THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 24, 1995 TAG: 9503240032
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
Making college aid available to students on the basis of need makes perfect sense and doesn't raise an eyebrow anywhere on the ideological spectrum. That's the way affirmative action was originally supposed to work.
But somewhere along the way good intentions turned into bad ideas, complete with discriminatory quotas, set asides and preferences that pit conservatives against liberals, whites against blacks and men against women. This is progress?
Now affirmative action is a hot political issue. Many conservatives want to dismantle the whole edifice. Longtime supporter Bob Dole has done an 180-degree turn to get as far right as his presidential competitors. He ought to have whiplash. President Clinton has called for a review to decide what ought to be kept and what rejected.
The model has been cited: college aid based on need. Not race, not gender, but need. The goal of civil-rights laws, including affirmative action, was to open up opportunities so that merit - not race, not gender - would determine success. That's an idea with a long, distinguished pedigree. Jefferson envisioned an America where a natural aristocracy of talents would rule, not a hereditary aristocracy of birth.
There are now laws preventing the denial of opportunity based on race, religion, ethnic heritage, gender and so on. They are widely accepted and should be vigorously enforced.
But affirmative action in its most active incarnation aims at making opportunities more accessible to some based on complexion or chromosomes. That's a new discrimination in favor of groups, against individuals, based on factors beyond their control.
That's wrong. If some in our society need a leg up, then the assistance should be based on need, on economic disadvantage. And the goal should be to permit them to run the race of life to the best of their ability, not to fix it so they win. Otherwise absurdities multiply.
Today, the child of a wealthy black lawyer can receive a preference over the child of an impoverished white migrant farm worker. Millionaire minority partners get special treatment in certain business deals. In California, a policeman able to discover a single great-grandparent with a Hispanic surname gained an advantage in seeking promotion not available to candidates without an ancestor of the preferred ethnicity.
That's a return to the bad old days of discrimination, just dressed up in new ideological clothes. But it doesn't have to be that way. Where affirmative action now divides, a mechanism to provide help for those in need could create common ground.
The question is: Do politicians who want to scrap affirmative action really seek to extend opportunities to more Americans on the basis of merit? Let's see their plan. The concern is: They're interested only in roughing up opponents and inflaming the public without improving anything other than their chances for election. by CNB