Obama gave a nod to this argument in his speech on race. As a politician, I wouldn't expect him to do anything else. I think it's an effective line and it reaches out to people who he needs in his coalition. Fortunately, I'm not a politician and so I'll just say this--the "immigrants didn't do it" argument is dubious. Let's skip past the fact that the argument rather conveniently reduces a case made against slavery and Jim Crow into simply, "slavery." Let's skip past the fact that even at the reduced standard, the commenter owes, at the least, the very existence of the seat of his country to slave labor. Let's ignore all the slaves who died in the Revolutionary War, without which, there would be no country for the commenter's forbears to immigrate to. Let's skip past the era of redlining and excluding blacks from New Deal programs which "benefited" all whites--immigrants or not.Try explaining to 3rd generation immigrants how they or their forebears benefited from slavery. There are many facts that you could produce that may indeed prove it. But do these arguments have the same impact as the anecdote about the 2nd cousin who was denied a promotion because of a quota? This is the disconnect. The descendants of immigrants see themselves as not personally responsible for the crime of slavery, yet they see themselves personally paying for it. Why shouldn't they resent it? AA doesn't seem all that noble to them.
Let us jouney to the heart of things--what the "immigrants didn't do it" defense offers is an a'la carte brand of citizenship where one gets to pick and chose what one will or won't claim. Here is fellowship rendered on the cheap--scarfing down hot dogs and cheering for fireworks on the Fourth of July (despite the fact that said commenter's forbears did absolutely nothing to liberate the country) while slinking away when the subject of slavery or Jim Crow arises. I should thank the heavens that I had nothing to do with the forced removal of the Native Americans. But I recognize that I live in Manhattan--on land that I didn't settle. Moreover, I certainly had nothing to do with the murder of millions of Jews by the Third Reich, but I'm quite proud that my taxes help pay for the Holocaust Museum. Either you're an American, or you are not. If you are, welcome to the family--the entire family.
One more thing. I want to push back on this notion that asking the country to acknowledge past wrongs and commit itself to righting them is some sort of "give away" to black people. I think it's myopic to say whites "benefited" from Jim Crow because, when we refused to be mature and decided to segregate, we did not merely disenfranchise blacks, we passed our problems off to our children--black and white. I have made this case before, but bridging this chasm, healing this wound is only a "favor" for black people if you have no problem with your grandson having this same conversation again in fifty years.
Jim Crow wasn't simply a crime against black people--it was a crime against the American future. It robbed this country of the innovation and ingenuity of some of its most patriotic citizens. I talk about lynching a lot, because I think it gets to the meat of things--it's like our own version of Stalin killing all the Polish intellectuals, writ small. Post World War I, returning black veterans were hung by the Klan in the very uniforms that they'd served their country in. Think about that. Think about the damage that did to the country. Consider that when race riots jumped off in the South, they often didn't target the black poor--they attacked the black middle class, they very people you need to build a country. We stood by and watched as thugs sacrificed human capital in the name of some imagined virginal white womanhood. Was it really worth it?
It takes a certain type of mind, a certain short-sightedness, a certain craveness to see race along the lines of Us vs. Them, to believe that Jim Crow somehow (in the long-term) actually helped white people, and thus presumably, helped most Americans. I will be candid--where I'm from, we call that a ghetto mind-state, a "nigger-on-the-corner" mentality. But we only call it that because we give white people too much credit, because we watch too much TV, because we don't travel enough, because we think ya'll can fly.
No doubt, in the era of Jim Crow, the country failed black people. But what the progeny of the white immigrant should know is that, most importantly, the country--our country--failed itself. And then it left its children to pick up the pieces. You having fun yet?
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Thank you. I've never heard it said like this. Lynching and segregation held the entire nation back. Bill Clinton used to say things similar to this. He would say, and I paraphrase, if you can't think of young black and Latino men as your brothers, think of them as folks whose labor and taxes we need to keep Social Security functioning. We are in this together and only as strong as our weakest links.
watch out chief, you're black gloved fist is showing thru the screen and the powers that be at Atlantic might now appreciate it that much... be careful..
but you nailed it again... the scarfing down hot dogs july 4th line was great...
Not really...thinking a lot, but I wouldn't call it fun. I am going to try to take to heart the 4th of July argument.
As an old teacher of mine used to say, "when you hear the truth, it is your moral obligation to accept it immediately and change your behavior to match."
Time for a change. A small one, but a change nonetheless.
Damn. Guess who's blog is staying in my RSS feed reader now.
Thanks for this post.
Nice argument..
a question for Mr. Coates...
What do you make of this more recent talk of "class-based" affirmative action that I think has been linked to Obama (but not 100% on that..)?
I'm pretty old school liberal and see why affirmative action exists and it has my sympathy. On the other hand, I've never yet come across a situation where I've been on the short end of any "AA" action, so I've no reason to be resentful either...
Do you (or anyone else here) think that this idea of "class-based" is just a way to kill this white resentment? or is it a cop out?
I'm not sure what to think or feel about it. My gut is wary of anything that seems to make conservatives happy and knowing all the damn racism that still exists (I get to see the wonders of it as applied to the African Americans up here in VERY WHITE Wisconsin... ).. part of me thinks it's just a way to minimize any real attempt to help blacks.. on the other hand.. it might be a way to maintain the best parts of AA in a political climate that has become even more hostile to it..
I never minded AA, but as a working man i sure hate the talented 10th. Nothing worse than hearing a black lawyer or a black mba complain about the Man.
Why the hell would anyone care if the elite class of rich professionals is multicultural?
Jim Crow wasn't simply a crime against black people--it was a crime against the American future.
Every time I read some comment on other Web sites about how today's schoolchildren are suffereing from "revisionist history", I remind said commenter of the above point that was so glaringly absent from the history books of my and previous generations. But of course it's never quite as eloquent. Way to hit the nail on the head.
All that sounded very nice, but it failed entirely to rebut the commenter's point. Recognizing an awful past is one thing, and I think that is where most of your rebuttal focuses. Maybe whites should acknowledge the past more. But it is an entirely different thing to say that the state should offer preferential treatment to another group of people based on that past, where neither the person benefitting or being discriminated against because of AA had anything to do with it. You still have not addressed the point.
Yes, slavery and Jim Crow were horrible crimes, and yes they left a stain on the country. But I have never seen a valid justification for allowing the state to engage in discrimination in a futile attempt to rectify those crimes. We can't change what happened. All we can do is move forward without engaging in further discrimination toward any race.
And Coates, please stop telling white people why we think a certain way. Isn't this the same thing you criticized Toby Keith for? And when was the last time you sat down for lasagna with a white working class family? The bottom-line is we are hard-working people, and no one gave us shit.
The descendants of recent white immigrants who don't think their immigrant forebears benefited from racism are either idiots or kidding themselves. My Irish father arrived here in the late 1940s with little relevant experience but a strong body. He worked in construction, went into the Army during the Korean War, and got a union job with the gas company shortly thereafter.
Guess who WASN'T being hired in those days by the gas company? But almost every other 1st generation Irish-American or Italian-American kid (it was that kind of neighborhood) I knew had a father working in similar jobs.
So this "we never benefited" nonsense Angry White Men spew is the most ignorant sort of bullshit.
Holy crap, Ta-Nehisi.
And Jimmy, the elite class of rich professionals are the ones running the show (it's their money that lines the pockets of politicians). They're the ones who SHOULD be multicultural, if you subscribe to the trickle-down theory.
Of course, skin color is not an indicator of ethics, but by accepting the elite class as a group of white men, nothing... absolutely NOTHING, changes.
And not all blacks with multiple degrees subscribe to the Talented Tenth theory. In fact, its originator, DuBois, abandoned the idea in later life.
Great post. Welcome aboard!
I used to fall back on the "Wasn't Me" defense, and would flesh it out (if challenged) with a semi-littany about how I was 4th generation Dutch from Iowa, all my ancestors were Dutch, and I came from a long line of nothing but farmers and sailors. Clean hands! This worked perfectly well (for me, anyways) until one day when a roommate absolutely flattened me by asking just what my sailor ancestors were carrying around in their ships.
I'd never even thought about it, not once--I had just assumed it was grain.
Here's to a little collective guilt!
I agree with all of the above. However, I still don't see how race-based affirmative action is the best solution to the problem. As I see it (and commented in the previous thread) such programs serve to antagonize poor whites who might otherwise be coopted into supporting black advancement. If affirmative action were based on class and, perhaps more importantly, on school of origin, it could easily be applied to blacks in a way similar to the way it is today, while perhaps affecting more meaningful change. When we're talking about an upper-middle class/wealthy black kid who goes to prep school, I fail to see why the color of his skin should provide an advantage to him in applying to university over a poor white kid from an impoverished school district. The poorest schools in the country are typically majority black schools, so such a program would undoubtedly continue to benefit African Americans. At the same time, however, if the argument for affirmative action is framed in a manner that will be beneficial to poor white folks, they might get on board with it. Under the current regime, all too often those poor whites are the ones who are most vehemently against affirmative action.
On a side note, I think the focus on university is counter-productive. America's real problem is that its public school funding is based on local tax revenues rather than a broader, more redistributive system. Look to Canada, where their public schools are funded much more equitably through federal and provincial tax dollars. As a result, their universities are able to offer entrance based almost entirely on high school average, i.e. you are offered a spot if you have an 89. A more equitable public school system would most likely eliminate the need for affirmative action in the first place. Then again, this is a much less palatable proposal for most Americans (liberals and conservatives), as they'd rather see a few token black kids in university classrooms than risk not having a new computer lab at their kid's school.
