Is there a Catholic position on the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on affirmative action? I can’t find one.
In fact, I can’t imagine the most liberal theologian at Georgetown or Notre Dame finding one either. Not if he looks at the issue dispassionately and without a political agenda. I am quite serious.
We have a moral obligation to seek justice for minorities. We have a duty to seek laws that respect their dignity as sons and daughters of God. But how we go about achieving those ends is up for discussion. Which means that we are free to ask if affirmative action programs are necessary in this day and age. Do they amount to “reverse discrimination”? Do they unduly punish the current generation of whites for the sins of earlier generations of whites? Do they do more harm than good by creating a dependency mentality in those who gain a temporary advantage through their application? All these questions are legitimate. It is grossly unfair to assume that those who oppose affirmative action programs are merely putting up a smokescreen to hide their racial prejudices.
That said, permit me to weigh in on what the Supreme Court has done: I think the justices struck just the right balance. Maybe I should rephrase that. I do not take issue with Antonin Scalia’s and Clarence Thomas’s objections to the decision. Their dissent was rooted, as it should be, in questions of law. What I am talking about is the effect of the Court’s decisions on our public life; whether it affords universities a wise and just way to choose their student bodies. I say it does. In fact, I would say that the decisions permit universities to do what the most severe critics of affirmative action want them to do: choose the best candidates for their student bodies. Whether they will do that, or use the Court’s decisions as a way to continue racial quotas is another matter. But more of that in due course.
Let us first review the Court’s decisions in laymen’s terms, rather than from a lawyer’s perspective. The Court dealt with the admission policies at both the University of Michigan’s undergraduate program and the University of Michigan’s law school. The Court ruled that the undergraduate school’s approach was unconstitutional because it was too mechanical: It granted “points” to blacks simply on the basis of race. On the other hand, the law school’s approach was held to be acceptable because race was just one factor in a bundle of factors taken into account when evaluating applicants.
That makes sense to me. The undergraduate school would give twenty points to the sons and daughters of even wealthy and accomplished blacks, simply because they were black. Using this approach, Colin Powell’s and Bill Cosby’s children would be given a twenty point advantage over an applicant from an impoverished white family from the mountains of West Virginia. The undergraduate school discriminated — discriminated “in reverse,” if you will — solely on the basis of race. The law school, on the other hand, made a more thoughtful evaluation of their candidates. It would give preferences to blacks, but mainly to blacks who suffered from genuine disadvantages: blacks from broken homes, from bad neighborhoods, to those who had attended sub-standards secondary schools.
If such a yardstick is applied intelligently and fairly, it stands a good chance of finding a superior candidate for admission among a group of minority candidates whose standardized test scores may be lower than those of other applicants. It is hard to see an objection to this way of measuring an applicant’s potential. Obviously, an extremely bright and promising applicant from a broken family, who has lived in crime-ridden neighborhoods and attended poorly run schools, is likely to score lower on his SATs than a lawyer’s child, who has attended prestigious prep schools and received private tutoring on how to take the SAT test.
The military has found this to be the case. Their affirmative action programs have uncovered stellar officers among minorities who did not do well on their standardized tests. These officers demonstrated their mettle once they were admitted to officer training programs and assumed their responsibilities on the field of battle. They proved to have qualities — integrity, valor, perseverance — that could not be measured by the multiple choice questions on standardized tests.
Anyone who has taught high school can vouch for the fact that success in life is not measured by SAT tests. Many students who were athletes and who worked part-time jobs while in high school go on to great accomplishments in their professional careers, even though they did not do as well on standardized tests as some of their classmates who were more narrowly focused on test scores while in high school. I could give you examples of mine with very high SAT scores who went on to lackluster academic and research careers; and of students with middling SAT scores who are now doctors and lawyers, successful entrepreneurs and corporate executives.
Please do not misread me. I am not saying that there is anything deficient about the students with the high SAT scores who did not go on to make “big money.” I recognize that there is more to life than “climbing the ladder of success.” My point is only that their high scores on standardized tests did not predict their level of career accomplishment as adults. And the lower scores of their classmates who went on to positions of great responsibility did not predict their potential either. It seems to me that there is nothing wrong with universities seeking out minority candidates whose potential has been covered up by the disadvantages of living in poverty in one of America’s inner cities or culturally deprived rural areas.
But are there not whites who are also culturally deprived? Of course. One would hope the schools that apply the Court’s guidelines in selecting students would take be mindful of this. A white student from a poor Appalachian town is likely to have as many handicaps to scoring well on an SAT test as a poor black student from Harlem; maybe more.
Why then have race as a factor at all? Why did not the Court mandate that only poverty and cultural deprivation should be considered when giving preference to candidates with lower scores on standardized tests? One has only to drive into the major cities of this country, through the dreary tenements and row houses where so many minorities live to get the answer. Whatever the cause — and that can be debated — there is something unique about the kind of poverty that black children are likely to experience in this country. It requires specific attention — affirmative action.
Sandra Day O’Connor’s decision in this case disappointed many conservatives. But this section of it seems beyond reproach: “Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civil life our nation is essential if the dream of one nation, indivisible, is to be realized. In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.”
University admission policies that seek to uncover these “talented and qualified individuals” by looking beyond standardized tests are wise and fair. Giving preferences on the basis of race — using quotas — is not. That is what the Court decided. It seems reasonable to me.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
