Civil Rights: What Price Preference?

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

As the Supreme Court confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas made evident, affirmative action to benefit blacks and other minorities has become one of the most bitterly controversial social policies in the U.S. Some whites have opposed the idea from day one. Others initially accepted the concept of social justice but now argue that racial preferences have gone on long enough and ask whether minorities expect special treatment in perpetuity. Beyond the white backlash is a growing body of dissent, or at least disquiet, among blacks -- including some who have benefited directly from affirmative action.

They offer three striking arguments: 1) the very existence of preference programs may aggravate racial tensions; 2) preferential advancement for any blacks serves to cast doubt on the credentials of all blacks, both among white onlookers and, even more perniciously, in the minds of black achievers themselves; 3) the primary fruits of affirmative action, from admission, into prestige law schools to entry onto the corporate fast track, have been harvested mostly by middle-class blacks rather than members of the underclass. In sum, according to this view, affirmative action has succeeded at getting more black people into better jobs but has often failed to achieve the goal of fostering a more equal society.

While most blacks stop short of opposing affirmative action outright, an influential few suggest that the concept needs rethinking. Outright quotas, the flash point of white opposition, are increasingly rejected as counterproductive because of how whites administer them. Says Larry Thompson, deputy general counsel of Wall Street's giant Depository Trust Co.: "Most of us who have benefited from or participated in minority recruiting would be against numerical goals and quotas because all they lead to is taking the first 10 dark faces that walk through the door instead of taking people who are qualified."

College recruitment has proved to be of limited value unless accompanied by tutoring and counseling to help disadvantaged students all the way through. Since 1976, according to Reginald Wilson, who tracks minority affairs for the American Council on Education, the share of black high school graduates attending college has dropped from 35.4% to about 30.8%, vs. 38.8% for whites -- primarily because of higher dropout rates for blacks. "The tragedy on many campuses," says Wilson, "is that recruitment of minority students gets a lot of attention but remedial programs necessary for them to succeed do not."

Most important, preference programs seem to have only a minimal effect on breaking the cycle of ghetto poverty. As Yale law school professor Stephen Carter points out in the autobiographical Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, "What has happened in black America in the era of affirmative action is this: middle-class black people are better off and lower-class black people are worse off . . . The most disadvantaged black people are not in a position to benefit from preferential admission." In response, some scholars wonder whether socioeconomic class ought to augment race, or even replace it, as a criterion in affirmative action. Proponents say that would be fairer and, in a society of limited resources, more effective. They add that it might diminish backlash -- especially if preferences went to poor whites as well.

The idea of affirmative action for whites, of whatever condition, strikes most black social scholars as absurd. Many blacks already view with skepticism and even resentment the proliferation of preferences to other ethnic groups and to women, none of whose legacies of oppression remotely compare with slavery and the segregation that followed. Yet the idea of focusing on truly poor blacks is attracting growing support. Says Christopher Edley Jr., a Harvard law professor: "Trying to use economic disadvantage as a basis for affirmative action is valuable. But it should be a supplement. Race is still an independent contributor to disadvantage and remains a crucial fact of social life."

Carter, who describes himself in an interview as "a critic but not an opponent" of affirmative action, has been hailed by other eminent black scholars as articulating a new focal point of debate. "Perhaps what seems a backlash against affirmative action," he writes, "is instead (or in addition) a signal that the programs, at least in their current expansive form, have run their course. Or perhaps, if the programs are to be preserved, they should move closer to their roots: the provision of opportunities for people of color who might not otherwise have the advanced training that will allow them to prove what they can do."

Carter's most striking suggestion is probably beyond the capacities of deficit-burdened universities. After assessing and minimizing the alternative reasons for low black college enrollment -- joining the military, running ( afoul of the law, immersion in the drug subculture -- he speculates that the biggest disincentive is cost. Thus, he says, "preferential financial assistance (for all its obvious problems) might actually be a more logical and efficient solution than preferential admission." At the other end of the spectrum, when students emerge from graduate school, Carter contends, "the case for preference evaporates."

Carter is far from alone in perceiving affirmative action as primarily a middle-class boon. Thompson, who has recruited for his college, Yale, and his law school, Berkeley, says prestige institutions fared far better in the '60s and '70s at empowering the poor. Now, he argues, they enroll the children of black alumni. Princeton admissions dean Fred Hargadon allows that prestige schools are not finding enough of the disadvantaged, black or white: "None of us are yet so successful with affirmative action that we can spread resources to other social problems."

Whatever the best universities and largest corporations do, however, affirmative-action programs are fated to remain distant from the problems of the ultra-poor. Says Eleanor Holmes Norton, a former chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: "Affirmative action is now essentially a tool for getting people better jobs" rather than for bringing the economically excluded into the system. This results from what economist James Smith, author of a U.S. Labor Department study on the problem, dryly labels a "pro-skill bias." Most such programs operate at colleges and graduate schools or in private business. By the time impoverished blacks are of an age to deal with these institutions, many of them have been overwhelmed by a combination of inadequate schools, troubled homes and neighborhoods, an environment of drug use and other social ills. Even those with the will to work often need remedial training far beyond any corporate internship.

That sad fact does not invalidate affirmative action. Although it is viewed as a Democratic program, its underlying rationale includes a classic Republican trickle-down theory: the idea that having more black doctors and lawyers and professors and business executives -- which affirmative action has achieved -- will provide a more stable black community and better role models for the next generation.

But those role models may pay their own psychic price. The most poignant passages in Carter's book, or for that matter in the private conversation of many other "affirmative-action babies," speak of the "best-black syndrome." Over and over, Carter recalls, teachers told him he was the "best black" they had enrolled. He felt he was always set apart, never allowed to succeed or fail in open competition. Racial preferences, he suggests, have only partly healed our society. Affirmative action may mean we are no longer separate. But in the minds of whites and blacks alike, it keeps achievements from being viewed as equal.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart

[TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Sources: U.S. Bureau of Census, 1989 figures}]CAPTION: The poverty line is defined as an income of $12,674 a year for a family of four.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington and Elizabeth Rudulph/New York