I heard this argument when I traveled in Germany as well......
I heard the "wasn't me" defense in Germany, that is.....NOT your cogent argument.
"Wasn't me" isn't getting a fair shake... but forget that... "Still isn't me..." is a more interesting take. Black gay males and aids... isn't me. Isn't white people. Isn't the government. Isn't Jim Crowe, isn't a legacy of disenfranchisement, isn't a result of slavery.
Hence the white resentment. Not only is preferential treatment not going to solve anything, there is no fair way to blame anyone. If we keep pretending there is then we got something right: our great grand children will be posting to this thread.
I think there is some interesting discussion to be had on the a'la carte argument, but it isn't going to be any more fun for black people than anyone else. If anyone plays the responsibility card, then we all do.
Every person, regardless of color, is responsible for every illiterate child in this country, or no one is. How's that going for you?
"All we can do is move forward without engaging in further discrimination toward any race."
True, but we can't waive a magic wand and do that. Abandoning AA won't end preferences that tend to benefit whites over blacks and Latinos, such as legacy admissions or the fact that even with AA, a black man with no criminal record has the same hiring prospects as a white man with a criminal record. AA isn't what is tilting the playing field in terms of racial preferences. That field is tilted in white people's favor. All AA attempts to do is tilt it a little bit back towards neutral.
I think you really nail it with your focus on Jim Crow and its consequences. My own personal story has always shown me this in vivid relief. My family immigrated in the 1630s and by 1730 settled in a crappy valley in the Great Smokey Mountains. For 200 years they farmed the valley and survived barely. The TVA threw them off the land to build a dam in the area, and they immigrated to a nasty factory town, where they all worked on the line. Yet, the first generation born in that nasty factory town (i.e. my father and aunt) both got excellent public educations through college and both hold advanced degrees. A microcosmic image of the difference between the experience of white and black was my father's deferments from Vietnam. In his American Legion baseball picture from his senior year (the year after his high school and team integrated) he stands with a fully integrated team (9 black, 7 white, and 2 hispanic). He then always reminds me that not a single black or hispanic in that picture survived Vietnam. My father managed to get a scholarship at a crappy public uni to keep him out of the draft. When his buddies were dying in Vietnam, he was transferring to successively better schools once he found his niche in college. Thus his American legion reunions are now 7 whites, because they are all that remains. My dad can remember where and when they were all killed. In sum, my family has been here from the start, suffered poverty, dislocation at the hands of the government, etc... but the doors that my ancestors chose not to go through were always open to them. Slavery and Jim Crow ensured a different fate for anyone else. Perhaps affirmative action is not perfect, but its a hell of lot better than what came before. If the opportunity open to my father had been equally open to hispanics and african americans, I am sure that his reunions would have been multiracial, and I may not have ever been born. You see, he graduated last in his class, but he could steal bases. Plenty of colleges were happy to offer him a baseball spot and money to go school. Everyone is guilty for America's past, no matter what your own historical background may be.
A thought: I too find AA troubling, not on principle but on implementation--who and how?
A more solid argument, and one I try to advance in favor of AA in regards to rebuttals that slavery and de jure segregation are some 300 and in the latter 40 years (so long!) gone...notice the sarcasm, and thus no remediations are needed is that there are many well documented and widespread cases of race based discrimination in the present (housing, bank loans, employment, the criminal justice system).
Moreover, the range of empirical research which supports that race over-determines life chances would seem to make an irrefutable case, if folks were being honest, about the permanence of racism and its financial impact on black and brown Americans. Those who are damaged can and should be made financially whole.
One of the real challenges in this conversation is that we as a society can do something about collective discrimination and racism, many of us simply lack the moral character and courage to do so. And ultimately, the psychic investment in a belief in American righteousness and generosity often precludes an admission of collective white guilt, and responsibility, out of fear and self-interest.
It makes one think that about what would happen if we had a national conversation about white privilege in the present?
Yea man, diggin u, having fun.
I kind of resemble that post. My "people" didn't come to NYC until the late 20s and being Italian and Irish back then in NYC wasn't exactly country club living.
I grew up north of Harlem in the Heights before it was gentrifried. Minority hispanic was the majority and it gave my family great perspective on real life in America for minorities. A life which is not the same as anyone in white America regardless of when their "peoples" boat landed.
But, I think there is a difference that needs to be recognized about the immigrant population. While I agree with the fact that we have to own it and live it as Americans I do think it was harder for me to relate (not understand and be disgusted by) to the wrongness of the missdeeds of slavery etc. since it is not intertwined in my family history pre-immigration.
That all being said, I find AA to be at best a weak excuse for fulfilling the 40 acre promise and while it remains in place, equality cannot be achieved. But, while it is we exploit it if we can for my 1/2 Dominican children. :P
Regardless of we feel about AA, I think we can all agree that Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" Defense constitutes a legitimate argument against perceived infidelity...
How much of your taxes are going to the Holocaust Museum? Wasn't it built with private funds (on government-donated land)? I happen to think the museum shouldn't have been built in D.C., because it inevitably lead to politicization of the subject (and, because, it's not really an appropriate place for such a museum -- D.C. isn't known for its Jewish community).
In any event, it's hard to resent a penny coming out of your pocket every year. Not getting that job you wanted because they had to hire surly Taniqua is a greater cause of resentment.
I agree with Ta-Nehisi's argument but believe strongly that affirmative action should be class-based because that is fair and right and most likely to be effective. We as a community simply cannot admit that fatherlessness is the root of most problems afflicting us today. Yes, we Blacks are worse off economically than many other Americans. But poverty and disadvantage are relative. People all around the world are starving and suffering in ways that even the poorest in our country cannot imagine. We are not doing the best we can in the country in the world that offers the most opportunity. That is about our personal choices, not racism.
Ron Fiscus disposed of the "Wasn't Me" defense/"innocent persons" argument quite eloquently in his book "The Constitutional Logic of Affirmative Action." Fiscus argued that most whites today are in fact innocent of direct discrimination, yet they benefit from past discrimination because the applicant pools they compete in for jobs and school seats are distorted by the lack of minority representation caused by past discrimination.
MoeLarryAndJesus nails it. And laborlibert ought to read MLJ's post and reflect on it a little bit before (s)he so glibly says that no one gave white working folks "shit." There were (and are) whole kinship, social and economic networks that have benefited white workers for generations, most of which wouldn't have tolerated a black in their midst -- let alone extended any jobs or benefits to one -- in the absence of serious legal coercion that came only after the 1960s.
I live in a midwestern city with its own history of such tribalism, exclusion and outright racism, and I know what I'm talking about. Any white person who doesn't acknowledge this is either delusional or lying.
tricstmr writes:
What do you make of this more recent talk of "class-based" affirmative action that I think has been linked to Obama (but not 100% on that..)?
OK, you weren't asking me. But I don't understand why "class-based affirmative action" is always discussed as an alternative to race- and gender- and disability-based affirmative action. Why wouldn't we just add it in? There's ample evidence along the lines of the study mentioned in a previous post that racial discrimination is alive and well in the hiring and promotion of workers. It's also true that a wealthy black person needs a lot less of a leg up than a poor one (Obama did mention this, in the context of saying that he'd want his daughters to be considered pretty "advantaged" in an affirmative action context). I'd guess, though I have no evidence for this, that the difference between the prospects of the poor black person and the wealthy one is bigger than the gap between the wealthy black person and a wealthy white one. But the gap is still there. And you can't get rid of it in a generation, either.
I think "class-based affirmative action" is appealing because it locates the problem not with the public at large but with the beneficiary. If we offer them benefits because "they couldn't afford the advantages that others had," we're just magnanimous and forward-thinking. If we offer them benefits because "they still face significant discrimination," then it's "we" who have the problem, not them. And that makes us a lot more uncomfortable.
Which brings me to what laborlibert wrote:
We can't change what happened. All we can do is move forward without engaging in further discrimination toward any race.
A comment like this reflects an utter lack of understanding about how discrimination works. It's not as if the HR person facing a white job candidate with a felony record thinks, "well, his record gives me pause, but at least he's not black." She may just feel more comfortable with him during the interview. She may be better able to picture him in the office he's applying to work in, because he looks like the people who are already there. She may be a little uncomfortable with both candidates but decide to give the white felon a chance because, again, it feels a lot better to help someone out with their problem than it does to imagine that a system you're a part of is their problem.
In the end, anyone who thinks that blacks (and everyone else who benefits from affirmative action) wouldn't scrap those policies in a hot minute if we could actually "move forward without engaging in further discrimination toward any race" is deluded. The question is, how do you propose to make that happen? (Hint: "As long as everyone says they're not discriminating, surely it's OK" is not an acceptable answer.)
Fortunately, I'm not a politician and so I'll just say this--the "immigrants didn't do it" argument is dubious.
One may obviously agree that white immigrants, including very recent immigrants, benefit to some degree from the legacy of historical racial discrimination in America (slavery, Jim Crow, etc.), and even to some degree from contemporary discrimination, without also aggreeing that AA is a just or effective remedy for that problem. The costs to a particular white individual from AA may exceed the benefit he gets from past/current discrimination against blacks.
So here's an AA related question in a post-jim crow era world what is the role of the HBC&U?
Recognizing a wrong - in this case, a large wrong - is different from implementing a policy NOW because of what happened in the past.
The policy has to work NOW - in this moment, and in anticipation of future gains from said policy.
I don't see us giving American Indians back all their land - surely one of the most aggrieved of all groups. So where justice?
So anyway, I'm more interested, today, in does a policy of affirmative action makes this country stronger?
