A Much-Needed Awakening

It took David Hume's assault on the a priori view of causality to a waken Immanuel Kant from his "dogmatic slumber" on the issue of the a priori nature of all metaphysics. Similarly, though perhaps less monumentally, it took the recent controversy between Professor Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. and Zaheer R. Ali '94, president of the Black Students Association, on the origin of grade inflation to awaken me from my own dogmatic slumber on the issue of affirmative action.

Zaheer Ali, quite correctly, objected to what he perceived as an assault by Mansfield on the very legitimacy of the grades received by minority students.' In a March 3 letter to The Crimson, Ali said it was demeaning to suggest that inflated grades were given to Blacks from "some benevolent white teaching fellow or professor." Minority students should and do "earn their grades," Ali continued. Thus, according to Ali, such a practice of white benevolence would be fundamentally unjust and unnecessary, as well as demeaning to minority students. I agree completely.

Evidently, Ali is carrying on the struggle of Malcolm X and other influential Black leaders, as he disdains the idea of special treatment by "some benevolent white teaching fellow or professor." African-Americans, like other minorities, should not be dependent on the benevolence of the white establishment. As Shelby Steele noted in the December 21 issue of The New Republic, Malcolm X believed in Black pride and Black independence from white hegemony: "Malcolm sneered at government programs because he believed so much in Black people; they could do it on their own."

With such a positive message, special treatment should properly be condemned as patronizing; it only contributes to further Black dependency. I believe that Malcolm X would congratulate Ali on his message of Black pride and autonomy. And I believe that this is an important message--for all races.

However, such special treatment, which Ali so properly disdains as a demeaning practice, in fact occurs every year in admissions. Mansfield was quite right to ask Ali (in a March 12 letter) to extend his argument against special treatment in courses to the reality of the "benevolent white admissions officer." Few dare to challenge, or even to question, the goals of the admissions office when it grants special treatment based solely on race. Yet the logical extension of Ali's argument against special treatment would lead to the dismantling of the misguided white-benevolence machine in Byerly Hall. Unfortunately, in the realm of affirmative action, logic is not a highly valued standard for communication.

Affirmative action is mandated discrimination; that alone makes the program unjust. What makes affirmative action an even more insidious practice is its effect on its own recipients. Through the implementation of special treatment based on race, it engenders severe self-doubt in the hearts and minds of the very people who are supposedly benefiting from it. Shelby Steele, in The content of Our Character, eloquently makes this very point.

Here at Harvard, the negative effects of affirmative action have been evidenced most recently by the minority coalition, which called for a public apology from Mansfield. Minority students charge that Mansfield questioned the legitimacy of their grades; they claim that his statements, regardless of their veracity, are hurtful on a visceral level. Yet any special treatment necessarily leads to such pain through self-doubt. Minority students are still admitted to Harvard under the misty cloud of affirmative action, which generates the widespread perception of "under qualification." And few will likely escape from this debilitating weight, an inevitable corollary to affirmative action in practice.

Ali and many others cannot help but feel brusied when someone questions their legitimacy as students. But they are shortsighted to blame Mansfield. His comments resonate only because the flawed system of affirmative action allows them to resonate. The real blame belongs to the "benevolent white admissions officer" and the University officials who enforce the policy of special treatment based on the criterion of race. For by implementing such a practice, these well-meaning administrators create the atmosphere for the opportunity--and the likelihood--of questions of legitimacy based on race, such as Mansfield's.

The unfortunate consequences of affirmative action hold true whether the criterion is race, athletic ability or legacy status. Special treatment always has and always will breed the perception of illegitimacy and self-doubt. That doesn't mean that all recipients of special treatment are unqualified, or deserve to be questioned. But damaging impressions necessarily persist. One African-American student at the Business School recently expressed his disgust with preferential treatment in a letter to The Crimson: "if the policy is different for Blacks than for whites, then whites have an excuse to cry foul and Blacks, like myself, remain chained by our own self-doubt."

In his letter, Prof. Mansfield presented a potentially "shocking" idea to Ali; the entire Harvard community should listen. Minority students "are being hurt more by the inept good will of whites than by lingering racism." That is the lesson I am learning every day at Harvard as racial tensions continue to increase behind a veil of silence. We cannot tacitly accept this misguided crusade for justice. The consequences of affirmative action should not be ignored or silenced--especially by its recipients themselves.

We need to reevaluate the justice of the very principle of affirmative action, in addition to the discrepancies between such a noble principle" and its messy enforcement. Likewise, we should all awaken from our doginatic Slumber, on this crucial issue that somehow remains taboo.

It is affirmative action, and not its critics, that causes pain through self-doubt