https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/affirmative-action-lost-in-the-progressive
The article is paywalled other than the preview section at the top, but I've copy-pasted enough of the article below to get the main point across:
I pitched a piece to a magazine recently about the common conservative insult that Kamala Harris specifically, and many minorities in general, have only “DEI” to thank for their success, calling Harris a “DEI candidate.” As I stressed in the pitch, this is of course racist terminology designed only to inflame. It’s also a good example of the stupid way that terms become memes and then are applied more and more loosely; Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and affirmative action are both related to race and both associated with college, but they are genuinely very different things. In any event, the core of the pitch was this: in angrily dismissing the idea that Harris could have been the beneficiaries of any of the affirmative action programs that they themselves support, many liberal Democrats were inadvertently casting scorn on the whole concept of affirmative action. It’s racist and false to say that anyone gets a boost because of such programs! But if that’s true, then… what do those programs do?
I have no idea whether Harris ever actually benefitted from diversity programs, but if she did, good. And either way, if you think affirmative action is good, you should proudly state that of course minority applicants get into colleges (and achieve in other ways) thanks to admissions programs dedicated to promoting diversity. That’s the whole point. Affirmative action is perhaps the only policy program I can think of where the supporters of said program find it inherently offensive to frankly reflect the most basic definition of what such a program is for. Which I find bizarre and counterproductive; we should be proud of the programs we support! Simultaneously saying that we should have affirmative action and similar programs in place, but acting as though it’s bigoted to mention their impact - what they actually do - is a good example of the progressive snake eating its own tail. We don’t do this with public school or Medicaid, and we shouldn’t do it with diversity-enriching programs either. “It’s offensive to say that people on food stamps were able to access that food because of food stamps!” Just a really strange place we’re in.
Editor said no to the pitch, specifically because I was supposedly saying that Kamala Harris really was a DEI candidate. Which is not true. I was saying, instead, that to the degree that she may have been the beneficiary of these programs, that’s an example of the program functioning as it was intended. She became Vice President of the United States! Clearly she’s flourished in her personal accomplishments. To hide from the fact that affirmative action actually helps actual people to flourish is to completely hamstring our ability to intelligently defend such programs. More, though, it’s an artifact of a modern progressivism that’s utterly lost in its own pathologies, so scared of being called racist that it shies away from one of our most consequential anti-racist policies, so dogged by years of conservative mockery that it’s become incapable of simply and unapologetically stating its own values.
Told this story before, but I think it deserves repeating.
At the very tail end of my grad school days I found myself roped into an argument that I would have been better off avoiding. Two grad students were talking about the job market, and a new listing in particular. One of them, a white woman, noted that the other, a woman of color, would receive a boost, given that the application explicitly said that they were looking for minority applicants. (“We invite especially applications from scholars from minority groups….” or similar language, meant to make the preference plain without running afoul of equal employment opportunity rules, was a constant in such ads.) This offended the grad student of color, who said it felt like this implied that she was not qualified for the job. It devolved into the kind of pointless identity bickering that is so common among left-leaning 21st century people, and somehow I got pulled into it. When I was asked to weigh in, I said the only thing I could think to say. I asked them both if they supported efforts to give a boost to minority applicants for academic jobs. They both readily said yes; I told them that I do too, at least if it’s done right. And so I asked them: if such efforts do not actually make it more likely that minority candidates will get hired… what do they do? If they don’t, what are you supporting? Literally, how can such efforts be said to exist, if they don’t actually give anyone a boost?
To the specifc question of university hiring, I don’t know why any honest person would deny the basic reality - of course there’s been a vast effort in academia to hire more women and more professors of color, and of course that means that applicants of color have a signifcant advantage. Google for ten minutes and you will find a mountain of discourse within the academy about this effort. I was on the academic job market for two years and saw hundreds upon hundreds of job ads; the percentage that did not specifically encourage minority applicants had to have been in the single digits. Stuff like “We especially welcome applications from minority groups, women, LGBTQ applicants, applicants with disabilities...” Again, you’ll note that this is deliberate language; they’re not saying that they’ll give a boost to the applications of applicants of color or women, hahaha, that would be illegal. They just welcome their applications! And they’ll include boilerplate equal opportunity language to be safe. But the boost is there, and if you go to academic conferences and talk to profs on job committees they’ll often just nakedly say that they’re not reading any applications from white men this cycle. (The white male professors are always the ones most keen to share this information.) Yes, of course, minority applicants get an advantage in the academic hiring process. I think that’s sometimes appropriate, within reason. But that the statement “minority applicants receive special advantages when applying for many professor jobs” could be perceived to be controversial is absurd.
If you’re a supporter of giving minority applicants for jobs and schools, as I am when it’s handled appropriately, then the thing to do is to just openly and directly support those programs. Which means, yes, saying that some members of minority groups will get jobs or admission slots to competitive colleges who would not otherwise have gotten them, because that is literally the one and only thing these programs do. Just own it, directly. If you think it’s good, own it! I guess the fact that such considerations can be considered illegal in some contexts puts people on their back foot. But whenever there’s one of these cyclical controversies where a young academic complains that it’s hard to get hired as a white man in the American university in 2024, and the whole world of academia comes together to mock him, I shake my head at how disingenuous it all is. Go back to 2020 and find all of the colleges and professors talking about how they’re going to redouble their commitment to diversifying the faculty. Absolutely everyone in academia knows it; the job committees know it and the applicants know it and the advisors of the applicants know it, the people who support that hiring advantage know it and the people who oppose it know it. Everybody knows it, but to talk about it openly would be too challenging. Kayfabe.
It goes on past that for about another thousand words, but I didn't feel it was necessary to copy-paste that stretch; the above passage captures the point that I want to get people's thoughts on.