You simply can't find justice for a past wrong, in public policy today, other than an acknowledgment of past wrongs.
Policy has to be fair TODAY. And I think you can make an argument that affirmative action - basically ensuring that the makeup of various agencies, in some sense RESEMBLES the makeup of the population at large - is a sensible one.
This conflicts with the argument that the U.S. should be a straight meritocracy.
But of course, those who want to blame affirmative action, ALWAYS CONVENIENTLY FORGET the affirmative action in regards to huge donors to schools, or to legacy students (parents, grandparents, etc).
Until you get rid of THOSE unfair types of affirmative action - built on wealth and class - the argument against racial affirmative action is pretty weak.
And I don't see those going away anytime soon.
Still, may be worth adjusting some public policy towards affirmative action for the POOR, more so that simply racial. Deserving, hard working, bright students, no matter their background, should be elevated.
The costs to a particular white individual from AA may exceed the benefit he gets from past/current discrimination against blacks.
The costs to a particular black individual from workplace discrimination may exceed the benefit he gets from past/current benefits from affirmative action.
So what?
Is there any other area of public policy where "one white individual may suffer disproportionately" trumps every other consideration?
I agree with Ta-Nehisi's argument but believe strongly that affirmative action should be class-based because that is fair and right and most likely to be effective. We as a community simply cannot admit that fatherlessness is the root of most problems afflicting us today. Yes, we Blacks are worse off economically than many other Americans. But poverty and disadvantage are relative. People all around the world are starving and suffering in ways that even the poorest in our country cannot imagine. We are not doing the best we can in the country in the world that offers the most opportunity. That is about our personal choices, not racism.
I agree with Ta-Nehisi's argument but believe strongly that affirmative action should be class-based because that is fair and right and most likely to be effective. We as a community simply cannot admit that fatherlessness is the root of most problems afflicting us today. Yes, we Blacks are worse off economically than many other Americans. But poverty and disadvantage are relative. People all around the world are starving and suffering in ways that even the poorest in our country cannot imagine. We are not doing the best we can in the country in the world that offers the most opportunity. That is about our personal choices, not racism.
Deleted.
professordarkheart
You said "Is there any other area of public policy where "one white individual may suffer disproportionately" trumps every other consideration?"
What do you mean by that?
"I agree with Ta-Nehisi's argument but believe strongly that affirmative action should be class-based because that is fair and right and most likely to be effective."
Steve Sailer brought up the obvious problem with class-based affirmative action: class is such a slippery term, and individuals will attempt to make themselves appear lower class in order to gain preferences.
Juan writes: "American blacks live better than blacks in almost any part of the world. Aside from tiny number of prosperous black-run countries (Trinidad & Tobago plus... what else?), every other black-run country is a hell hole. Maybe American blacks should be grateful they live in a majority white country instead of Haiti or Nigeria. "
I remember reading similar arguments to justify Aparthied in South Africa. That South Africa's Black Population had the Highest Standard of Living of the black population in all African Countries. I loved Mandela's Response to this* that Black South Africans beef with the reigme of Botha and the rest wasn't that they were poor in relation to the rest of Africa but that they were poor in relation to their own countrymen.
*If you want to read the actual statement it's in Richard Manning's Book they cannot kill us All.
What do you mean by that?
What I mean is that saying "the costs to a particular white individual from AA may exceed the benefit he gets from past/current discrimination against blacks" is not an effective argument against the overall goals of affirmative action, any more than "the costs to a particular black individual from workplace discrimination may exceed the benefit he gets from past/current affirmative action policies" is an effective argument that blacks in general should be given stronger preferences.
It's a mistake to think of affirmative action primarily in terms of its effect on individuals; its primary rationale is that is we try to get schools and workplaces to resemble the overall makeup of the population because: a) everyone in those environments will benefit from the range of perspectives and experiences and b) when those who have been traditionally excluded from those environments are included, discrimination will become less prevalent because the natural tendencies of institutions to reproduce themselves will no longer be discriminatory.
Re: Juan
I can definitely see the problems with class-based affirmative action, but I would think that they could be overcome with a combination of looking at what high schools a person has attended and their parents' financial records. Colleges already rate high schools, and weight GPAs according to what school you attended. I.e., you go to an elite New England prep school and your 3.8 is multiplied by 1.2, whereas you go to an underfunded inner city public school and your 4.0 is multiplied by .8. Rather than a means for rejection, schools could use this as a criteria for admission. It wouldn't be as simple as factoring in skin color, but would likely be more effective.
So the Atlantic now has a black nationalist to argue race-based sophistry. How chic.
Yes Mr Coates. Lets not buy into the "immigrants didn't do it" argument. Quite the contrary, henceforth, all would-be citizens--except those of African ancestry of course--have to pay a "WHITE-GUILT-INCLUSION" Fee in order process their naturalization papers.
By the by have noticed that you employ a lot food-based analogies?
I find this particular argument really interesting because it has such a sad historical echo. I mean the "don't punish the immigrants" argument is virtually the same argument used to oppose open housing in the 1950's and 60's. The various groups of inner-city and suburban people in places like Boston and Chicago used racial covenants and redlining (and, when that didn't work, sometimes turned to outright violence) to keep their neighborhoods all-white were very often immigrants who were upset that they were being "punished" by (predicted) depressed property values and the diminished social standing of living in a mixed-race community. The various Chicago "civic clubs" and "homeowner associations" in immigrant communities in the 1950's were usually the most aggressive advocates of segregated housing and the preservation of the black ghetto. Hell, the "nadir of race relations" (from roughly the end of Reconstruction through the New Deal) happened during the most famous burst of immigration in American history.
But even people who immigrated more recently need to realize how much of their daily lived experience is linked to the nation's racial history. The entrenched poverty created by hundreds of years of wealth transfer from blacks to whites continues to drag down this country's labor pool, educational system, and healthcare system. It's no coincidence that many of the factors in which we trail the rest of the developed world (eg: literacy, obesity rates, incidence and mortality of chronic disease, gun violence) are also characterized by huge disparities between black and non-black people. And of course, America's uniquely inefficient, sprawling urban model, with few pedestrian options and many of the most well-paid and productive employees living furthest from work, is at least linked to post-WWII white flight.
One of the most annoying things about racial discussion in this country is that fixing these issues is often seeing as "punishing" non-black people. When the point is really to work through huge systemic problems that keep dragging the country down, and help all Americans regardless of when they got here.
Well, I certainly didn't make the original comment in some fit of anger, or to be trollish. I made the comment because it's an argument that I have personally had, and the response I wrote was the response I heard. great post.
One thing that I find intersting is that the right talks about things like rising tides raising all ships, trickle down economics and how growing the economy benefits everyone. Then when the conversation turns to AA or immigration all of a sudden its a zero sum economy:-)
I think the GI bill is a great argument for the rising tides concept. After WW II a whole bunch of guys who wouldn't have gone to college got the opportunity and then in the 1950s and 60s were a big part of the growth of the middle class. Guys who would have been blue collar workers were now starting businesses.
I see the same thing in Ta-Nehisi's argument. From the Civil War until the Civil Rights act there were so many barriers placed in the way of Blacks advancing so only a very very small percentage of them were part of the growing middle class. How many businesses didn't get started?
Granted there are a few places that are numerically limited, only so many people can get into Harvard. So yeah some white people will have to go to a non ivy league college. I think an important point here is to clarify just what the purpose of elite colleges in. First and foremost it is to create the next generation of elite leaders. I think it is perfectly valid to argue that the top x% black students need to be in that pool. Otherwise you end up with the same WASP families running things for ever, remember there was a time Catholics and Jews woudln't have been admitted either. Which is also why I'd say the first people to be displaced by AA should be legacies. Can anyone make a rational argument not based on borderline monarchism that someone like George W Bush should automaticaly be put on the fast track to political leadership simply because of who his dad was?
Another way of putting this, a white kid with great grades who just misses getting Harvard becasue of AA is going to have his pick of schools as a 2nd choice and do pretty darn well for himself. If we aren't enrolling blacks in Harvard we are exclduing a group of poeple from the leadership of the country. To anticipate the counter argument for race blind admissions, there is a certain chicken and the egg element at play here, part of creating a generation of black students who qualify for Harvard in equal percentages to whites requires generations of blacks being part of the leadership elite (both business and political). White Protestants have been providing the students to the Ivy league for over 300 years, it is unrealistic to think minorities will be on a level playing field after 30 years of AA. It hopefully won't take 300 years to equalize but it certainly will take more than 1 generation.
So the Atlantic now has a black nationalist to argue race-based sophistry. How chic.
Yes Mr Coates. Lets not buy into the "immigrants didn't do it" argument. Quite the contrary, henceforth, all would-be citizens--except those of African ancestry of course--have to pay a "WHITE-GUILT-INCLUSION" Fee in order process their naturalization papers.
By the by have noticed that you employ a lot food-based analogies?
So the Atlantic now has a black nationalist to argue race-based sophistry. How chic.
Yes Mr Coates. Lets not buy into the "immigrants didn't do it" argument. Quite the contrary, henceforth, all would-be citizens--except those of African ancestry of course--have to pay a "WHITE-GUILT-INCLUSION" Fee in order process their naturalization papers.
By the by have noticed that you employ a lot food-based analogies?
Juan writes: "American blacks live better than blacks in almost any part of the world. Aside from tiny number of prosperous black-run countries (Trinidad & Tobago plus... what else?), every other black-run country is a hell hole. Maybe American blacks should be grateful they live in a majority white country instead of Haiti or Nigeria.
