* Why racist laws backfire, part 3
Topics: AA
16 May 1990
From: ervan
Pete recently posted an article and I recently saw a piece on McNeil/Lehr
regarding the black law professor at Harvard who resigned until they
hired a female black law professor. What is being demanded here is not
that Harvard (or any university) be unprejudiced and not let race interfere
with a hiring decision but that Harvard actively give minority candidates
preference. They are already doing this to a large degree, but people
are not happy. Only 1% of new PhDs in the U.S. are black, but 4% of
faculties are black. This doesn't tell the whole story, but universities
are already trying hard.
To insist that some group be given preference based upon some
qualification that is not relevant to the post is a lowering of standards.
I hear many people say that it won't lower the quality of faculty because
there are plenty of qualified black applicants. Well, first of all that's
just not true, there are hardly any. There might not even be a single
black female currently looking for a job who is qualified to be a
professor at Harvard law school. The second problem is that just
because there are several people that meet the minimum qualifications,
choosing randomly among them will not generate the best faculty. You want
to hire the best people you can, not just some people above the marginal
line.
It is ironic that the same people who for a long time said that
employers were overlooking the qualifications of blacks and not hiring
enough for racist reasons are now saying that we should overlook the
(possibly) better qualifications of whites (males, etc.) and hire blacks.
The other side of the coin is to admit that putting race
specifically in the hiring policy will lower standards but that it
should be done anyway. One of the people arguing for quotas on
McNeil/Lehr suggested that blacks only be required to have a Masters
and not a PhD to be qualified for a faculty position. Ultimately,
this sort of lowering of standards is what will occur if such a policy
is pursued. The lowering might not be this explicit, but it will be
there.
If there is a law (or in this case a University regulation)
that requires people with inferior qualifications to be hired because
of their ethnicity (or whatever) it will have the following implications:
We admit that blacks are inferior, that they can't compete,
and that they need white help in order to be anything. This will
generate (or agravate) the feeling among whites that blacks really
are inferior, because it will be true within the sample group that
is known. Even if more level heads 'understand' the necessity of it
the vicious circle problem will be worse. If I'm considering hiring
a black man that worked at company X with quotas, I know that he is
less likely to be qualified *because* he is black because blacks at
company X are less qualified. So, even if I'm not prejudiced and
just looking out for my company, I'll avoid hiring blacks. The law
would have backfired.
What message does this send blacks? It tells them that whites
treat them with contempt. It tells them that whites don't think they
can compete. It tells them also that they don't need to bother
competing and being qualified. Instead of competing to be good
law professors (or whatever), they just need to compete to get on the
hand out list of jobs for the less qualified. I would like to remark
in passing that this problem is typical of socialist solitions, for
example, instead of competing to build better housing at cheaper prices,
builders compete to get to know HUD officials and then produce poor
products at higher prices. Again, the law would have backfired
by making it worse for blacks.
The notion seems to be that faculty positions in a law school
should be used to dissemenate culture as well as information about law.
People arguing for quotas babble on about how such positions would
teach whites about black culture and how such blacks would be
role models for aspring black youth. As for the first, I don't
want my professors wasting time telling me things not relevant to
the class. The larger problem is that faculty in such positions will
be avoided by students and other faculty because everyone will know that
they were hired not because they are qualified but to fill some quota.
A role model professor that no one wants to take classes from and
everyone treats with contempt is not much of a role model. You can't
create a role model with a rule, it must be done with achievement.
Finally, what does this do to the institutions involved? It
has them selling their reputations (in some small way) by producing
an inferior education to what they would have otherwise produced.
It cheats the students out of the better education they could have had
(including black students), it cheats society out of the better
productivity it could have had by having had better educated students
(including black members of society). Finally, it steals from me,
the employer, some small part of my freedom to conclude contracts with
whoemver I want.
----Ervan
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