Don't Go Halfway

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION is a perversion of the egalitarian principles embodied in the U.S. constitution and held dear by many Americans. But it is a necessary perversion, given the depth of past injustices to Blacks and other minorities.

To correct the under-representation of Blacks in the elite ranks of our society, in such nearly exclusively white cliques as the Harvard Law Review, we should adopt procedures that will alleviate this condition as quickly as possible. Then we may discard affirmative action and interpret the Constitution as a color-blind document.

The procedures that are needed now entail, first of all, an awareness that race should be taken into consideration while selecting members for elite groups like the law review. Law review editors, as well as a majority of the Crimson, have so far taken this admirable first step.

Unfortunately, they have refused to go further--to ensure that we will not only pay lip service to the traditional discrimination against Blacks and others, but also take concrete action to increase minority representation. The law review staff should this week commit itself to electing a specific number of minority editors at the next possible opportunity. The review staff should leave the decision of when to discard special provisions for minorities to a future body of review editors--which will be better able to understand minority needs because it will include a significant number of minorities.

The review staff deserves commendation for the attempts it has made so far to address injustice to minorities. This is not an easy task, and the review editors face considerable pressure from an unbending, almost all-male and all-white Law School faculty and from other individuals whose perceived self-interest leads them to prefer the currently disadvantaged condition of Blacks and other minorities.

After travelling this far, to the point where review editors understand that something must be done, we can only hope that unlike a majority of the Crimson, they will not take the easier, but far less productive, road out of the affirmative action dispute.

Minority quotas may be difficult for many to digest. But they represent the most effective way of correcting the injustices prevailing in our society. They should be adopted now so that they may be abolished as soon as they complete their task. Only then will all individuals playing a game bounded by a color-blind constitution be guaranteed a fair chance of winning.