Hmm, perhaps they do but grateful, god no. Kind of like saying the house negro should be happy he is in the house and not out picking cotton? Equality for Americans regardless of race or color is the goal I would hope. Not resignation to fried chicken and yessa boss, imma happy boss, over mud pies in Haiti.
Juan writes: "American blacks live better than blacks in almost any part of the world. Aside from tiny number of prosperous black-run countries (Trinidad & Tobago plus... what else?), every other black-run country is a hell hole. Maybe American blacks should be grateful they live in a majority white country instead of Haiti or Nigeria.
Hmm, perhaps they do but grateful, god no. Kind of like saying the house negro should be happy he is in the house and not out picking cotton? Equality for Americans regardless of race or color is the goal I would hope. Not resignation to fried chicken and yessa boss, imma happy boss, over mud pies in Haiti.
"Here is fellowship on the cheap--scarfing down hot dogs and cheering for fireworks on the Fourth of July (despite the fact that said commenter's forbears did absolutely nothing to liberate the country) while slinking away when the subject of slavery or Jim Crow arises."
Well said. By the way, one hears this sort of complaint all the time among white South Africans who complain about Affirmative Action, when they were just toddlers during apartheid.
Today's posts will go a long way in helping me respond to this type of resentment the next time I hear it expressed. Bravo!
Ta-Nehisi,
(1) David Boonin has a draft up of his forthcoming book on race. The affirmative action chapter handles the immigrant argument quite nicely.
(2) White post-civil-War immigrants benefited from affirmative action programs which excluded blacks - check out Ira Katznelson (2005) When Affirmative Action was White.
dearleader nyc - you owe me a monitor i just sprayed coke all over it reading your "shaggy" post.
Ta-Nehisi is right AND we need to move on. The two are not mutually exclusive. Someone born to a single mother making $19,000 annually needs much more help than a daughter of two parents who made $70,000 annually. Also, we can sue now when we face purely race-based discrimination. Everything can't be the fault of the government. I feel that attitude disrespects, not honors, those who preceded us.
We excuse and glorify unhealthy and dysfunctional behaviors as a community and no amount of affirmative action will save us from the consequences.
Ta-Nehisi
I think you made a factual error.
You said " Let's ignore all the slaves who died in the Revoloutionary War, without which, there would be no country for the commenter's forbears to immigrate to." The problem with that is that as the Revolutionary War spread through every region, those in bondage sided with whichever army promised them personal liberty. The British actively recruited slaves belonging to Patriot masters and, consequently, more blacks fought for the Crown. That doesn't mean we should discount the efforts of the slaves that did fight on the side of the Americans but I don't think you can correctly say without the slaves the US wouldn't be free.
"Let us jouney to the heart of things--what the "immigrants didn't do it" defense offers is an a'la carte brand of citizenship where one gets to pick and chose what you will or won't claim."
Doesn't that exclude African-Aemricans from citizenship if they don't "claim" responsibility for slavery and Jim Crow? For the record, I think that is absurd because:
"Jim Crow wasn't simply a crime against black people--it was a crime against the American future."
In fact it was just slavery under another name. Just an extension of the same social and economic arrangement.
Can't remember who said this:
"Guess who WASN'T being hired in those days by the gas company?"
Answer: Anyone who wasn't Irish or Italian. Protestants, white or black, need not apply. (Bet he didn't tell you that part of the story.) Cry me a river, too.
Am I missing something here in the AA debate? Can anyone point to the pervasive implementation of AA program throughout the country with hard targets for minorities, women, etc? I'm not aware of any. I mean, are significant numbers of people being told, "sorry, I gve the job to Nancy over there because of the higher melanin content of her skin".
My understanding of Corporate America today is to encourage a diverse workplace. If confronted with a work unit lacking diversity, all things being equal, a minority would be selected. I may have blinders on after 20+ years at one major corporation. These are certainly the guidelines we have been given and how our workforce has evolved over the years.
So much of this moaning about AA should be chalked up to sour grapes. Name me a person who ever said "you know, I really didn't deserve to get that job, Bob over there was much more qualified". Everybody thinks they were screwed. If a white was chosen over a white, they would come up with another excuse.
As a 51 year-old white guy, I've watched this dynamic in action. When I got my first management job, the rumor was that I was married to some bigwig at HQ. A white co-worker who came to that office after I did, got her job because she babysat the boss's kids when they were younger. The fact they lived in different states didn't matter.
AA was and still is needed because left to the conscious and sub-conscious preferences of the decision makers, the work world would be lily-white and male. If you can't accept that reality, the Bush Administration has a job for you. Probably in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
Another way of putting this, a white kid with great grades who just misses getting Harvard becasue of AA is going to have his pick of schools as a 2nd choice and do pretty darn well for himself.
And a black kid who just misses getting into Harvard after it eliminates its racial preference is also probably going to do pretty darn well for himself.
Again, every additional job or college slot given to a black candidate as a result of a racial preference is a job or college slot denied to a white candidate on account of that racial preference. A policy that favors the members of one race necessarily disfavors the members of other races. Hence all the anger and resentment by members of the disfavored race. There's no getting around this.
I'm sorry Juan, but in the words of Marlo Stansfield, "You want it to be one way. But it's the other way"
T.
And a black kid who just misses getting into Harvard after it eliminates its racial preference is also probably going to do pretty darn well for himself.
But, as so many others have said, the racial preference is not there in order to help that black kid get a Harvard degree because he'll be so much worse off with one from, say, UVA. It's there for Harvard, which wants a student body that reflects the top students from across the spectrum of American society. Harvard's not in business to satisfy every white kid who thinks his test scores should have gotten him in; it's in business to achieve what it defines as the goals of a premier educational institution, one of which is to equip its students to live in a diverse society.
Can you tell me why this raises so few objections when Harvard flexes its academic standards for athletes, or to make sure it has students from flyover country and not just from the coasts, but not when it does so to achieve racial diversity? I'm seriously asking.
Middle-class, midwestern, middle-aged white dude here, and I've seen plenty of racism, and never, ever, ever seen someone denied a job because of AA. I have, however, heard plenty of drunk whiners with typo-ridden resumes complaining about the job they didn't get because the company "had to give it to some black guy" or some woman, or whatever. God forbid they spell check their resume, or wear a tie to the interview.
AA compensates for present discrimination. To argue otherwise requires ignoring significant research. Should there be a class-based side of things? Probably. But we need to keep the race and gender side as well, because those are groups that are still actively discriminated against.
Of course, if I wanted to pretend that AA is about my owing a blood debt to african americans because of what my ancestors did to theirs, I'd have a pretty good counter argument. In conversation with any black person, I can say with a fairly high degree of certainty that their ancestors owned more slaves than mine did.
Yes, I'm ignoring the fact that they have slave-owner ancestors as the result of rape, but as long as I'm ignoring the nature and purpose of AA and ignoring the racism that's still very real in this country, then why not ignore slave rape as well, right?
I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but I wanted to drop a thought in.
Ta-Nehisi makes the point that when you come to America and decide to join it, you have to accept its good and bad, its full past, and take it on as your own. But what about the fact that its not as if we leave our old pasts behind. Take my grandmother, for instance. She had to escape Germany in 1940, a place she was born in, because they had done, well, we all know. She came to America because she was let in and got lucky, and now my grandparents are the most patriotic, wonderful Americans you can think of. Never a racist word from them, never a snarling resentment. They worked hard and love their country.
But they still wake up with nightmares because of Germany and WWII. That's part of who they are. You want them to also take on the responsibility of slavery and Jim Crow, something they had nothing to do with? I understand saying that when you come here you have to accept the full country, but think of the flip side. America accepts new immigrants as a way to change the makeup of the country - immigrants change who this nation is just as much as this nation changes our immigrants. Immigrants come to this country (some at least) to get the best of it and hopefully improve the place. They don't make a wholesale trade of their past life for their new life. The bring it to America, changing the very past of the population. If tomorrow the entire state of New Mexicao was flooded with immigrants and in 25 years every single person in that state was descendend from 20th century Mexicans, it would be insane to say they have some responsibility for slavery or Jim Crow.
Immigrants do have to accept America's past. But just as much, America has to accept immigrants' pasts.
I mean, are significant numbers of people being told, "sorry, I gve the job to Nancy over there because of the higher melanin content of her skin".
Probably not, no. But the fact that job candidates who are rejected because of a racial preference aren't generally told that by the employer obviously doesn't mean it isn't happening. If the racial preference is effective at increasing the representation of the preferred race, then it must be happening.
As I have mentioned before, college admissions policies are often based on a points system. Candidates are awarded points based on various characteristics, and the winning candidates are the ones with the most points. If the policy includes a racial preference, candidates of the preferred race are awarded additional points on account of their race. If the college makes the point scores of its candidates publicly available, then it would be possible to identify not only how many additional candidates of the preferred race were admitted on account of their race, but exactly who those individuals were, and exactly which candidates of the disfavored race were rejected on account of their race.
I agree with much that you say in this post (especially "Jim Crow wasn't simply a crime against black people--it was a crime against the American future. It robbed this country of the innovation and ingenuity of some of its most patriotic citizens") but it is kind of a bait and switch in that it doesn't have much to do with Affirmative Action itself.
Yes Jim Crow was a crime against the American future, but is it a crime that justifies discriminating against Asian people based solely on the color of their skin? Because it isn't white people who bear the brunt of the negative side of college affirmative action, it is Asian people. And your response appears to be "you came to this country, so deal with it.
The problem with that response is that they not only didn't do it, they might not believe that racial discrimination now is a great way to deal with it.
