wrong for an elite university's law school. The added nuance lowers the volume and cools things down. The most striking development is that Americans have learned to talk about race without being racist. Things have changed considerably since the heyday of Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who took race-baiting to a new level when he ran for re-election against a black opponent in 1990. A now-legendary attack ad showed a white man crumpling up a rejection letter as a voice-over said: "You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair?" Mr. Helms encouraged white constituents who had experienced job loss or professional disappointment to blame affirmative action. The message was that antiwhite discrimination was the only possible explanation when a black applicant was chosen over a white person. George Bush took a page from the Jesse Helms playbook when the administration filed a Supreme Court brief condemning affirmative action at the University of Michigan and tried to mislead Americans into believing that Michigan has a quota system that systematically discriminates against nonblack applicants. The Michigan program in no way resembles such a system. Indeed, the program differs only cosmetically from the one that transformed the American military from a profoundly segregated force on the verge of self-destruction into a model of interracial cohesiveness. As recently as 10 years ago, quota-baiting by a president would have triggered echoes around the country. Politicians would have jumped on the bandwagon. But the debate about the Michigan case has been surprisingly calm and reflective, partly because many Americans now understand how affirmative action works. Even hard-core conservatives were shaken to see black and Hispanic students disappear from California's elite campuses after Proposition 209 outlawed race-sensitive admissions policies there in 1996. They do not wish to see the phenomenon repeated across the country. The new tone also reflects a growing realization that a majority of special admissions cases involve white students who are athletes or V.I.P.'s, or wealthy applicants who get into elite colleges because their families write big checks. The growing realization that money and privilege play a role in the admissions process has transformed what began as a debate about race into a discussion about the meaning of academic merit and what constitutes fair access for the rich, white and famous. The strongest challenge to the Bush position has come from the American military, which knows that killing off affirmative action would leave the country with a fighting force that would be weaker and more segregated than it is today. Senior officers still in uniform are unable to challenge the White House directly. But their views are reflected in an amicus brief filed last month and signed by several decorated former officers - including three former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The brief discusses the Vietnam War period, when the military's ability to defend the country was compromised because it had gone into battle with a nearly all-white officer corps and a multiracial fighting force. Integrating the officer corps meant increasing the minority representation among those entering the Army, Navy and Air Force academies. This meant understanding that standardized test scores are not the final arbiters of ability and focusing on a broad range of factors - including race - in recruitment and admissions. As the Wall Street Journal columnist Al Hunt noted recently, the military academies have grown in stature since these changes took place. Many cadets, both white and black, have been found to have leadership skills superior to fellow students with higher test scores. A similar pattern has emerged at elite civilian colleges, several of which hold SAT's in such low regard that they no longer require applicants to take them. The idea that "merit" can be defined solely in terms of test scores has been rejected by the American military and has lost credibility just about everywhere - except in the White House. The voices that argued most forcefully for Mr. Bush to attack affirmative action at Michigan did so partly because they believe that the university puts too little weight on SAT scores and too much weight on race. This fixation on the link between SAT scores and race is peculiar, given a White House with so many people who relied on privilege and connections as they rose to high office. True, the university's admissions scheme - which is based on a 150-point system - awards a maximum of 12 points for the SAT score and 20 for membership in an underrepresented minority group. But to focus on that is misleading, given that 20 points can also be earned by white students who are economically disadvantaged or who attend predominantly nonwhite high schools. In addition, a full 110 of the 150 points are derived from academic factors. Mr. Bush brandished the "quota" label to feed the far right. But the country is learning that special admissions, when taken as a whole, favor white students more than blacks - and that class, not race, is the main determinant of who gets a boost into the most coveted colleges. |
