Im-Politic: Don’t Forget About All the Systemic Anti-Racism

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affirmative action, African Americans, critical race theory, government contracting, higher education, Ibram Xendi, Im-Politic, minorities, race relations, racial justice, set asides, Small Business Administration, systemic racism

There’s a big concept that’s been utterly and conspicuously missing in the floods of verbiage sloshing across the nation about systemic racism, and it’s badly distorting the picture of how bigoted America and all its institutions remain. Think of it as “systemic anti-racism.” So far, it seems as good a term as any for all the official and unofficial efforts launched and maintained over the course of decades to help victims of discrimination overcome its lingering effects. And they have been legion.

Oddly, the unofficial programs seem to be by far the best known. Surely they’ve been the highest profile, and the most prominent have been the affirmative action policies long in effect throughout American higher education. This post discusses a study indicating just how many minority students have been provided with opportunities to attend colleges and universities by revealing how significantly state government bans on these programs since the 1990s have reduced the shares of “underrepresented” youth in the student bodies of their public institutions.

And if these data don’t convince you, here’s the verdict on such programs from no less than Ibram Kendi, one of the nation’s leading propounders of critical race theory – which of course contends that systemic racism still defines much and even most of American life: “Affirmative action programs in education have been demonstrated to increase diversity and increase access specifically for underrepresented groups.” (There’s evidence, though, according to the aforementioned CBS News post, that such underrepresentation has worsened since the 1970s at the most selective colleges.)

Yet the reach of affirmative action and related initiatives has extended far beyond the campus. As this history of the idea puts it (all the while emphasizing how fuzzy and confusing it’s long been):

“The actual programs that come under the general heading of affirmative action are a diverse lot; they include policies affecting college and university admissions, private-sector employment, government contracting, disbursement of scholarships and grants, legislative districting, and jury selection. Numerous affirmative-action programs have been enacted into law at local, state, and federal levels. In addition to programs that have been mandated by law, many private corporations and universities have developed affirmative-action programs voluntarily.”

The federal government’s measures have been especially impressive. Since 1961, because of an executive order issued by President John F. Kennedy, Washington has not only required all companies doing business with Washington to end racial discrimination in their own hiring practices (a policy with roots in the immediate pre-World War II period), but to promote equal opportunity in employment actively, and to document such practices and their effects in detail. Penalties for non-compliance were severe.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson expanded these obligations with a directive that all federal contractors and subcontractors act to expand opportunities for minorities.

The Johnson years also saw the first small-scale federal efforts to use the Small Business Administration (SBA) “to award contracts to firms willing to locate in urban areas and hire unemployed individuals, largely African Americans, or sponsor minority-owned businesses by providing capital or management assistance.” These practices were strengthened and expanded during the 1970s until in 1978, Congress expressly authorized the agency to focus such activity on “socially and economically disadvantaged small business concerns” (as the statute states) or “on businesses that are least 51% owned by one or more socially and economically disadvantaged individuals and whose management and daily operations are controlled by such individual(s)” (according to a history prepared by the Library of Congress).

It’s important to note that the SBA has also used this authority to help such businesses win contracts throughout the federal bureaucracy. In addition, every federal agency that authorized to buy any product from the private sector is required to operate an Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization whose mandate includes ensuring that minority-owned small businesses “are treated fairly and that they have an opportunity to compete and be selected for a fair amount of the agency’s contract dollars.”

And don’t forget “set asides” – which means that a certain number of federal contracts are either reserved completely for minority-owned businesses or businesses “in historically underutilized business zones” (including in economically depressed areas with big minority populations), or that such businesses be given preferential pricing in the contracting process. To cite one example, since 2015, Congress has required the Transportation Department’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program (which exists separately from the above SBA operations) to award a specified percent of its contracts to companies defined as having dealt with “ongoing discrimination and the continuing effects of past discrimination in federally-assisted highway, transit, airport, and highway safety financial assistance transportation contracting markets nationwide.”

Nor is the federal government the only level of government in America offering such preferences. As of 2016, the National Council of State Legislatures reported that “At least 38 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico have state-level MBE development programs involving certification for participation in state government procurement….” And such policies are in place in many U.S. cities, too.

I don’t want to present an overly rosy view of the American race relations scene. As many of the sources above make clear, the scope for using racial preferences in higher education admissions and in government contracting has been steadily narrowed by the courts. Some of these government programs were underperforming even before these restrictions came into force. None of them seem to have made a satisfactory impact on the nation-wide racial wealth gap yet (especially lately). And prejudice continues to mar policing in many areas of the country. So race relations Nirvana is still a long way off.