As I have mentioned before, college admissions policies are often based on a points system. Candidates are awarded points based on various characteristics, and the winning candidates are the ones with the most points. If the policy includes a racial preference, candidates of the preferred race are awarded additional points on account of their race.
You mentioned this earlier, and I didn't say anything because I thought you were referring to resentment about the fact that this has happened. But now you're using the present tense, and I have to step in.
The points system in racial preferences is illegal, and has been since Gratz v. Bollinger in 2003. What you are describing simply doesn't happen anymore. Neither are quotas allowed in admissions or employment; their use began to be legally proscribed in the 1970s. No employer "has to" hire a minority under any circumstances; if they choose to adopt affirmative action policies, they do so only because they feel they have an interest in doing so. When you argue that a school or employer ought not to grant racial preferences, you are essentially arguing that it should not have the freedom to prioritize diversity in its workforce or student body.
But, as so many others have said, the racial preference is not there in order to help that black kid get a Harvard degree because he'll be so much worse off with one from, say, UVA. It's there for Harvard, which wants a student body that reflects the top students from across the spectrum of American society.
That's irrelevant to my point. Regardless of Harvard's intent (and I don't accept your characterization of that intent, anyway), the black kid is still going to do pretty well for himself whether Harvard has a racial preference or not. Either he'll get into Harvard, or he'll go to some less prestigious but probably still very good univesity instead. If a racial preference imposes only modest costs on members of the disfavored race, then it likewise provides only modest benefits to members of the favored one, and getting rid of the preference won't change things much.
Can you tell me why this raises so few objections when Harvard flexes its academic standards for athletes, or to make sure it has students from flyover country and not just from the coasts, but not when it does so to achieve racial diversity? I'm seriously asking.
Because favoring people on the basis of their race has been a terrible social and political problem in U.S. history. It is widely viewed as profoundly unjust and flies in the face of the race-neutral, "color-blind" society that most people want, or at least say they want.
Mr. Coates' remarks about individuals needing to accept collective responsibility for the crimes of their country, as well as collective sharing in its joys and blessings, is a powerful and correct one. It should also be said that it's hard to square with the classically liberal conception (perhaps I should say 'fallacy') of our identity being something that we create and choose for ourselves. Which is no skin off my back, of course, since I disdain Enlightenment liberalism anyway.
Juan, by the way, is being utterly ridiculous. The fact that the 'whitest' country in sub-saharan Africa also has the highest murder rate would seem to suggest that it isn't the inherent blackness of South African Black people that makes them criminals, it's the legacy of social alienation and general moral corruption that were created by several hundred years of Boer exploitation. The bloody Boers created a society based on completely inhuman values, and now the Black people of South Africa are taking their turn to be inhuman too. Boer chickens are coming home to roost. If I was the leader of South Africa I would start by abolishing the bloody Boer language.
I lived in an African country and never had to fear anything more than petty theft. I know quite a few people who have lived in West African villages and said they never felt safer. (Presumably the deep religious faith of people there has something to do with it.) I would venture to suggest that while people in the village where I lived were certainly much _poorer_ than people in inner city Detroit or Pretoria, they were probably quite a bit less _unhappy_.
Mr. Coates' remarks about individuals needing to accept collective responsibility for the crimes of their country, as well as collective sharing in its joys and blessings, is a powerful and correct one.
Before I rebut this, I want to make clear I understand this concept. Are you saying that individuals really *are* responsible for the crimes of the past as some sort of national inheritence, a political collective bequest, or that they merely need to act that way in order to fix current problems as a practical solution?
The points system in racial preferences is illegal, and has been since Gratz v. Bollinger in 2003.
This claim is just wrong. The court did not rule that "the points system in racial preferences is illegal," but merely that the particular kind of points system used by a particular school at the University of Michigan was illegal, because it was too rigid and not narrowly tailored to the asserted interest in diversity.
Regardless of Harvard's intent (and I don't accept your characterization of that intent, anyway)
This is Harvard's intent in the words of Larry Summers, who as president was responding to the Grutter ruling preserving affirmative action in its present form: "We all share a vital stake in the education of citizens and leaders for a diverse society. I am pleased the court has affirmed policies like ours that promote compelling educational interests in inclusiveness. We will continue to pursue those interests with energy and care, so we can provide our students with the best possible education and prepare them to contribute to society."
If a racial preference imposes only modest costs on members of the disfavored race, then it likewise provides only modest benefits to members of the favored one, and getting rid of the preference won't change things much.
This would be true if the populations were the same size, but since there are many more whites than African Americans, you can increase African American representation dramatically (say, from 5 to 15 percent) while not affecting white representation much (say, from 95 to 85 percent). African American representation triples while white representation is reduced by about 1/10th. The same numerical impact on each group doesn't have the same proportional impact on each group.
But this is beside the point. Whether eliminating affirmative action would change things a lot or a little, it exists because it accomplishes a goal that schools and workplaces find worthwhile. If "favoring people on the basis of their race has been a terrible social and political problem in U.S. history," then there are only two possible solutions. You can try to redistribute some of that "favor" to those who have been going without it, or you can actively discriminate against whites, so that no one is favored at all. The only other option is to implicitly condone a "terrible social and political problem" by refusing to address its results.
This claim is just wrong. The court did not rule that "the points system in racial preferences is illegal," but merely that the particular kind of points system used by a particular school at the University of Michigan was illegal, because it was too rigid and not narrowly tailored to the asserted interest in diversity.
Gratz:
Grutter:
It is exactly because it automatically awarded predetermined "points" that the program in Gratz was struck down and exactly because it didn't that the onw in Grutter was allowed to stand.
Ta-Nahesi,
If you're going to delete my comment, you might as well delete Hector's response to it. Otherwise you've got a little asteroid in orbit around a star no one can see.
For what it's worth, I'm not sure what you found factually incorrect or offensive in my previous comment, but it's your blog, so you get to make the rules. I'm just the barely-tolerated guest.
If you can't cut the racist garbage Juan, perhaps you could be a more welcome guest by bothering to actually spell your hosts name correctly.
"You mentioned this earlier, and I didn't say anything because I thought you were referring to resentment about the fact that this has happened. But now you're using the present tense, and I have to step in.
The points system in racial preferences is illegal, and has been since Gratz v. Bollinger in 2003. What you are describing simply doesn't happen anymore."
It was narrowly struck down by the conservatives on the Supreme Court. It was strongly argued by all sorts of people on the left that the point system ought not be struck down. Unless you believe the 2003 decision now puts it beyond review, the fact that a Democrat is likely to be nominating to the Supreme Court in the near future means that the points system may very well be at issue again soon.
And again, until you can come up with a good reason why academically successful Asian students ought to be discriminated against, racial discrimination in college admissions on the basis of race aren't easy to defend.
It is exactly because it automatically awarded predetermined "points" that the program in Gratz was struck down and exactly because it didn't that the onw in Grutter was allowed to stand.
No, that's not what the court said in its ruling. A point system is merely a way of quantifying the preference. The court said nothing about the legality of a point system per se. It struck down the particular UofM policy at issue in the case because it was too "rigid" and was not narrowly tailored to the school's stated goal. Nothing in the ruling precludes a more flexible or narrowly-tailored point system.
I would have thought immigrants would have more to say about illegal immigrants than AA.
A look at black rights from a historical perspective:
a) Slavery was repealed with the Reconstruction Amendments, which were ratified between 1863-1870, the latter of which occurred 135 years ago. (NOTE: Tennessee only ratified the 15th amendment, which gives blacks the right to vote, in 1997. Ironically, women got the right to vote in 1920, when Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th amendment, which had passed Congress in 1919.)
b) When reconstruction ended in 1877, 131 years ago, federal troops left the south. What had been slavery became nearly 200 more years of Jim Crow and sharecropping.
c) Federal troops only came back to enforce desegregation 51 years ago, in 1957 (Little Rock), after WWI, WWII and its aftermath, which led to the refounding of Israel in 1948. 1957, incidentally, also was the year Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to declare independence. Most of the rights blacks achieved came from work done in the following ten years.
d) The suffrage provided by the 15th Amendment was finally reinforced by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and its subsequent renewal in 2006.
e) The last pockets of sharecropping actitivies only ended in the early 1970s, (learned this firsthand), when machines were developed to pick cotton more efficiently. Only instead of sharecropping, we now have the issues surrounding migrant workers and porous borders.
A "wasn't me" viewpoint is ignorant and weak. Slavery practices trace back to Egypt, Greece, Rome, worldwide. As a global society, everybody's guilty. Everybody has to pay for it.
This would be true if the populations were the same size, but since there are many more whites than African Americans, you can increase African American representation dramatically (say, from 5 to 15 percent) while not affecting white representation much (say, from 95 to 85 percent). African American representation triples while white representation is reduced by about 1/10th.
I don't think this makes much sense. If the complaint is that blacks are underrepresented in relation to their share of the total population, then any increase in that representation means an equivalent reduction in the representation of non-blacks. If the representation of blacks increases by 10 points, as in your scenario, then non-black representation must necessarily fall by 10 points.
But this is beside the point. Whether eliminating affirmative action would change things a lot or a little, it exists because it accomplishes a goal that schools and workplaces find worthwhile.
So you're happy to simply defer to whatever policy a school or employer finds worthwhile, are you? I thought you were making a normative claim about what you think schools and employers ought to do, not merely a descriptive one about what they actually do currently. If Harvard and Yale decided tomorrow that their AA programs do more harm than good, and scrapped them accordingly, you'd approve of that decision, would you?
If "favoring people on the basis of their race has been a terrible social and political problem in U.S. history," then there are only two possible solutions.
