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 tanley
Kurtz's scathing account of how affirmative action corrupts elite
institutions ("Crimson
Truths") stands head and
shoulders above the usual tired commentary. Citing his own experience,
Kurtz zeroes in on a little-discussed but morally crucial element
of these programs — namely, how they can backfire on their
intended recipients. This is a subject with which I too feel vividly
acquainted, even 20 years after being forced to witness the human
face of just such "social experimentation."
In the early 1980s, I was an undergraduate at an Ivy League school,
living with some 30 other students in a privately endowed scholarship
house. To say that this community was "selective" or "elitist" is
to understate. Its admissions process was then more competitive
than that of any U.S. college or university. Most residents, for
example, had only received applications by having scored in the
top 0.5 percent of the PSAT. It was the sort of place where a single
house team won the national "It's Academic" championship two years
running, and where in any given year its graduating class of eight
or twelve accounted for a disproportionate share of the university's
Mellons and Fullbrights and Marshalls and summas and so forth.
Even by the standards of an already demanding university, this house
was ground zero for pressure and performance.
But one thing this institution did not have, as it happened —
to the recurring frustration of its higher-minded inhabitants —
was many black students. This is not to say it had no such students
at all. Two years before the story that follows, for example, one
young man of African-American heritage, admitted under the usual
standards and requirements, had lived there for a year. Though he
could have stayed longer and did not — he ended up preferring
an apartment of his own to the demands of group life, and was well-off
enough to dispense with the scholarship — he was a successful
and well-liked member of the community. (Some years ago, incidentally,
he was listed in Jet magazine as "one of the fifty richest
black entrepreneurs in the United States.")
But that particular scholarship winner, as the saying went (un-self-consciously
in those days), wasn't "really" what the moral purists of the community
meant by "black." He "talked," "thought," and so on, too much like
"us." If this forward-looking institution were truly to prove its
dedication to affirmative action, or so the word went down, it would
have to find "black" candidates who were not like this one —
that is, not performing at the same level as the rest of "us" —
but rather, as unlike the house majority as possible.
Thus began a series of experiments by this elite institution in
the name of what is now called "affirmative action," meaning the
self-conscious practice of holding black test scores to a lower
standard than others. As it happened, the first such human experiment
came in the form of a freshman to whom I was assigned as a roommate
— a black Southern young lady we'll call Amanda (not her real
name).
Amanda was from a white-collar middle-class family, herself an aspiring
doctor. She was a sweet, serious, wholesome, and religious, enamored
of the sorts of things that doted-upon freshman daughters of striving
parents are enamored of in other such homes and colleges —
cosmetics and beauty routines, letters from friends, the school
football team, and stuffed animals. She was also showered regularly
with treats and visits and phone calls by her devoted, and obviously
very proud, family.
But Amanda also — and she alone that particular year —
had been admitted, indeed wooed, by this scholarship house despite
the fact that her standardized test scores were
| “It
was Amanda, and Amanda alone, whose life had been made
a day-to-day failure by the absurd ideological expectations
thrust upon her.” |
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significantly
lower than those of anyone else there. Though she was an obviously
bright student with good grades from her high school, she had nowhere
near the intellectual or scholastic range of the other house residents.
She could not follow — more to the point, had no interest in
following — much of what was said and done by the other individuals
there. Even ordinary banter, or what passed for it in such a circle,
typically presupposed a great deal that she hadn't ever heard of
or read.
As anyone outside a university will have guessed by now — and
as practically no one around her did — it did not take long
for this mismatch of person and place to prove disastrous. Day by
day, Amanda became more intimidated and withdrawn. At first she
simply didn't say much, either at breakfast or lunch or parties
or bull sessions; then little by little she stopped appearing at
them. One incident seemed especially emblematic. A visiting German
student entered our room, saw a bear on the wall on Amanda's side
of the room (an athletic symbol), and mistakenly began interrogating
her about whether she was a Marxist or Leninist. Since neither term
made any sense to her, and since he stupidly continued to question
her because he assumed otherwise, she first became embarrassed,
then grew visibly upset.
How many other such "culture shocks" she endured in that place,
I can only guess; but as time went on, her solution to feeling disadvantaged
in this way became increasingly consistent. She avoided the rest
of us constantly, even to the point of keeping hours so odd that
as to minimize any such contact.
And she next started skipping out on requirements of the scholarship
itself — house meetings, public-speaking events, committee
work. The house's student advisory body solicited her; promises
were made of improvement; patience was asked of all. Yet no entreaties
changed Amanda's behavior; instead they only formalized the impotence
on all sides. She became, in this sense, a postmodern character
— one present most powerfully by her absence. Eventually, she
was hardly there at all.
What was the institution to do? A passionate controversy ensued.
On one side, a minority argued that her scholarship should be rescinded
and given to someone else because she was failing to meet its most
minimal requirements; on the other, an even more emotional majority
responded that, in effect, you can't do that because she's black.
Whatever else may have come of it in the short run, representing
the minority faction had the effect of setting my own political
compass permanently. In one public meeting, a member of the student
advisory committee called me a "racist" — this, for having
argued that we should give the same scholarship to some theoretical
other person who would actually benefit from it. (My accuser was
actually crying as he explained how terrible he felt about being
"white.")
But the real issue, and here we circle back to Stanley Kurtz's point,
wasn't really — or at least shouldn't have been — what
the rest of "us," whatever our views, were enduring because of this
twisted experiment. It was rather Amanda, and Amanda alone, whose
life had been made a day-to-day failure by the absurd ideological
expectations thrust upon her. Here was a young woman of talent and
serious mien who was obviously capable of excelling in a broad swath
of the country's schools — who for that matter might also have
excelled at that particular university apart from the extra academic
pressures of the scholarship house. Instead she was being made miserable
— and later, defiant and angry — by circumstances no more
appropriate to her abilities and goals than, say, spending the summer
in Redskins training camp would be for most of the rest of us. Only
worse: not only was Amanda's immediate happiness at risk, but of
course her very future.
The story doesn't get more uplifting as it goes along. In the course
of avoiding the scholarship house where she felt such a failure,
Amanda was solicited and befriended by habitues of a campus socialist-separatist
black organization. They in turn persuaded her that race and racism
and having to live with "whites" were the root of her trouble. Rapproachment,
following such counsel, was effectively moot. Perhaps most depressing
of all, though this I heard only second-hand, these same friends
also persuaded the former aspiring doctor to abandon the pre-med
curriculum in favor of — what else? — black "studies."
In the end, the pro-affirmative action majority of the house prevailed,
and Amanda's scholarship was left intact even though she spent the
last six months of it in absentia. After that she went off to live
at the black separatist house. Last I heard she was getting all
Cs in her work.
I don't know what happened to Amanda after she left college, or
to the parents for whom her admission to this school and scholarship
house was once judged a high point of life. I don't know whether
their optimism survived events; it's extremely doubtful that hers
did. What I do know is that anyone who has attended any major American
university in the last 25 years will recognize Amanda's story, because
thanks to affirmative action — as Kurtz's tale reminds —
such stories abound, even though we are all supposed to be too polite
to mention them.
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