Nor is my purpose in this column to make the case either for or against any of them. (For the record, I’m generally supportive.) And no one should come away from this post thinking that it’s examined or listed all of these preferential programs exhaustively. 

What I am emphasizing here is that these efforts to overcome historical racial injustice show that the inadequacy of progress hasn’t been for lack of trying -at least to a noteworthy extent. As a result, they call into question the extent to which American racism today is still actually systemic. As a result, any teaching of race relations in the schools, or government or private business efforts to raise employees’ awareness of racial issues, or even any discussions or press coverage of these subjects, would do well to include discussions of these systemic anti-racist policie. Otherwise, it would seem fair to criticize them as systemically biased.

Im-Politic: Maybe American Higher Education Isn’t a Completely Lost Cause?

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academics, cancel culture, Center for Study of Partisanship and Ideology, critical race theory, education, Eric Kaufmann, higher education, humanities, Im-Politic, liberal authoritarianism, political correctness, social sciences, tolerance, wokeness

The late Native-American leader Wilma Mankiller wisely observed that “Whoever controls the education of our children controls the future.” It’s a great way to explain why it’s so important to determine whether the country’s schools at all levels generally have stayed in the business of transmitting knowledge and learning techniques to students, or whether they’re becoming propaganda operations.

Scarily, there’s abundant and seemingly surging evidence of the latter, and though I’m not big on arguing by anecdote, I certainly was alarmed by my stepson’s own recent experiences at Dickinson College, where in his humanities and social science courses, he contended he was both fed a diet of woke-ism and regularly belittled for being a white male.

So when I first heard about a massive new report on “Academic Freedom in Crisis: Punishment, Political Discrimination, and Self-Censorship,” I was expecting to see a detailed case that American higher education had passed the point of no return on political correctness, critical race theory, and intolerance of dissents from them. Instead, the March study from the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology contained a noteworthy amount of evidence that traditional notions of academic freedom – which logically, anyway, go hand-in-hand with non-overtly politicized notions of education – retain surprisingly (to me, anyway) strong support on U.S. campuses.

Not that the study, by University of London political scientist Eric Kaufmann, doesn’t serve up plenty of findings to worry about. But these were some of the most encouraging of the many results compiled and discovered by the author that stood out:

>Of the academics surveyed in various studies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who consider themselves to have ever been victims of what Kaufmann calls campus authoritarianism, only 0.03 percent report being dismissed from their jobs or being “deplatformed” (barred from forums or debates held either in person or on social media). And the U.S.-specific numbers are probably lower, since elsewhere in the study it’s made clear that academic freedom’s position in the United Kingdom and Canada is much more precarious. (p. 13)

>A much higher but still distinctly minority share (23 percent) of such respondents report being “threatened by disciplinary action for speech.” (p. 13)

>Only seven percent of U.S. respondents in a survey conduced by the author would favor a “campaign to oust” an academic for “dissenting” (i.e., negative) views on the value of diversity. Only eight percent would support similar efforts either regarding a colleague believing traditional parenthood as superior, or one backing a “restrict immigration” position. A higher, but still decidedly minority (18 percent) would support such a campaign against a colleague believing that “a higher share of women and minorities lowers organizational performance.” (p. 23)

These findings cover what Kaufmann calls “hard authoritarianism” in higher education. But he’s also studied forms of “soft authoritianism,” which he defines as “not being hired, promoted, awarded a grant, or published in a journal.” Of course, he notes, “both matter for academic freedom. Active social bullying is more punishing than social ostracism, which is in turn worse than socially avoiding someone or not including them in one’s social circle.” And all can damage careers. But here the picture looks unexpectedly encouraging, too. For example:

>Kaufmann admits that the sample size is very small, but his own poll found that just 22% of US academics “admit they’d discriminate vs a [Donald] Trump supporter in hiring.” He claims, however, to have come up with a methodology that can determine the share of respondents who would act on such views without admitting to them; This figure is a much bigger 40 percent – but still a minority. (p. 139)

>A separate, larger study found that “17% of [U.S.] conservatives and 16% of centrists would discriminate against a leftist hire whereas only 14% of American academic leftists would discriminate against a conservative hire.” Not only are these percentages low, but I interpret them as showing that such prejudices can work both ways – and possibly cancel out each other’s impact to some extent. (p. 146)

