Two Sides Of The Same Coin

Matt Yglesias poses a challenge to liberals on their position on affirmative action and legacy admissions. He says:

…the point here isn’t that the existence of legacy admissions is irrelevant to the affirmative action debate. The point is that liberals owe the world an explanation of exactly what the relationship is supposed to be. Should both be abolished, or neither? Are we making a serious policy point here or are we just mocking the president?

From the standpoint of principle, for what it’s worth, I think one offsets the other. The legacy admission is a pure expression of reward based on systemic privilege and the affirmative action admission is a pure example of redress based on systemic underprivilege. They represent the two main groups of our society that are judged and rewarded in accordance with characteristics that have nothing to do with them as individuals– inherited privilege and inherited color. (Even athletics, after all, requires more than just genes. You do have to work at it.) Yet, privilege and color are fundamental forces in American life, whether we want to admit it or not. On this issue they are bound together.

Everyone else on a college campus is a mishmosh of various athletic, artistic and academic talents along with regional obligations and various other missions assumed by the school, wherein students with a certain baseline level of skills are exposed to the most diverse group of people that the college can muster. It benefits elite children of privilege to have exposure to people of color and it benefits people of color to rub shoulders with children of privilege. Indeed, jocks and geeks and artists and musicians and rich kids and black kids and foreign kids all living together on the same campus and sharing classes and making friendships is a demonstrably educational experience, which is after all, the point.

So, I say keep both affirmative action and legacy admissions along with all the other criteria that the school decides creates the best opportunity for learning.

On a strategic level, unfortunately, I think that many reasonable people have been gulled into thinking that the affirmative action issue is one of fairness and that without it students would otherwise be admitted to college purely on “merit.” The legacy issue is the most crystal clear example of why this is not so because it is such a perfect comparison to racial preference. And it draws attention to the fact that the Republicans are not acting out of a desire for true meritocracy. One cannot say that people should not be admitted to college because of their race, which after all is a heritable characteristic, something they receive from being the child of certain parents through absolutely no effort of their own, while defending the legacy student like George W. Bush who also was admitted to college because he was the child of certain parents and through absolutely no effort of his own.

Indeed, one could make the case that Bush was far less deserving than the average racial minority who is admitted with extra points, because unlike them he had the good fortune to be sent to the best private schools in the nation and could have engaged tutors and SAT preparation etc., to bring him up to the level at which he could have been admitted on a meritocratic basis. After all, those who wish to abolish affirmative action always make the case that the best way to ensure equal opportunity is to ensure that the primary and secondary education system properly prepares all students to the best of their ability. George W. Bush and all the other privileged rich kids who rely on legacy admissions to attend college are a screaming example of those who have every possible advantage in terms of preparation for college and still fail to win their place in the institution of their choice on the basis of their own accomplishment. Certainly, they are far worse examples of a meritocratic ideal than a black student who came from sub-standard schools in a lower middle class family and had none of these extraordinary opportunities to better their academic performance.

This dichotomy illustrates to sincere people that the issue is more complicated than it seems and makes them question the motivations of those who consistently argue as if unfairness in admissions is only a matter of race. Since I believe that most Americans are not racist and don’t wish to be used for the purpose of pandering to racists, I think it behooves liberals to expose these coded appeals.

The issue of legacy admissions is strategically useful for Democrats because no matter how sincerely argued on both sides, it is primarily a political football that serves as a useful symbol for those who believe that all of this “race” business has just gone on long enough — they’re tired of hearing about it and, — Judas Priest, haven’t we done enough for those people already?

Legacy admissions are the way to show people who believe that the issue has been raised out of a concern for fairness that they have been duped. Republicans should be forced to explian why they have been such passionate advocates of meritocracy when it comes to blacks and hispanics and yet so silent on the issue of meritocracy when it comes to the children of wealth and privilege.

…which leads to the question of who really plays the “class warfare” card, doesn’t it?

Note: edited for embarrassing misspelling of Matthew Yglesias’ last name.

…and misspelling misspelling.

Have another glass of wine, dig.

and another…