Er, "has been" is past tense. Just because it was a terrible problem in the past doesn't mean it is still a terrible problem today. It may still be a problem, but much less of one than it was in the past.
You can try to redistribute some of that "favor" to those who have been going without it, or you can actively discriminate against whites, so that no one is favored at all.
I don't really understand this.
It was narrowly struck down by the conservatives on the Supreme Court. It was strongly argued by all sorts of people on the left that the point system ought not be struck down. Unless you believe the 2003 decision now puts it beyond review, the fact that a Democrat is likely to be nominating to the Supreme Court in the near future means that the points system may very well be at issue again soon.
None of this makes describing the "points" system as a method currently in use accurate. Such a description is what I posted to correct.
But for what it's worth, 6-3 is not especially "narrow," and the three likeliest vacancies in the next president's term also happen to be the seats of the three dissenting justices, so I don't think Gratz is in particular trouble.
And again, until you can come up with a good reason why academically successful Asian students ought to be discriminated against, racial discrimination in college admissions on the basis of race aren't easy to defend.
"Discrimination" against Asian Americans is a misnomer. The only reason that Asians are more disadvantaged by racial preferences than whites is that they are much less likely to benefit from preferential policies that, for some reason, we don't call "affirmative action," like legacy and athletic admissions, that overwhelmingly benefit whites. Think of it this way: every applicant achieving at a certain academic level will get in. But some others who don't rise to that level will also get in, because their uncle is an alum or they're the only applicant from South Dakota that year or they're Hispanic. As a group, Asians are unlikely to benefit from any of those advantages, so they only get in if their academic achievement stands alone. If they had to make it on academic merit alone, whites would be at a similar disadvantage; Asian admissions would also make up a majority of the vacancies that would result from eliminating the preferences that benefit them.
I'd rather reject students on the academic borderline to achieve a diverse student body than to make sure the next generation of Bushes will get to be in Skull and Bones---that's the only defense I've got.
Mixner,
I knwo your smart enough to understand basic math so why ar eyou being deliberately obtuse?
Lets use real easy math. Sya there are 100 blacks and 1000 whites. If 5 blacks are currently in Harvard and we increase that to 15 we have trippled their representation from 5% to 15%, also an increase of 10%. We displaced 10 whites, so we only decreased their represenation by 1%
"The only reason that Asians are more disadvantaged by racial preferences than whites is that they are much less likely to benefit from preferential policies that, for some reason, we don't call "affirmative action," like legacy and athletic admissions, that overwhelmingly benefit whites. Think of it this way: every applicant achieving at a certain academic level will get in. But some others who don't rise to that level will also get in, because their uncle is an alum or they're the only applicant from South Dakota that year or they're Hispanic. As a group, Asians are unlikely to benefit from any of those advantages, so they only get in if their academic achievement stands alone."
And in addition to non-racial policies, they also don't get in based on their skin color. Pointing out that they are damaged by non-racial policies isn't a particularly good argument that they should feel fine about being damaged by racial policies. Coates correctly points out that all sorts of explicitly racial policies were directed against black people and that such policies were injustices. Why are policies directed against Asian people not injustices?
"I'd rather reject students on the academic borderline to achieve a diverse student body than to make sure the next generation of Bushes will get to be in Skull and Bones---that's the only defense I've got."
But that isn't what happens. At the competitive schools, the Asians who are rejected are still well above the academic achievement of the border for a non-racial admissions system. So you have to reject Asians that are not on the academic borderline in order to have successful racialized admissions policies.
And in addition to non-racial policies, they also don't get in based on their skin color. Pointing out that they are damaged by non-racial policies isn't a particularly good argument that they should feel fine about being damaged by racial policies. Coates correctly points out that all sorts of explicitly racial policies were directed against black people and that such policies were injustices. Why are policies directed against Asian people not injustices?
No school that I know of has "explicitly racial policies" directed against Asians, though many suspect there are informal ceilings. If these exist, they are dead wrong, and clearly illegal. However, any "ceiling" on Asian admissions (like those on Jews earlier in the 20th century) would only benefit the next most qualified set of students: high-achieving whites. Affirmative action is a red herring here. If a certain number of spots were reserved for historically disadvantaged minorities whose academic scores might not otherwise qualify them, and whites and Asians competed on equal footing for all of the others, gains in Asian admissions would come almost entirely at the expense of white students. To say that it's minority students who perform less well academically than they do who "steal" Asian students' spots, and not the white students who perform less well, is purely arbitrary.
Except that immigrants reaped a ton of benefits as they shifted from immigrant status to "white."
THe reality is that society was built by anchoring black folks at the bottom. All immigrants groups came in and were pitted against black folks. Most of them (European specifically) could join the whiteness and move up and out of a immigrant status.
These arguments make sense on their face but are ahistorical and ignore the way society is set up to disadvantage lots of people but even those people have relative advantage over black folks.
I knwo your smart enough to understand basic math so why ar eyou being deliberately obtuse? Sya there are 100 blacks and 1000 whites. If 5 blacks are currently in Harvard and we increase that to 15 we have trippled their representation from 5% to 15%, also an increase of 10%. We displaced 10 whites, so we only decreased their represenation by 1%.
I think you're the one who's being obtuse. The complaint is that blacks are underrepresented at Harvard in relation to their representation in the general population. Blacks are about 12% of the American population, but much less than 12% of the Harvard student body. Since representation is a zero-sum game (the representation of all groups combined sums to 100%), an increase in the representation of blacks at Harvard necessarily means a decrease in the representation of non-blacks by exactly the same amount.
Mixner as usual you are being an ass.
Neither th epost you replied to or my example denied that the raw number of whites displaced is equal tothe number of blakcs admitted, that is a given.
The point which you are deliberately avoiding is the ratio that number is on the total population. Again real slow, if there is a white population of 1000 potentail harvard students and we give 10 or their spots to blacks we have decreased the percentage of whites who got accepted by 1% (10/1000) if there were a population of 100 blacks then that same 10 increased them by 10%. What part of this simple math do you not get?
This thread is yet another example of why any discussion with you is pointless. You apparantly have not interest in honest debate. All you wnat to do is distract people with irrelevant tangents or pedantic debates about what the questions is.
If the topic were how many trees are in a given forest you'd come along and say "but the forest is made up of Aspens, Conifers and Firs not Pines"
The complaint is that blacks are underrepresented at Harvard in relation to their representation in the general population. Blacks are about 12% of the American population, but much less than 12% of the Harvard student body. Since representation is a zero-sum game (the representation of all groups combined sums to 100%), an increase in the representation of blacks at Harvard necessarily means a decrease in the representation of non-blacks by exactly the same amount.
Obtuseness aside, you had been objecting to the negative effect of affirmative action on individual whites. In the 5-->15, 95-->85 example, a given black student is three times more likely to have his application accepted. A given white student is only 10% less likely to get in. On the individual level (which I happen to think is a silly place to focus our attention anyway), the black applicant has been affected much more than the white one. See?
But it's also the case that the white population of Harvard as a whole has given up 10% of its slots, while the black population has tripled its slots. Of course the same number of slots are in question, but it's beyond doubt that that number has a different proportional impact on the two populations. The reason I'm even taking the time to argue the point is that it's one of the frustrating things about white resentment of affirmative action. There just aren't that many black people. If you gave jobs to three times more black applicants than would have gotten them without affirmative action, you've only affected a tiny minority of white workers; the chances that any white individual has been directly affected is quite small, and yet resentful whites act as if affirmative action could somehow deny each and every one of them the job they "deserve."
Professordarkheart and Eric K,
Your right on your math, but wrong on the logic.
The large benefit accrued to black applicants in your example is a function of their rarity, not of any sort of discrimination against them.
For contrast, consider an advantaged minority that is only 2 percent of the population, but makes up 5% of all Harvard students. One could also benefit that group by raising their admittance rate 3-fold in exactly the same manner that blacks would benefit in your example. They would then be 15% of the population, and whites would shift downwards to 85%. But no one would argue (I hope) that such a course of action is just.
Re: If you're going to delete my comment, you might as well delete Hector's response to it.
Er, Juan, I didn't say anything racist. You're the one who did. So there's no reason _my_ post should get censored.
Anyway it's kind of fun to infer the contents of invisible posts from the responses to them.
Ta-Nehisi,
By your argument, black citizens bear the same citizens' share of the responsibility for slavery as white citizens, the same share as descendants of immigrants, the same share as descendants of slaveowners. Am I getting that right? I don't see what other conclusion your argument allows. For example, if someday we decided to pay reparations for slavery, all taxpayers would be on the hook for the costs, and that's as it should and must be.
I think there's a whole set of arguments along these lines by whites which amount to denying a collective racial guilt for slavery or Jim Crow. And I'll admit, the idea of collective racial guilt strikes me as absolutely nuts--I'm supposed to be responsible for evils done by other people because they look like me? I can't imagine that kind of collective guilt idea leading anywhere good.
The large benefit accrued to black applicants in your example is a function of their rarity, not of any sort of discrimination against them.
Huh?
This whole debate was in response to Mixner writing:
To which I answered:
In other words, "the large benefit accrued to black applicants in [my] example is a function of their rarity" was the beginning, middle, and end of my point.
Heedless,
Your point is technically true but so what? If Blacks made up 2% of the population and 5% of the Harvard student body we wouldn't be having this conversation.
RE: professordarkheart
"But, as so many others have said, the racial preference is not there in order to help that black kid get a Harvard degree because he'll be so much worse off with one from, say, UVA. It's there for Harvard, which wants a student body that reflects the top students from across the spectrum of American society. Harvard's not in business to satisfy every white kid who thinks his test scores should have gotten him in; it's in business to achieve what it defines as the goals of a premier educational institution, one of which is to equip its students to live in a diverse society."