>Similarly, and returning to his own surveys of U.S. academics, Kaufmann found that “24% of leftist academics would rate a right-leaning grant lower while just 16% of right-wing academics would rate a left-leaning grant lower. However, in terms of papers, right and left discriminate against each other at a similar rate (13- 14%), and for promotion, right-wing academics are somewhat more likely to discriminate against the left than vice versa (16% vs. 13%).” (p. 150)

>Using his methodology for uncovering concealed biases, the author writes that 26- 48 percent of American left-wing academic staff would discriminate against a right-leaning promotion, grant, or paper and 26-32 percent of those on the right would do so against their left-leaning equivalents. Again, these more controversial numbers are higher, but still represent minorities. (p. 150)

And positive results aren’t simply confined to the realm of actions and potential actions. For example:

>Kaufann’s survey found that Americans academics profess to prioritize “academic freedom” over “social justice” by 58 percent to 26 percent. Moreover, only 38 percent of American academics in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) view themselves as “activists” – and they’re clearly among the most politicized groups on campuses. (pp. 59 and 100)

>Moreover, according to the author, it’s not even clear that “academics are more likely to discriminate on political grounds than professionals in other sectors.” (p. 182) In other words, there may be no special discrimination problem in higher education – although its aforementioned crucial role in “controlling the future” arguably makes its politicization more dangerous.

In this vein, Kaufmann’s report does present evidence that the presence of activist, agitprop-spouting professors is having an outsized and damaging impact on students. Thus he cites a 2019 U.S. study reporting that:

“…55% of students feel that the ‘campus climate prevents me saying things I believe.’ Fully 82% of conservative students said they had self-censored at least once in class, compared to 40% of liberals. On politics, race, gender, and sexuality, about 30-35% of Republican students are reluctant to share their views in class compared to 15- 25% for Democrat students. While these numbers show a substantial chilling effect, they indicate that right-leaning students are somewhat less inhibited in expressing their views than right-leaning academic staff.” (p. 170)

In addition, there’s reason to think that the (largely woke) politicization of American colleges and universities could worsen in the coming years, as Kaufmann presents considerable evidence showing that younger academics tend to be less tolerant and more willing to act on their progressive biases than their older counterparts.

But perhaps most revealing was Kaufmann’s decision to end his analytical section on an unmistakably bright note: “Fair-minded leftist academics outnumber the hard-authoritarian left by a factor of two or three (even in SSH fields), and offer an important base from which to build a future consensus in favor of academic freedom.” And if someone who’s investigated the subject so thoroughly, and clearly began with such grave concerns, can see reasons for hope – albeit with the need for continued vigilance and pushback – who am I to disagree?

Im-Politic: Race-Mongering and the Hell of No Intentions

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Asian-Americans, Biden, Capitol riots, critical race theory, Donald McNeil, hate crimes, Im-Politic, Jay Caspian Kang, Kamala Harris, race relations, racism, The New York Times, white privilege

It’s bad enough when self-appointed – and then government- and/or business- and university-endorsed – experts on racism spread the claim that intentions don’t matter at all when it comes to identifying the forms of bigotry that have harmed various American minorities throughout the country’s history, and that continue holding them back today.

It’s that much worse when they and the nation’s leaders casually throw around terms like “white privilege” – which insist, inter alia, that the very denial of bigoted beliefs is proof of their existence – and even turn them into firing offenses. And it’s worse still when the President and Vice President explicitly agree that actions should be treated as proof of racism in the absent any evidence of racial motivation.

That’s why the weekend comments on the recent Atlanta spa killings by President Biden and Vice President Harris are so dangerously divisive for a country that isn’t exactly short of dangerous divisions these days. I’m talking about the former’s statement that

“Whatever the motivation [for the Atlanta killings], we know this: Too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down the streets worrying. They’ve been attacked, blamed, scapegoated and harassed”;

and the latter’s more detailed declaration that

“Whatever the killer’s motive, these facts are clear. Six out of the eight people killed on Tuesday night were of Asian descent. Seven were women. The shootings took place in business owned by Asian-Americans. The shootings took place as violent hate crimes and discrimination against Asian-Americans has risen dramatically over the last year or more.”

The only possible silver lining could be their prompting of some serious national attention to the real relationship between intentions and events before the situation gets completely out of hand. So here’s an initial effort.

