Affirmative action policies, which assuredly are of relevance to us here at Dartmouth, may or may not be of long-term benefit to the formerly disadvantaged groups they are intended to aid.
In this column, however, I should like to leave that question aside briefly and consider two wider effects such policies can have on American or any other society, that have the possibility -- or perhaps probability--of influencing the society decidedly for the worse. I will consider them mainly as they apply to colleges and universities, but the wider relevance ought to be clear.
The first, one which is generally applicable everywhere some form of affirmative action is in play, is the race-consciousness that affirmative action necessarily brings with it. And this cannot fail but to be an extreme sort of race consciousness.
If one establishes that a certain percentage of, say, new professorial appointments must be members of minorities, then every single faculty appointment must have this requirement in the back of its procedural mind, much as we undergraduates are always aware, even if dimly, when selecting our courses, of the distributive slots still to be filled.
But not only this. Someone must determine where the boundary line between white and nonwhite begins. Is an American of Greek descent to be considered white, while one with roots in Turkey, just a short way across the Aegean, to be considered "of color"?
What is one to do with Eurasians, or quadroons or octoroons? This sort of thinking makes attaining a color-blind society utterly impossible, of course, and indeed weaves thought along racial lines tightly into society's fabric.
There must be, one after all assumes, a computer file somewhere on this campus that classifies every student by race -- how else could Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenburg flush with pride as he year after year announces the groundbreaking figures for the various minority groups?
Now, perhaps the ideal of a color-blind society has been abandoned since the 1960s in favor of some sort of doctrine of recognizing racial differences, but with respect. Evidence of this shift in direction mounts daily.
I will not here express a preference one way or the other as to the direction our society takes. However, in such an environment of extreme sensitivity to race, it is a display of the greatest hypocrisy to feign shock and horror when whites begin (as they inevitably will in greater numbers, and as some have begun to already) to show signs of increased race consciousness, even solidarity, as they see everyone else doing the same all around them.
It is, to put it mildly, a disturbing notion that there is something very "particular" about whites that necessitates their being judged by different standards of racial saintliness.
The second effect, which cannot be underestimated in importance, is a potential increase in contempt, even hatred for the majority group now undergoing reverse discrimination. Year after year we read in Ivy League campus newspapers of the record number of minorities admitted to the freshman class. The veritable orgy of self-congratulation that accompanies these admission figures is plain for all to see.
And this annual display cannot fail to give rise to curious thoughts. If a greater number of minorities really is unadulterated bliss, why do we not press forward even more to the cutting edge?
Is Berkeley, which is now some 75 percent nonwhite in its student body, for that reason to be considered in the "demographic forefront" of American higher education? Is it in fact, in some ineffable, intangible way, obsolescent for American colleges to have a high percentage of whites?
How can such thinking fail to gradually breed contempt for the white majority, and a silent desire that it would just "go away" a good deal faster than it is presently retreating? If this is to be the mindset, Dartmouth and other colleges and universities really ought to try to stimulate more and faster national immigration from the nonwhite nations.
In fact, if this line of reasoning is pressed far enough, we would of course have to conclude that to really be progressive, Dartmouth ought to bar whites from admission and employment altogether. In that direction -- need it really be said? -- lie injustice and conflict of spectacular proportions.
The only decent ways of defining affirmative action, then, are those that consider it as a clear means to a fairly definite end, and possessed of a finite life span.
There is a certain school of thought, for instance, that is increasingly coming to view white racism as a sort of permanent amorphous force in this country. A force of essentially constant strength, and one which like other strong but amorphous forces acting in human society -- lust for instance -- requires an entire array of social structures, conventions and organizations to contain and counter it.
I declare unequivocally that this is a disgraceful point of view, and one which when taken to its logical conclusion could justify the most intolerable abuses against the majority race.
Mind-boggling progress in eliminating prejudice and discrimination has been made in the last 30 years, and those that are convinced that a tremendous amount remains to be done are most likely deceiving themselves. In solving those problems that remain, making affirmative action permanent is assuredly not the answer.
