Friday, May 29, 2009

Sotomayor and Racial Preferences   [Robert VerBruggen]

Matthew Yglesias writes, about some conservatives who raised the question of preferential treatment Sotomayor may have received at Princeton:

Beyond the simple observation that conservatives really and truly are fanatical in their defense of the prerogatives of white people, the obvious observation to make is that everyone in life has been treated preferentially by someone at some point. Sometimes if you face a lot of disadvantages in life, people recognize that and extend you an extra helping hand. Or maybe, like John Roberts, you were educated at a private boarding school before attending Harvard. Or maybe you’re Irving Kristol’s son. Or maybe because your ideology pleases Rupert Murdoch, he agrees to cover the losses of the magazine you work at. The only reasonable question to ask about someone like Sotomayor is whether or not you think it’s reasonable to conclude that, on balance, poor minority women benefit from more special advantages in life than do middle class white men.

Yglesias completely misunderstands the question being debated. The issue isn't whether Sotomayor might have been treated preferentially "at some point," or whether she was more or less advantaged than anyone else "in life." The issue is whether she received preferential treatment in the awarding of a credential.

They're two very different things. When someone is privileged in life — for example, by going to an elite boarding school — he can leverage these privileges to make himself more qualified for various positions. When someone is privileged in the awarding of a credential — such as by receiving a degree for less or lower-quality work than others had to do — this makes the credential less valuable. In other words, it papers over a lack of qualifications.

This strikes to the heart of the affirmative-action debate. No one, not even white-folks-lovin' conservatives, disputes that minorities get fewer "special advantages in life than do middle class white men." The issue at hand is whether that fact mandates we hold minorities to a lower standard when it comes to hiring and university admissions — and then, apparently, forget they were held to a lower standard when they're nominated to the Supreme Court. One can quite reasonably conclude that it doesn't, and failing to reach a given conclusion from a fact is not the same as denying the fact itself.

Finally, the debate itself is evidence for one of the more important arguments against affirmative action. If universities didn't treat minorities preferentially, there'd be no question about whether Sotomayor's graduation from Princeton with honors means anything less than anyone else's.

05/29 03:23 PMShare