Let’s start off with what’s presumably still common ground. I trust that every thinking person understands that good intentions alone don’t guarantee results that would widely be recognized as positive, either in terms of public policy or private behavior. Well-meaning words or deeds can easily overreach or backfire in all sorts of ways, especially if not well-informed or carefully thought through. They can also easily – and often rightly – be deemed offensive, especially when the well-intentioned hold more power than the the objects of their supposed largesse. And let’s not forget that good intentions per se can be difficult to distinguish from cynical, narcissistic, or simply hollow virtue-signalling.

Every thinking person surely also agrees on condemning well-meaning words that clash with deeds – that is, hypocrisy. When public officials are guilty, that’s legitimate news and they should pay a price. In both the public and private sectors, the same goes for deeds that violate the law, whether they’re inconsistent with any words spoken or written by the perpetrator or not. And when public and influential private sector individuals may be involved, certainly journalistic or other investigation and presentation of any relevant information is warranted.

Nor should it be overly difficult to recognize what’s right and wrong in more complicated circumstances – like those involving insistence that significant and/or official racism has vanished in America because segregation laws have been eliminated, or because affirmative action programs have been in place for decades, or because an African-American has been elected President, and that ignore the lingering effects of government-produced or government-tolerated discrimination. (Basing public school funding heavily on property taxes is a glaring example of the former; housing red-lining is an example of the former turning into the latter.)

Whether such ignorance is willful or genuine, it’s certainly never admirable. At the same time, should such holding beliefs result in careers being damaged, or personal reputations being trashed in public – with innocent family members being victimized in the process? That strikes me as opening the door to the totalitarian practice of prosecuting thought crimes – which all too easily lead to conviction because by definition no tangible or visible evidence would be required to establish guilt. And who actually wants America to turn into a society that would, therefore, inevitably be dominated and psychologically paralyzed or worse by fear of indictment? And who actually wants to hand unscrupulous individuals such extraordinary power to intimidate and injure, an outcome that also seems entirely plausible. Unless you believe that all men and women are angels?

The Biden and Harris Atlanta comments go even further toward severing the link between words and thoughts on the one hand, and deeds and results on the other. And don’t underestimate the impact of presidential versions of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. In particular, they threaten to boost the likelihood that evidence-free claims will suffice to produce actionable findings of racism or other forms of bigotry, to make the sensibilities of even the most fragile personality or prejudice-mongering individual the determinant of guilt, and to trigger all the aforementioned consequences and increased fear and self-censorship.

If you’re skeptical, check out what happened to a veteran New York Times reporter who was forced to leave his job because students that he led on a Times-organized educational tour of Peru complained that he used both the N-word and other racially insensitive language in their presence. The reporter, Donald McNeil, claimed that the context of these comments revealed no bigoted tendencies whatever, and according to his detailed account of the episode – which hasn’t been challenged – he has the facts on his side.

But what’s most important is that when the paper announced McNeil’s departure to the staff, it specificied that these facts – including the context – didn’t matter. “We do not,” the Times said, “tolerate racist language regardless of intent.”  (See here for the full story.)

Such troubling disregard for the facts themselves – as opposed to how they bear on issues of intent – is also clear from the Biden and Harris remarks. In the first place, despite all the press coverage they’ve received, it’s far from clear that any surge in hate crimes against Asian-Americans has even taken place. As pointed out by – Asian-American writer – Jay Caspian Kang, an at-large contributor to the magazine section of that same New York Times, these claims

“largely rely on self-reported data from organizations like Stop AAPI Hate that popped up after the start of the pandemic. These resources are valuable, but they also use as their comparison point spotty and famously unreliable official hate crime statistics from law enforcement. If we cannot really tell how many hate crimes took place before, can we really argue that there has been a surge?

“There have also been reports that suggest that these attacks be placed within the context of rising crime nationwide, especially in large cities. What initially appears to be a crime wave targeting Asians might just be a few data points in a more raceless story.”

So it’s entirely reasonable to worry that the slighting of intent issues by the nation’s two top elected leaders could also encourage the rapid proliferation of all encompassing and never-ending searches for racial or other bigotry-related dimensions of any events involving different categories of people – even normal, every day life interactions.

I can’t imagine a more effective formula for encouraging much of the nation to walk on eggshells in understandable fear of retaliation from all manner of racial justice vigilantes armed with the unprecedented naming and shaming power of social media – and for stoking countervailing variants similar to those that reared their own ugly head on January 6.