Summary: Both sides of the "affirmative action" debate have blind spots.

SEARCHING FOR A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD Thoughts on Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity by Andrew Bard Schmookler

Too many of the proponents of affirmative action have been reluctant to see the defects in their programs, but those who now so eagerly work to dismantle those programs display a willful blindness of their own.

First, the blind spots of the liberals. When defenders of the system dismiss its critics as racists and sexists, they fail to perceive how deeply the program of preference based on group membership offends genuine and laudable American values of success based on individual achievement. Many have been unwilling to acknowledge how often mediocrity has triumphed over excellence because of affirmative action, how much injustice has been done to individual human beings under the banner of justice for aggrieved groups.

The arguments that these "injustices" served justice as a kind of reparations for past wrongs made sense thirty years ago. But at some point, reparations have accomplished whatever healing they'll be able to; eventually, it becomes healthier for the relations between groups to move beyond atonement, for the payment of old debts to give way to the even scales of justice.

But justice is not so easily achieved as the rhetoric of the opponents of affirmative action suggests. Here we discern the blind spots of the conservatives. Perhaps it is time to act like a "color-blind" society, but this would hardly be a return to some prior state. Americans have never been color-blind, nor even-handed in the assignment of gender roles, and it is far from clear how the dismantling of affirmative action would lead to the justice evoked in current conservative rhetoric. So long as people discriminate in their hearts, so long as people prefer to be surrounded with folks like themselves, and so long as the great preponderance of positions of power are still filled by white men, do not certain groups need special protections? Affirmative action has real defects, but do its opponents have better rules to propose to level the playing field?

There is an even more fundamental issue to be addressed if we are to be able to speak meaningfully of a level playing field. As important in the American pantheon of values is the rewarding of individual merit, no less central is the ideal of equal opportunity. At a minimum, equal opportunity means that in an immediate contest, rewards are given on the basis of merit. But on a deeper level, the ideal of equal opportunity applies not only to some present competition but to the determination of individuals' prospects in the whole course of their lives. America -- founded to provide a contrast with the aristocratic order of Europe where a person was born into his lifelong status -- has always held as an ideal that the home in which a child is born should not prejudge the status he or she will achieve. But we are far from being such a society. Of course it is important to stress the importance of each individual's taking responsibility for his own destiny. The conservatives are right that the "culture of dependency" shows the disastrous results of a society's failing to convey that message strongly enough. But this individualist philosophy has major limitations. A hundred children born into affluent American homes will predictably have, as a group, a markedly different destiny from that of a group of a hundred children --similarly endowed by their Creator-- born into impoverished homes.

Such an epidemiological perspective demonstrates that it is only true to a degree that individuals can be held responsible for their fate. Is the ideal of equal opportunity violated by this blatant inequality in American life? Is it good enough to say that the inheritance of social status is de facto and not de jure? Or is it contrary to our ideals of individualism that the accident of being born into one collectivity (such as a family, a neighborhood, a race) rather than into another strongly determines an American child's chances for success? Is opportunity equal enough if the inheritance of status is probabilistic and not certain, if extraordinary individuals can escape the circumstances of their birth? Or should we be committed as a society to doing everything we can to truly equalize every child's opportunities, given equal God-given talent? If we give less official attention to the moment of competition among adults, we will need to become much more attentive to how well disadvantaged children are prepared for that competition. If the circumstances of a person's birth are to cease being so predictive of that person's prospects in America, this society is going to have to invest far more --and more effectively -- than it does now in its least advantaged children. (That such investment would go disproportionately to help members of groups now helped by affirmative action would be a virtue undiminished by the faults of the present program for help would no longer be given because of group membership.)

Our present public institutions not only fail to compensate for the disadvantages of birth, they actively exacerbate them. The public schools in rich neighborhoods offer far more than those of the poor. Head Start programs hardly begin to make up for the head start enjoyed by the children of the well-educated and successful. We say we believe in a level playing field for individuals, but how much are we willing to do to make it truly level? Do we even know how to do it? On the other hand, if we decide that fairness requires only that it is the swiftest who wins each course --and that it is not our concern how crippling are the circumstances into which many children in America are born-- will we be abandoning part of the soul of our democracy?

These questions are difficult for us because of some deep confusion in our cultural understanding of the question: what are the rights and responsibilities of individuals and of groups in relation to society as a whole? When some people's lives aren't working well, the liberals, with their emphasis on the responsibility of the collective to take care of its members, tend to find the cause in society's defects and to create government programs to make things right. The conservatives, with their stress on the responsibility of individuals to sink or swim by their own efforts, tend to find the causes of failure in the defects of individuals, and to reject as unjust meddling any government intrusions into what they regard as private decisions. If the current debate about affirmative action can help us bring together these pieces of a larger truth that thus far escapes us, this struggle will have been worth it.