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John O'Sullivan.(Is Affirmative Action on the Way Out? Should It Be? A Symposium)(Cover Story)

Affirmative action has never been simply a "hand up" to "people who have had a hard time." It originally meant preferential treatment for people belonging to the racial group that had had a hard time, namely, American blacks under slavery and Jim Crow, or to the sex that feminists falsely claimed to have had a hard time, namely, American women under motherhood. Many of its supposed beneficiaries, however, had not themselves had a hard time, having been born into rich or successful middle-class families, or having married rich or successful men, or even having married poor and unsuccessful men who accepted a duty to support wives and children out of a breadwinner's income. And, of

Those who do just well enough at school either fall at a later occupational hurdle--or require a succession of preferences to maintain the elite career that they have been told is their birthright. And because they are clever people (rather than absolutely brilliant), they will sense that their success is bogus and is therefore occasionally resented by their colleagues. Unless they are also of superhuman honesty, they win seek refuge from this uncomfortable self-knowledge and join the dropouts in embracing the theory that white racism is pervasive and explains their various plights. In terms of personal achievement and happiness, everyone is worse off.

Of course, there are many policies that we could pursue to better the prospects of people in poor and minority communities--improving public education, making vouchers available so that parents can remove their children from unimproved schools, restoring law and order where it has broken down, assisting church charities. We should, indeed, pursue such policies irrespective of our attitude to affirmative action. What we should not do is to suggest that such reforms are compensation for removing racial and sexual preferences, since that would wrongly suggest that preferences are a benefit.

What should replace affirmative action? Let me repeat: affirmative action is institutionalized racism. Why do we need to do anything other than abolish it? Any "replacement" must be worthwhile on its own merits. If it is, it need not be justified as a replacement for something that should not be there in the first place.

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The third general effect is the spread of racism. Of a multitude of potential examples, I will cite just one: racial and ethnic segregation in the universities and its acceptance by the college authorities. We are shocked at this, but why? Race-conscious policies make people conscious of race.

Racial preferences in the public sector have suffered a few significant reverses in the courts, and in some state referenda. But those reverses have yet to be translated into action on the ground; figures like Mayor Brown of San Francisco have announced their intention not to enforce the law and have suffered neither rebuke nor consequences; and the federal government continues to enforce compliance with preferences and set-asides that the courts have disallowed.

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Approximate Word count = 1865
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)