Is it Too Soon to Stop Punishing 17 Year-Old Asian Kids for Slavery?
They shouldn't have done it, but when have they been punished enough?
Slavery is America's original sin. It was a crime of unthinkable brutality, a moral abomination whose effects are still being felt. Sometimes, when I see a person of Asian descent in the 16-to-18 age range, I’m tempted to ask: “Why did you do it?”
Politeness precludes that sort of question, but I’m sure we can all agree: Some sort of punishment is in order. We need corrective measures to remedy the centuries-long system of oppression that these kids perpetuated since their birth during the second George W. Bush administration. That's why Harvard developed a race-based discrimination system that many felt was a just sanction for Asian children’s myriad crimes. The Supreme Court just declared that system illegal. And that forces me to wonder: Should we craft new penalties to check the privilege of, say, the neighborhood kid who watches my cat when I’m gone? Because he’s really had an attitude since his dad got of out jail in Myanmar.
We, as a society, must improve the prospects of the victims of slavery and Jim Crow. And we all know who those victims are: White kids with one Hispanic grandparent. We must move mountains to ensure that white kids with one Hispanic grandparent have preferred access to this country’s elite institutions. The same goes for Andover-educated children of professional-class Nigerians who emigrated in 1998 and kids whose parents are from, like, Lebanon, and everyone’s too polite to ask “Aren’t you…white?” Those people must have special consideration that takes their disadvantage into account.
Attending an elite university can be a pathway to success. And we must never ask: Is that perhaps the problem? Have companies and desirable institutions fallen into a pattern of lazy credentialism instead of assessing aptitude and making decisions based on those assessments? Is a thing we must never wonder. I shouldn’t have even typed that — pretend you didn’t read it. The point is: Ivy League = fast track to success, that’s the way things are and should always be, we must remain hyper-focused on the first part of that equation and never, ever think about the second part.
Diversity is paramount. Affirmative action sought to increase diversity in higher education, and the policy seems to have been enormously successful in attracting a wide array of diverse students from the wealthiest, most elite families in the country. My apartment in college illustrated this beautiful panoply: One roommate was the son of a cardiologist from Yonkers, another came from a pulmonologist in Scarsdale, and a third was raised by a nephrologist in New Rochelle. What a diverse bunch! They had a wide range of opinions about the best way to drive to Manhattan and the optimal strategies for match-hopping at the U.S. Open.
Too many Americans lack opportunity. In too many places, jobs are scarce and schools underperform. Parental income is a depressingly good predictor of a person’s income, and at times, the cycle of poverty seems almost inescapable. Too many young people face challenges that derail their lives. Too many Americans are unprepared for the modern labor market. We need to give these struggling young people the thing that would really turn their lives around: Better access to Harvard University. The magic bullet to the country’s social and economic problems clearly lies in access to schools that are exclusive by definition. If we’re serious about sweeping fixes for society’s ills, then the first thing we need to do is fine-tune the processes that affect the roughly 0.2% of Americans who apply to Ivy League universities.
Principles matter. One of the most sacred American principles is equality under the law. Articulated in the Declaration of Independence, enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment, and affirmed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, probably no principle is more responsible for social progress in this country. Exceptions to this principle must be made only for excellent reasons. And I’m sure we can all agree that this is an excellent reason:
Colleges have very important promotional materials to produce. Without affirmative action, the numbers in those those promotional materials might be less impressive. Clearly, this consideration justifies a total rethink of the concept that has probably been the most powerful driver of human rights in this country and around the world.
At some point, Asian teens’ atonement for slavery will be through. The Supreme Court has moved that day closer, but I wonder if it’s arrived too soon. I also worry about the precedent this might set; will elderly Native Americans now be let off the hook for the Armenian genocide? Will post-menopausal Aboriginals be made to pay for the Spanish Inquisition? Perhaps not. At any rate, institutionalized punishment of Asian high-schoolers for crimes committed by long dead white people is now illegal. Only in my heart will I be able to punish them for slavery, not to mention cancer, tornadoes, the Dreyfus Affair, eczema, bee colony collapse, freezer burn, the Second Boer War, heart disease, the cancellation of Freaks and Geeks, and the fact that Westworld teased some mind-blowing ending but it turned out to be a bunch of nothing bullshit.
Those complete bastards.
That's enough sarcasm for now. That might actually be enough sarcasm for several decades.
Affirmative action in universities is officially dead, and though the workarounds are obvious and probably little will change, I'm not sorry to see the policy (officially) go. It was a blunt instrument that may have made sense once, but America's increasingly complex demographics rendered it nonsensical. The young people disadvantaged by the policy did nothing wrong, and its beneficiaries were often not the people the policy was intended to help. It institutionalized a regressive and frankly deeply-fucked-up racialized worldview that made a mockery of some of our most important principles.
And, though I try not to attack people’s motives, I need to say this one time: This was partly a system designed to make white people feel less guilty. We engineered racial outcomes that we wanted so that we could look around and say “Hooray, diversity — we did it!” But the diversity was engineered, and it took a concerted program of race-based discrimination to achieve. And that, in my opinion, caused the cons to outweigh the pros.
I think it’s clear that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow are still present in our society. But I also think that engineering outcomes is a poor substitute for doing the hard things we need to do to expand opportunities for people who have been shut out. That’s why I support things like increasing cash payments and the Earned Income Tax Credit, changing zoning laws to give people more mobility, and trying to bring education reform back from the dead. The demise of deeply unpopular admissions policies might actually free up political capital to help bring these things about. Hopefully, we can focus on substantive solutions instead of on superficial policies that undermine our principles and harm people who did nothing wrong.
Oh man that was funny. Some of your best work. Bravo.
> though the workarounds are obvious and probably little will change
It might seem so, but I am more optimistic. Look at UC Berkeley - they've had decades to find an effective workaround and haven't been able to do it. I'm sure some colleges will go too far, and there will be some lawsuits. But *the good guys will win those lawsuits*. Don't rain on my parade, Jeff.
In the meantime, I hope that states like California and New York that are utterly incompetent at educating black children will look to success stories like Mississippi for ideas on how to do better.