Definitely. The problem as I see it, however, is that race-based affirmative action gives Harvard an easy way out. Well-off African-American kids who have gone to the same schools as upper-middle class white kids don't really provide that cross-section. What they do allow is for Harvard to let kids in without dealing with issues like financial aid or the possibility that their high school might not have prepared them for the school they're accepted to. It's a cop out, of sorts. I don't take issue with affirmative action, even if race-based, except think it really accomplishes anything when a wealthy black kid with educated parents is given a leg up on a lower-middle class white applicant strictly because of the color of his skin.
RE: professordarkheart
"But, as so many others have said, the racial preference is not there in order to help that black kid get a Harvard degree because he'll be so much worse off with one from, say, UVA. It's there for Harvard, which wants a student body that reflects the top students from across the spectrum of American society. Harvard's not in business to satisfy every white kid who thinks his test scores should have gotten him in; it's in business to achieve what it defines as the goals of a premier educational institution, one of which is to equip its students to live in a diverse society."
Definitely. The problem as I see it, however, is that race-based affirmative action gives Harvard an easy way out. Well-off African-American kids who have gone to the same schools as upper-middle class white kids don't really provide that cross-section. What they do allow is for Harvard to let kids in without dealing with issues like financial aid or the possibility that their high school might not have prepared them for the school they're accepted to. It's a cop out, of sorts. I don't take issue with affirmative action, even if race-based, except think it really accomplishes anything when a wealthy black kid with educated parents is given a leg up on a lower-middle class white applicant strictly because of the color of his skin.
Sorry Hector,
If Ta is going to be deleting every other comment I make, it doesn't look as if I will be able to engage you in debate with you and your unique blend of homophobia and afrophilia (to coin a term). You are a strange cat. Enjoy the echo chamber. If Ta's going to make me sit in the back of the proverbial bus, I'll spend my time elsewhere.
"Yes Jim Crow was a crime against the American future, but is it a crime that justifies discriminating against Asian people based solely on the color of their skin? Because it isn't white people who bear the brunt of the negative side of college affirmative action, it is Asian people. And your response appears to be "you came to this country, so deal with it.
The problem with that response is that they not only didn't do it, they might not believe that racial discrimination now is a great way to deal with it.
Posted by Sebastian | August 7, 2008 5:24 PM"
As someone labeled "Asian-American" by my college who didn't get into either of the Ivies I applied to (but still got into a pretty good school), I get really tired as being used as the rhetorical tool to beat up on AA. We do benefit in ways from positive stereotypes in ways that AA do not, so I have no real problem with AA. If you can get admission officers, especially at elite schools, to talk off the record, you would be surprised how candid they will be about a big reason there aren't a larger proportion of Asians at such schools is that they receive a lot of complaints from rich white old alumni families that the Asians are taking over, getting all of the Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian spots, etc. You see how a lot of these families' kids talk when only around white kids (or what they falsely think are only white kids) and they start complaining about how the Asians try too hard and make everybody have to work harder, which isn't how it was when their daddy went to school there.
Reality Man,
A few Asian immigrant groups do suffer from poverty and lack of educational opportunity (Hmong and Cambodians, maybe some Filipino families as well although my understanding was in general Filipino immgrants are quite well educated). I think they should probably have the opportunity to get class based AA. Other than that you're right that Asians have little reason to complain. I don't have much of a problem with positive discrimination in favor of disadvantaged groups, but then again I don't share the liberal rights-based idea that we can all freely choose our identity and that group identity is secondary, so it isn't such an intellectual problem for me.
"A few Asian immigrant groups do suffer from poverty and lack of educational opportunity (Hmong and Cambodians, maybe some Filipino families as well although my understanding was in general Filipino immgrants are quite well educated)."
My understanding is that the average Filipino-American income is slightly higher than the average white American income, but reliable numbers are hard to come by. I wouldn't have any real problem using AA helping out, say, the Hmong, just as I don't have a problem using it to help out the children of poor Latino immigrants.
"I don't have much of a problem with positive discrimination in favor of disadvantaged groups, but then again I don't share the liberal rights-based idea that we can all freely choose our identity and that group identity is secondary, so it isn't such an intellectual problem for me.
Posted by Hector | August 7, 2008 10:38 PM"
What liberal has really said this with regards to things like race? I can't honestly think of a single liberal writer who has written such a thing. In addition, liberals have been pointing out for a while that things like sexual orientation aren't choices made by individuals and thus it's stupid to hate people for things they have no control over, like their race, sex or sexual orientation.
The problem as I see it, however, is that race-based affirmative action gives Harvard an easy way out. Well-off African-American kids who have gone to the same schools as upper-middle class white kids don't really provide that cross-section. What they do allow is for Harvard to let kids in without dealing with issues like financial aid or the possibility that their high school might not have prepared them for the school they're accepted to. It's a cop out, of sorts. I don't take issue with affirmative action, even if race-based, except think it really accomplishes anything when a wealthy black kid with educated parents is given a leg up on a lower-middle class white applicant strictly because of the color of his skin.
I totally agree with you. I like the idea of class-based affirmative action, though not necessarily to the exclusion of considering race; poverty is pretty clearly a larger hurdle for individuals to overcome than race in the abstract, but I also think that all students do benefit from other kinds of diversity in a student body, even if what makes a given student contribute to diversity isn't necessarily a disadvantage at all (I don't have a problem with affirmative action for athletes or artists, for instance; I don't see why academics should be the only realm of achievement that merits reward). In my own observation, first-generation college students from all backgrounds are the ones who have to hustle the hardest to make it to college, and need the most support when they get there. A college that exactly mirrors the racial makeup of American society but gets all its students from prep schools hasn't done much to address disadvantage or to value diversity.
But it drives me nuts when the very fact of considering race in admissions or hiring is singled out from among all the other kinds of priority-juggling that I've just mentioned as a totally different (and evil) way of thinking. When Obama gave his Race Speech, he was treated in some quarters as a prophet for finding a way to talk about "the anger and the bitterness" in the black community that "find[s] voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table." But no one really talked about why that anger was kept so private. I have known many black people who have been passed over for a job or a distinction in favor of a white person. I have known black people who were victimized by a white criminal, or spat on, or called names, or patronized by a white person because they were black. I have experienced some of these things myself. But I wouldn't ever try to deny that to tell some white guy who had nothing to do with any of that, to his face, that I resented him, would be unforgivably rude, and tempting a fight.
And to go back to Ta-Nehisi's original reason for posting on the racism/white resentment thing, I guess I'd say that the reason I wouldn't bother to make much of a distinction between the two is that, if you don't recognize that directing either one toward black people in general, let alone toward me, whatever your specific experience, is unforgivably rude, than you haven't merited the effort it would cost me to do so.
"A few Asian immigrant groups do suffer from poverty and lack of educational opportunity"
Translation: A few Asian immigrant groups are economically unsuccessful and their kids do poorly in school.
Translation: A few Asian immigrant groups aren't greedy bastards like Fred who like to exploit other people in order to take their position on top of the decadent late-capitalist economy.
Translation: I like being a jerk about non-white people.
Translation: I like being a jerk about racist scum like Fred.
Whitey:
Harvard has an enormous endowment, and I'm pretty sure they don't have any trouble coming up with financial aid. But I'm not sure why it would make sense for Harvard to take students who weren't prepared academically. I mean, isn't the point of having an elite school partly that you don't have to do a lot of remedial catch-up from high school? If the students you let in from deficient backgrounds weren't academically prepared, wouldn't they kinda stand out among the folks with maxed-out SAT scores and 4.0 averages in high school?
Note that with AA, we're not talking about letting in black students who aren't prepared academically, we're talking about letting in black students who are standouts in almost any crowd, but who are not quite as qualified as some of the white and Asian students they beat out. (That's not as true for AA at, say, the University of Maryland, but it's definitely true for Harvard.)
I'm not sure why it would make sense for Harvard to take students who weren't prepared academically. I mean, isn't the point of having an elite school partly that you don't have to do a lot of remedial catch-up from high school? If the students you let in from deficient backgrounds weren't academically prepared, wouldn't they kinda stand out among the folks with maxed-out SAT scores and 4.0 averages in high school? Note that with AA, we're not talking about letting in black students who aren't prepared academically, we're talking about letting in black students who are standouts in almost any crowd, but who are not quite as qualified as some of the white and Asian students they beat out.
I wish Harvard were as sensible as you are on this score, albatross. But I've taught there, and I teach now at a top 5 liberal arts college, and I think it's safe to say that these schools are pretty happy to congratulate themselves for admitting, for instance, "black students who are standouts in almost any crowd, but who are not quite as qualified as some of the white and Asian students they beat out," without thinking too hard about whether it disadvantages those black students to merely be a super-intelligent 10% alongside another 90% who are super-intelligent and have also had all the training that money can buy.
This is, in fact, one of my biggest problems with AA as it works today; it operates on the myth that, because ability is equally distributed among the races and income brackets, people of equal ability in different races and income brackets can all start at "GO" and have an equal chance of success. All too often, I've seen this assumption used to justify the conclusion that if AA admissions fail at a higher rate than others, well, that had nothing to do with us. I do indeed think that class-based AA is fair; but fairness aside, I think that explicitly moving AA beyond race might also prompt us to be more honest about the fact that AA means admitting kids, whatever their ability, whose preparation for college has been lacking, and who therefore make it incumbent upon us, if we're going to admit them, to help level the "preparation" playing field ourselves.
The last Fred above was an imposter, btw.
