Tag: Affirmative Action

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Heather MacDonald writes that Donald Trump took “the most important step it can to restore meritocracy. to American society” by eliminating disparate-impact. When exactly was there a meritocracy in the United States? Certainly no time before 1964 when discrimination against people of color and women was legal. Not directly after the passage of Civil Rights laws in 1964 when White resistance to the new laws was so fierce it required the implementation of Affirmative Action in order to ensure that Whites complied with the new law. Since MacDonald finds any tool that aids people of color a boost is an affront to meritocracy, it certainly isn’t the recent past So MacDonald needs to identify the golden age of meritocracy in USA because from the evidence I can see, there never has been a meritocracy.

MacDonald glosses over 200 years of American History. She assumes that the 1964 Civil Rights ended discrimination and nothing more needed to be done. For her racial prejudice is obvious, racists are obnoxious assholes in a Ku Klux Klan robe screaming the N word. It certainly couldn’t be nice middle class whites who hire employees or admit students to Ivy League colleges. They wouldn’t be caught dead in a Ku Klux Klan robe, so how could they be prejudiced.

The advantage of the public bigots is that they are easy to identify. The problem is the more prevalent form of racism that Blacks encounter is from polite and powerful White who, just the same, might be disinclined to hire someone different from them. They don’t say we are picking a White over a Black. They know the game. They say that the White guy is just more qualified for the job than the Black guy. For this reason, discrimination is difficult to prove. This is the barrier that Blacks face. MacDonald doesn’t appear to be bothered much by this more subtle form of racism or even acknowledge that it might exist.

Disparate-impact was one of the tools that the government used to show discrimination. If an employer has never hired Blacks, year after year, in a community where the population is 25% Black, then the government can see that there might be a problem with discrimination in hiring. Without disparate impact, how does MacDonald propose to identify non-compliant businesses and schools?

She doesn’t. She views discrimination as a phantom problem that doesn’t occur any more so there is no reason to investigate. People are only looking for the best – Black, White, Man, Woman. Race and Gender don’t matter only quality. Well, maybe, but how do we know this is happening unless we evaluate?

Finally, for the record, there will never be a meritocracy as long as rich families hand over their businesses to their children. It is never going to happen as long as some people have connections and others don’t. It never is going to happen as long as people with money can buy their children’s ways into universities. It never is going to happen when White middle class people can avoid “bad” school districts. It never is going to happen as long as poor Black children are given a second rate educations while White middle class children are given a first rate one.

How does MacDonald feel about those problems? Until she addresses them, I don’t believe that she gives a damn about meritocracy.

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With a Conservative majority in the Supreme Court, an upcoming case regarding Affirmative Action is expected to effectively end this program. The complaint about Affirmative Action is that race shouldn’t be a criteria for admission into college. Merit should be the only criteria and merit is a cold clinical calculation. Merit is based on grades, test scores, and extra-curricular activities. There is no question who the deserving students are if merit is the measurement. Since race has nothing to do with merit, it shouldn’t be factored into any decision for admission into schools. These opponents would have you believe that we live in a fair world.

We don’t. For example: Judy has wealthy parents who can pay for her to attend an expensive private school with a low student to teacher ratio while Johnny lives with his poor mother and has to attend an urban public school with a high teacher to student ratio — do they receive the same education when they compete for admission at colleges years later. They studied the same subjects for the same twelve years. They took the same ACT/SAT tests. All of these are verifiable facts so then merit is the only fair way to make these decisions.

But this isn’t the case. Some wealthy parents are paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000 to give their children a leg up in their education. Of course the money advantage is greater than just better schools with better teachers. Wealthy parents can also afford tutors when their child needs extra help, several attempts at ACT/SAT until the child gets a better score, coaching on how to take ACT/SAT tests to insure better scores, their children’s extra curricular activities, and, most importantly, are comfortable paying the basic necessities of life for their children. The average American worker’s salary is $58, 260 so you can deduce from that not many parents can afford this particular advantage. Yet no one complains about this unfairness.

Well, you say, life is unfair. There is always going to be rich and poor. The rich will always have more money than the poor. There is nothing we can do about it.

Right. But then you are accepting wealth as an acceptable unfairness while railing against another unfairness — race. Having more money is no more merit than a person’s race. The wealthy child just was born into the right family. Doesn’t the extra money their parents spent on them diminish the achievements of those wealthy private school students? I mean, won’t they spend their whole lives wondering if they actually deserved their success or did their parents buy it for them? Poor things will never know the truth.

Merit is a meaningless concept when parents can spend $60,000 on their child’s education. Why bother spending that money if you can get the same education in an urban public school? That is a lot of money to spend for the same result. But, of course, wealthy parents spend this extra money because they know they are going to get a return on their investment. Their kids will get a much better education.

This better education gives them even more chances in life. Unsurprisingly many of the 70 schools on the list of the most expensive high schools are also known as feeder schools for Ivy League colleges. You know the Ivy League — the colleges of Presidents, Senators, Supreme Court Judges and CEO’s. These schools send between 10 % to 37% of their students to the Ivy League. Imagine that 70 feeder schools, almost all of them pricey private schools, supply the Ivy League with the students who then become the future leaders of the country. Well worth the $60,000 yearly price if you got it. There is nothing wrong with that. I get it, you want the best for your children.

On the other hand, it is more than a little disingenuous to complain about Affirmative Action when you have the money to get the best education while less financially endowed parents must live with public schools. Public schools, by the way, that wealthy people wouldn’t send their own children to. The present system of education is so unfair that nobody questions parents moving to richer school districts or sending their kids to private schools, yet little effort is made to improve the public school system. Which actually shows real interest in fairness.