Glenn Loury: Affirmative Distraction
In this long-form piece, FAIR Advisor Glenn Loury (AM 82) argues that “Using different standards when judging the fitness of blacks…is inconsistent with the goal of racial equality. It invites us to become liars—to pretend that false things are true. It invites us to look the other way. It’s not equality; it’s the opposite of equality. Knowing that I’m being judged by standards that are different and less rigorous by virtue of the fact that my ancestors suffered some indignity is itself undignified.”
He goes on, not sparing words. “I’m for racial equality, not patronization. Don’t patronize my people, inflict on us the consequences of a soft bigotry of low expectations, or presume that we’re not capable of manifesting excellence in the same way as any other people.”
“To have misgivings about affirmative action is not to be indifferent to the problem of racial inequality,” he argues. “Indeed, anyone who takes the problem of racial inequality seriously ought to have misgivings about the practice of affirmative action to the extent that it displaces deliberation and action oriented toward redressing the deep causes of that inequality.”
“You can do two things with…differences in performance. You can pretend that they don’t exist—that’s what I mean by lying—or make them evident in the way that you deal with the people in front of you. The temptation to do the first is overwhelming. But that’s not equality. Do you think that university administrators don’t know this? They know, and they’re not saying, because there’s a political understanding that what we need to do to deal with the legacy of slavery and racism is to patronize blacks. And that makes me angry.”