"THe reality is that society was built by anchoring black folks at the bottom."
Black folks are at the bottom of the socio-economic totem pole in every multiracial society, from France, to the U.S. to Brazil. Considering the strenuous efforts the U.S. government has made over the last 25 years or so to discriminate in favor of blacks (that is essentially what affirmative action is), it's hard to argue that blacks remain at the bottom due to some conspiracy to "anchor" them there.
Liberal man, when Hector says he's opposed to some "liberal" idea, like the idea that human beings have immutable rights, he means "liberal" in the sense of "post-Enlightenment thought," not "liberal" in the sense of, "characteristic of the left side of the modern American political spectrum." He's rejecting every advance in political thought in the past 400 years, in other words. Hector thinks we should revert to pre-liberal ideas like drawing and quartering people for not bowing to the imaginary man in the sky with the proper reverence. How he reconciles theocracy and communism I don't know, but it must be fascinating.
Anyway, to get back on topic, I don't believe in collective guilt. But I don't believe in collective credit, either, and that's common enough. If you're going to feel pride for some great thing your ancestors did, you should feel some shame for the shitty things they did. Whether that should translate to any public policy that tries to correct for the wrongs of people who have been dead 100 years, I'm not so sure. But it's an interesting question.
Gee, Fred, why don't you tell us why "black folks are at the bottom"? We'd all love to hear you just come out and say it, before you get banned.
I like this blog. Maybe I'll stay here for politics and only follow Matthew for the NBA. We're still lacking a blogger with decent musical taste, though.
"Bill Clinton used to say things similar to this. He would say, and I paraphrase, if you can't think of young black and Latino men as your brothers, think of them as folks whose labor and taxes we need to keep Social Security functioning."
Bill Clinton was smart enough to know how specious that is, and he was a talented enough politician to say it anyway. Black and Latino men skew into lower income levels so they tend to have negative effective tax rates; that is, most of them consume more in government resources than they pay in taxes. Better to think of blacks and (legal) Latino men as our fellow citizens and leave it at that.
Fred writes: "Considering the strenuous efforts the U.S. government has made over the last 25 years or so to discriminate in favor of blacks (that is essentially what affirmative action is), it's hard to argue that blacks remain at the bottom due to some conspiracy to "anchor" them there."
The last 25 years? Are you trying to be funny here?
"Gee, Fred, why don't you tell us why "black folks are at the bottom"? We'd all love to hear you just come out and say it, before you get banned."
I don't want to get banned, so let me give the right answer: since every group has the exact same inherent abilities, and since every culture is equal, the only reason why blacks tend to dominate the lower socioeconomic strata in multiracial societies is because of persistent, institutionalized racism. Since blacks are more successful in the U.S. than they are almost anywhere else, it follows that the French must be more racist than Americans.
I hope that let's me keep my commenting privileges here.
We have always been at war with EastAsia.
I don't believe in affirmative action. It's an other-izing process that formalizes a system of preferences based on race. It's morally wrong, in deontological sense.
In a consequentialist sense, it may be beneficial-- its benefits outweighing any harm it may do, whether in practice or to some abstract moral principle. That's an argument I'm very open to.
I find it hard to believe this is so-- we're talking about a program that has existed far longer than I have, to address the legacy of wrongs older still. It doesn't seem to have ended the status of African-Americans as a permanent socioeconomic underclass. In fact, we seem to have done a really bad job of that in general.
I don't believe it's picking up the pieces. Unless I buy into that, I can't believe in its justice as a policy.
My bias is to see the problem in terms of difficulty of upwards socioeconomic mobility even over the span of generations--the poor stay poor and the rich get rich. Framing this problem in terms of race distracts and divides us from that reality.
Re: Since blacks are more successful in the U.S. than they are almost anywhere else,
Um, I know quite a few black people who emigrated here from various Caribbean countries and have suggested to me that they were better off back home. Perhaps poorer money-wise, but better off in terms of safety, an educational system that was not totally dysfunctional, more of a sense of community, and less social and moral alienation. Some of them said flat-out "I wish I could go home."
Like I said, I know a lot of people in the village I lived in Africa who were very poor money-wise but were probably happier- and yes, more "successful" in the sense that they had a place in society, a worthwhile job and a sense of belonging- than miserable and alienated people in the inner-cities of Detroit, Marseille, or Capetown. They also had clean water and clean air, even though they had to walk to the well to get it, which is something that I doubt many shantytown people in Capetown have.
Perhaps you think that African Americans ought to bow down and thank you for the precious right to live and be exploited in the United States, but I disagree.
"Either you're an American, or you are not. If you are, welcome to the family--the entire family."
If that applies in the same way between immigrants and the perpetrators of slavery and Jim Crow, as it does to present-day African Americans and the perpetrators of slavery and Jim Crow, then I think the country can move past it. Injustice hurts both sides of any conflict. Everybody got hurt by this mess. Everybody has to work to get out of it, if we're ever going to.
Lest I remind everyone that the group that most benefited from Affirmative Action are White Women! As they were and are included in the minority collective that "entitles" one to AA rights.
"Um, I know quite a few black people who emigrated here from various Caribbean countries and have suggested to me that they were better off back home. Perhaps poorer money-wise, but better off in terms of safety, an educational system that was not totally dysfunctional, more of a sense of community, and less social and moral alienation."
This is a fair point, and it's probably due to the lasting effects of British culture in some of these Caribbean countries. Caribbean blacks tend to have different attitudes toward work, education, etc., than most African Americans.
Steve Sailer also made an interesting point about this once, that the Eastern-most Caribbean islands tended to be better off, partly because these islands had the first pick of slaves from from ships bound from Africa, and selected the slaves who came from the most cooperative/peaceful/industrious tribes or villages in Africa.
"Steve Sailer also made an interesting point about this once..."
Wow, and you wonder why you get treated like a racist jackass.
You miss another variant of the "it wasn't me" defense, the most important part in my opinion.
We are all individuals. White people have no rights, responsibilities, or any other obligations, nor do black people. I, N. Zombie have the responsibility to treat people with basic human decency, and for the most part I do. Whatever harms you are talking about, they were committed by other people. It wasn't *me*.
YEAH TA-NEHISI COATES!!!
I have heard the 'I didn't do it' line so many times, by the same people who are so proud of an America not "done" by them. It blows my mind.
Being part of a nation is like being part of a family. You are proud of the the achievements and ashamed of the failures. Like a good son a good citizen accepts responsibility for deeds done by other members of the group. Life isn't fair, deal with it.
That something so obvious cannot be grasped by so many!!
Most people can only grasp that which benefits them personally.
Very, very nicely done!
Like a good son a good citizen accepts responsibility for deeds done by other members of the group. Life isn't fair, deal with it.
Okay, my Maori ancestors committed genocide. How do you want me to accept responsibility for that? Should I give myself up to be hung for their crimes?
I've never understood what it means to accept responsibility for the crimes of other people who died before I was born. I can accept the responsibility for my crimes legally, but if we are all to suffer the punishments some of our ancestors should have suffered, we'd all be executed or life in jail, which is a hard way to run a society.
I can accept responsibility in the sense of taking a hard look at why it happened and seeking to avoid it, but in that case why restrict yourself to crimes your own ancestors or fellow citizens did? I think I have something to learn from the failure of collectivism even though my ancestors were nowhere near Russia or China during the relevant time periods.
It's all very easy to say "deal with it", but how?
Much ado about nothing. All a distraction from the real problems, and the real solutions. We've had AA for decades, but the black-white achievement gap remains wide. Blacks commit more violent crimes by a wide margin -- this is an undeniable fact. Single parenthood dominates in the black community, and black men are AWOL. The black neighborhoods of my city are heaped with trash -- someone put it there. These are behavioral problems that can't be solved by services, programs, policies.
Study, graduate, abide by law, be honest, considerate and polite, get married. AA is a drop in the bucket compared to these simple rules. But it's so much more fun to argue about AA!
The heart of things is simply that the immigrants really didn't do it. And not just the immigrants, the decedents of the people who did it, did not themselves do it. You can call this "a' la carte brand of citizenship" if you want but people are not morally responsible for the actions of others, not even their own ancestors.
If you think you ARE morally responsible for the actions of your ancestors, then supporters of reparations, or even AA as a mild form of reparation, have to deal with the fact that not only did white immigrant's ancestors not enslave people in the US, but most white Americans in the US at the time when slavery was legal did not have slaves. Also many white Americans died in the civil war, which freed the slaves. Furthermore you have to consider black immigrants who's ancestors where not in the US at the time of slavery (and perhaps not during the time of Jim Crow) do they also get AA? Probably yes, but why? If they do, what about the decedents of black's who took, traded, or owned slaves?
But the main concern of mine, is not all these complicating factors about how responsibility for the acts of your ancestors works, but the fact that it doesn't work, and shouldn't. We are only responsible for our own actions.
Being an American, all the way, in the family, etc. doesn't make you responsible for the actions of other Americans.
Certainly black people in America where treated with horrible injustice. But AA doesn't and can't make up for that. Your asking people who didn't commit the evil acts, to pay compensation (even if not direct monetary compensation) to people who did not have those acts committed against them. That simply isn't just.
Affirmative action doesn't end or help to end racism, it keeps it going, and it IS racism, or technically racist discrimination, itself.
laborlibert nails it with his (or her) response -
"Recognizing an awful past is one thing, and I think that is where most of your rebuttal focuses. Maybe whites should acknowledge the past more. But it is an entirely different thing to say that the state should offer preferential treatment to another group of people based on that past, where neither the person benefiting or being discriminated against because of AA had anything to do with it."