Affirmative Action

I have been reading some good discussions on race based affirmative action lately. I have seen this as a very difficult issue because on one hand, systematic racism (a.k.a slavery and segregation) was a terrible evil that has legacy effects that need to be righted, but on the other hand, systematic racism (a.k.a. race based affirmative action) cannot be a valid solution to that problem. Two wrongs don't make a right. At a seminar on trans-racial adoption, I had the insight of what the solution must be.

Before I get there, let's start with a couple examples.

• My friend black friend Mark is an engineer. He has a good paying job and lives in the suburbs in a big house. His children are receiving a quality education with all the opportunities suburban schools have to offer. Should they be given preferential treatment when applying to college simply because they have dark skin?
• When I adopt a black child and raise him in an essentially "middle-class white" manner, should he be given preferential treatment based on his dark skin?
• Take a white child born into an alcoholic, meth-addicted family, who struggles against all odds to get B's in school. Now suppose my adopted son from the previous example acts like a typical middle-class kid and is a slacker, coasting by and getting B's. Should my black son get into the same college that the white boy was denied admission to?
• If the races of the two kids in the previous example were reversed, should the hard working child get priority over the slacker, even if they had the exact same GPA? What if the slacker had a slightly higher GPA?

Yes, these examples are not the norm, and typically I am against using exceptions to define the rule. Here, though, we see that the exceptions make the rule all the more clear. The problem with race-based affirmative action is that it looks at the wrong thing, skin color, instead of the real culprit, the socio-economic situation. The systemic race-based evils of slavery and segregation have been dealt with by Constitutional Amendments and Civil Rights Laws, which absolutely must be enforced. The problems we continue to see fifty years later are due primarily to the poverty cycle that was begun by those evils. It is this poverty cycle that must be addressed. Affirmative action should therefore be poverty-based, not race-based.

The only just way to right the legacy effects of overt racism is to treat the remaining symptoms because we have already put in place the treatment to the root problem. A good look at the world around us reveals that the institution of racism has ended. Whites and blacks live in the same neighborhoods, work in the same jobs, and go to the same schools. The ratios are not proportional, however, which is a sign that things still aren't right. But we must recognize that the ratios are disproportionate because of the difficulty in escaping poverty for all people, not because of racist practices that keep people down.

Thus our solution should be targeted toward the ongoing cause of persistent inequality, which is not based on race at all. Race based affirmative action is not the solution. Socio-economic based affirmative action is the solution.