The antagonists are so self-righteous that they have embraced the common assumption that these programs are important - for good or ill, depending on one’s view - to ordinary Americans. This must be so for advocates to claim that affirmative action is an essential remedy for racial, ethnic or sexual injustice. And it must be so if critics are to decry affirmative action as widespread reverse discrimination. But it isn’t so. Affirmative-action programs don’t matter much for most Americans.
By affirmative action, I do not mean ““outreach’’ programs in college or job recruiting. Nor do I mean a general consciousness of race, sex or ethnicity that causes companies or colleges - when judging people of similar merit - to strive for some racial or sexual balance. These mild forms of affirmative action stir little controversy. The disagreement centers on programs that may slide into preferences or quotas. That’s what President Clinton defends, as he did again last week at the NAACP’s annual convention, and that’s where studies typically find small effects. Consider:
College admissions: Preferences are used only by elite schools (those whose students have SAT scores in the top 20 percent), report economists Thomas Kane of Harvard and William Dickens of the Brookings Institution. Ending preferences would ““have little impact’’ on who goes to college, because almost everyone could get into other schools (admission rates exceed 90 percent). The main effect would be to shuffle spots at elite colleges.
Jobs: The affirmative-action programs required of companies with federal contracts seem to raise black employment only slightly and to lower Hispanic employment, conclude economists William Rodgers III of William and Mary and William Spriggs of the Commerce Department. In 1992 blacks were 13 percent of the workers for federal contractors, compared with 11.7 percent of workers in the labor force. Hispanics constituted 7.1 percent of workers at contractors, lower than their 7.6 percent share of the labor force. (Rodgers and Spriggs can’t explain the difference.)
Government procurement: Set-aside programs do little to foster minority-owned businesses. In the late 1980s only about 12 percent of minority firms had sales to state or local governments, and two thirds of these relied on government for less than 25 percent of their sales, say economists Timothy Bates and Darrell Williams of Wayne State University. But firms that depend heavily on government (25 percent or more of sales) actually have a much higher failure rate. They’re vulnerable to contract loss.
The major gains for blacks and women have flowed from anti-discrimination laws and a shift in social attitudes, not affirmative action. Similarly, the great remaining problems for blacks - family breakdown, inadequate workplace skills - defy solution by affirmative action. But the debate proceeds as if these programs have immense significance. The scholars who show otherwise are not necessarily die-hard critics. Often, the opposite. Harvard’s Kane endorses preferences at elite colleges. It’s important, he says, to have diverse student bodies at schools that produce society’s leaders. Similarly, Rodgers and Spriggs support federal affirmative-action job requirements.
In light of the research, the case is hard to make. I have no doubt that these programs do some good for some people. Kane’s study finds that after controlling for the usual factors (family income, etc.), blacks from elite colleges enjoy a payoff - in terms of higher salaries - similar to whites’. Abolishing preferences would hurt some; black acceptances slumped at UC, Berkeley’s law school when preferences ended. But the benefits of these programs no longer justify the social costs.
What’s sacrificed is a basic principle - that people should be judged as individuals and not on the basis of race or sex - for gains to a few people. Affirmative action also sends a hurtful message to blacks and other favored groups. Shelby Steele’s 1990 book, ““The Content of Our Character,’’ put this eloquently:
““Blacks cannot be repaid for the injustice done to the race, but we can be corrupted by society’s guilty gestures of repayment. Affirmative action is such a gesture. It tells us that racial preferences can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves … This is an incentive to be reliant on others just as we are struggling for self-reliance.’’ And people who succeed on their own risk having their achievement stigmatized as an artifact of affirmative action.
Finally, affirmative action sows racial, ethnic and sexual ill will. Whites may blame setbacks (over college or jobs) on those who benefit from preferences. But the resentment is overblown, as Kane and Dickens show. Consider Harvard, they say. It has 18,000 applicants for 1,600 spots each year. About 90 percent will be disappointed. Now consider that about 15 percent of Harvard students (about 240) are black or Hispanic. Even if all benefited from preferences - clearly not the case - ending preferences would help only 240 more white students. Still, many whites ““may falsely believe they would be accepted’’ but for preferences.
I doubt that affirmative-action programs would survive a genuine appreciation of their limited benefits. Actually, affirmative-action programs probably won’t survive anyway, because as political scientist George La Noue of the University of Maryland reminds us, courts are slowly disallowing preferences except as a remedy for proven discrimination. And California voters rejected preferences in Proposition 209. The dismantling will be needlessly wrenching if we continue to focus more on symbolism than on facts.
