|
 hen
the great Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote that "the
mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall/Frightening, sheer, no-man-fathomed,"
he probably was not thinking about the need for guardrails on highways
in the Rockies. Still, his advice seems pertinent: "Hold them
cheap/May who ne'er hung there."
Adarand Constructors,
Inc. based in Colorado Springs, clearly does not hold itself cheap.
The company prides itself as "Colorado's premier guardrail
and fence contractor." Twelve years ago when the U.S. Department
of Transportation called for bids on a guardrail project, Adarand
responded with the lowest bid, but lost the contract. The DOT awarded
it instead to Gonzales Construction Co., a firm certified as a small
business "owned and operated by economically disadvantaged
individuals."
The heads of
many companies, large and small, hang their heads at the petty injustices
of our national system of racial bid-rigging. But occasionally,
someone puts up a fight. Adarand sued and, in 1992, prevailed before
the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly a decade of further litigation and
efforts by the Clinton administration to salvage the affirmative
action program by amending some of the rules, however, has brought
the Adarand no justice. Its case is back before the Supreme Court.
President Bush's
decision last week to ask the Court to uphold the constitutionality
of the DOT program has disturbed many of us who doubt the wisdom
of racial quotas and set-asides and who had hoped for something
better from this administration. The president calls us to fight
"the soft bigotry of low expectations" in our schools,
but the great billowy bigotry of racial stereotyping in affirmative-action
programs appears to bother him less.
Let's think
about our cultural guardrails, those inconspicuous barriers that
may save us when we seem destined to plunge into the abyss. While
other societies have skidded off the cliff into the abyss of group
rights, we have been saved so far by our respect for the dignity
of the individual. And while other societies plunge headlong into
the chasm of ethnic nationalism, we have merely careered near the
edge, held back by our belief in human equality.
Lyndon Johnson
famously justified affirmative action by calling for a "level
playing field." The metaphor itself is a bit lumpy but we got
the idea: Johnson meant that ending discrimination against African-Americans
would not, by itself, propel large numbers of disadvantaged people
into the economic mainstream. Some additional steps would be needed.
But what steps? Subsidies? Tax-breaks? Two-tier contracting systems?
Sometimes extraordinary
problems require extraordinary solutions. I do not fault President
Johnson for his proposal to attack the racial hierarchy in the United
States with tough-minded forms of intervention. But I do fault him
for not thinking about the guardrails. He did nothing to ensure
that his temporary measures would not become a system of permanent
privilege, and he ignored the need for elementary fairness to those
who would be on the losing end of quotas.
The image of
leveling the playing fields, of course, has now become quaint. As
affirmative action switched from being an extraordinary, short-term
intervention to a permanent bureaucratic fixture, its ideological
apologists had to offer a different reason for setting aside ordinary
standards of fairness. American society, they now say, is so saturated
with invidious and self-perpetuating racial stereotypes and so rife
with institutional disadvantages visited on minorities that it will
take generation upon generation of vigorous affirmative action to
achieve genuine racial equity.
To a large
majority of Americans, of course, that image is simply strange.
It corresponds to very little in our personal experience. We do
indeed see racial stereotypes and occasional institutional disadvantages
— but they are, with one major exception, the throwaway stuff and
yard-sale clutter of our past. We don't buy the racism-is-endemic
theory, and we increasingly see no good reason for policies such
as the one that gave the guardrail contract to Gonzales instead
of Adarand.
In one very
important realm, however, it is clear that our society is burdened
with systematic disadvantage. Educational achievement differs dramatically
among racial and ethnic categories. Disproportionate numbers of
black and Latino students are at the bottom in American grade schools
and high schools, and disadvantage in school reverberates into a
lifetime of economic disadvantage.
Is there a
conservative answer to this inequity? Are these students the victims,
as George Bush suggested in his convention speech last year, of
the "soft bigotry of low expectations?" It is a powerful
phrase and true to a point. But it leaves the question, "Whose
expectations?" Teachers and their unions, school principals,
and state legislators own part of the responsibility. But the deeper
and more uncomfortable answer is that poor performance in schools
reflects families and communities in whom the ambition of self-improvement
through learning either never took root or has withered away.
The problem,
in short, is cultural. Some cultural traditions emphasize the importance
of learning; others do not. Or, if that statement seems too bald,
try this: Some cultural traditions emphasize that children must
strive to excel in the kinds of learning that our society organizes
into grade school and high school curricula. Other traditions emphasize…other
stuff. Traditions are what they are because they are self-perpetuating.
Contempt for school in one generation is usually passed to the next;
ignorance flourishes among the ignorant and scatters little seeds
of ignorance that will one day be harvested in still more kids hanging
out, doing drugs, and ignoring their one real opportunity.
Traditions
are not, however, unbreachable prisons. Individuals do sometimes
find their way free, and traditions themselves can be reshaped or
sent on new paths of self-development. Moreover, most traditions
contain within themselves dissenting opinions that, under the right
conditions, transform the whole. Even in a culture that generally
derides formal learning, some read books. Even in a tradition where
academic success connotes sell-out, some aspire to college. The
best way to help children in such communities is to recognize and
reinforce the work of the dissenters who, against the odds, uphold
the ideals of intellectual achievement.
The real alternative
to affirmative action is to challenge the validity of those cultural
traditions that excuse, foster, and perpetuate an ethic of hostility
to formal learning. Difficult? Yes, but not impossible. The place
to begin is in the mountains of our own minds. The "soft bigotry
of low expectations," Mr. President, is right there in front
of you in the Transportation Department's procedure for awarding
contracts. A clean and fair method of deciding who gets to install
guardrails on Rocky Mountain highways will not please everyone,
but it would blow up one of the pylons that supports the Culture
of Ignorance.
DOT set-asides
for minority contractors are perks for individuals who have already
reached the middle class. They do nothing for the child whose family
doesn't care whether he can read. They are meaningless to the teenager
who has dropped out of school. And they are just as irrelevant for
when that child, that teenager, becomes an adult. Affirmative action
programs appease a certain political class, but children languishing
in the backsweep of educational indifference are beyond its help.
They will not reach college, or if a few do, fewer still will graduate.
They will not found small businesses. They will not bid on DOT contracts.
Racial politics
is America's cliffs of fall/Frightening. We twist and turn through
these mountains looking for the high pass and the safe descent,
but there is no easy way. We can, however, learn from our mistakes,
and affirmative action was one of them. Let's take a different road.
|
