For my blog post today about John McWhorter’s 2000 book, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America,
I will use as my starting point a story that McWhorter tells on page
172. The context is the controversy surrounding Proposition 209 in
California, a measure that banned race-based admissions at public
universities. An anti-Proposition 209 organization at Berkeley was By
Any Means Necessary, or BAMN.
“Indeed, it is difficult to avoid sensing at BAMN meetings, as well
as in their literature and in conversations with their members, a yen
for indignation rather than constructive engagement with the actual
facts and positions surrounding university admissions and race. Nothing
indicated this more strongly than the organization’s treatment of a
group committed to class-based, rather than race-based, admissions who
tried to make a statement at one meeting. The head repeatedly refused
to allow the representative to speak, and when he finally managed to say
his piece, predictably with a certain degree of exasperation at having
been silenced for so long, she dismissed his position as ‘an attitude.’
This group’s ideas were considered beyond the pale not on any logical
basis, but because class, an inchoate concept in America, is less easily
harnessed into personal, identity-based grievance, and is thus only
fitfully commensurate with Victimology.”
Here are some thoughts:
1. This passage coincides with other themes that McWhorter discusses
in this book. McWhorter criticizes a trend that he sees among
African-American spokespeople that he believes is knee-jerk rather than
intellectually rigorous. In addition, as I talked about a couple of
posts ago, McWhorter argues that most African-Americans are not poor.
This influences his critique of affirmative action, for McWhorter points
to statistics indicating that most African-American students admitted
to Berkeley on the basis of race, under lower academic standards, are
not from poor families. Moreover, remember that scene in the West Wing
in which President Bartlet’s conservative Supreme Court nominee,
Christopher Mulready, is debating affirmative action with Charlie?
Charlie is defending affirmative action by saying that African-Americans
have been historically discriminated against, and Mulready responds
that Charlie’s argumentation is stuck in the past, that Charlie should
instead focus on the fact that minorities admitted to universities under
affirmative action actually perform competently in academics once they
get into college. Charlie wants a paper and pen so he can write that
down! In any case, McWhorter would probably disagree with Mulready on
this, for McWhorter argues that a number of African-American students
who got into Berkeley due to affirmative action did not do particularly
well in academics once they are in college.
2. I have heard African-Americans who have said that Martin Luther
King, Jr. later in his life fought classism, and they appear to praise
him for that. Why would BAMN not be open to someone saying that
admissions should be based on class rather than race? I can somewhat
see McWhorter’s point (if I understand it correctly) that it may be
harder to organize a movement against classism. Moreover, there was
probably a concern within BAMN that America could go back to the days
when African-Americans were not adequately represented within certain
fields, such as medicine and law, and that race-based admissions were
necessary to keep this from happening.
I’m in favor of everyone having a shot at a good life, regardless of
class or race. I question whether having colleges admit people under
lower standards is the way to go, however. It’s not that I believe that
only the cream of the crop or the best academic performers should have a
shot at life, but rather that I think that people should develop
competency. The goal should be to ensure that everyone has an
opportunity to do this before they apply to college. Unfortunately,
we’re arguably a long way off from having a level playing field, when it
comes to education in America.