"We expect," wrote Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, on behalf of a 5-4 Supreme Court majority okaying race-based affirmative action in the recent Michigan cases, "that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." [For Gadfly's coverage, see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=4#35.] The "interest" to which she referred was, of course, the achievement of "diversity" in university enrollments.
There's been much discussion in education-land since the Court's ruling as to what must change, particularly within the K-12 system, in order for O'Connor's expectation to come true. That is, what must happen for affirmative action to wither away because so much education equalizing would have occurred that diversity can sustain itself without special preferences and double standards in college and grad-school admissions. It's a worthy goal, certainly, as well as the rationale for No Child Left Behind's focus on universal academic "proficiency." And it poses the greatest single challenge facing our education system and those who lead and work in it.
But is it realistic to think that affirmative action can ever fade away? Is it a temporary prop for those who need it, or a basic restructuring of societal assumptions that moves away from people denominated by their individual accomplishments and toward a land of group identity and privileges?
Two countries with long histories of group-denominated preferences offer strikingly different pictures of what the future might hold. India and Malaysia are both highly diverse nations, with many races, languages and religions - and tensions among them. Decades ago, each country began to reserve places in its universities (and government employment and other prized benefits) for groups deemed to be disadvantaged or in need of special help. In India's case, quotas for "untouchables" and indigenous tribes date back to 1950. Malaysia has been struggling at least since the early 1970s (when I first visited) to ensure that its Malay population gets as many of that society's advantages as the higher-achieving Chinese population. (The third big group in Malaysia is Indians, but there are also many indigenous tribal members, immigrants from Indonesia and the Philippines, etc.)
What's happening in those lands today, after decades of affirmative action?
In India, nearly universal "preferences" are fast arriving, a spoils system in which every single group and faction vies for its own guaranteed piece of the action. The Washington Post recently reported that the list of "backward" classes is growing to include even such improbable candidates as prosperous landowners and high-status Brahmins. (Roughly equivalent, in U.S. terms, to affirmative action for landlords and Episcopalians.) Nationwide, about half of India's population qualifies for affirmative-action quotas. In the once-princely state of Rajasthan, 78 percent are eligible. Says a leader of the quest to extend the quota system to upper-caste people, "Not a single politician dares to stop this thing. It's a big, big joke."
On the other hand, when revisiting Malaysia a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to read (in the Sarawak Sunday Tribune) that raced-based admission to higher education is on its way out. Meritocracy is in. The government has decided "to admit students into local universities on the basis of their public examination results and not race. With the enforcement of meritocracy, the public is led to think in good faith that the previous race-based quota system used for registering university students has now been discarded. It appears to be so...."
Is this happening because the race-based system was leading to balkanization and divisiveness in a country that yearns to foster unity? Or because affirmative action succeeded and the Malays are now doing as well as the Chinese? Or both? I do not know. But it's clear that Malaysia is finding that undoing a long-established preference system is touchy. It turned out, for example, that the latest medical school class at the University of Malaya contains just one Indian, a situation that was promptly denounced by Indian political leaders on grounds that it's not a "fair representation" of the country's demographics. This and "similar cases that have gone unreported" led the Sarawak columnist to wonder whether "the recently introduced system of meritocracy" ought not be rethought "given the complexity of our country's racial myriads [sic]."
He went on to note, in the spirit of Justice O'Connor, that if meritocracy is to determine university admissions, then the lower education system also needs an overhaul. Malaysia's primary and secondary schools are, in effect, segregated, with each of the "myriads" having its own separate institutions with distinctive curricula (and languages of instruction), uneven standards, and distinctive assessments. The columnist remarked that changes will be needed before such a balkanized primary-secondary system can feed into a single, meritocratic tertiary system.
The most striking thing about Malaysia today, aside from its evident prosperity, is its preoccupation with national unity and nervousness about inter-group tensions. Yes, every town sports a government-financed mosque and the country is generally perceived to be a Muslim nation. But it's also a real melting pot and lots of people - and especially its rather overbearing government - want its many subgroups to coexist equably. Is that why they're undoing race-based affirmative action?
Meanwhile, back in India, along with the continuing poverty of many millions, what is most apparent to the visitor and newspaper reader is that this once-secular democracy that strove to bridge its ethnic, religious, linguistic, and caste differences is now balkanizing before one's eyes. And the government is doing more than a little to foster that unhappy development. Thus we keep reading about Hindu-Muslim fights, the murder of Christian missionaries, and continuing caste conflicts. To what extent is affirmative action to blame? I can't be certain. But what must happen to a country where nearly everyone eventually qualifies for "preferences"? Doesn't one's group identity become the prized key to all valued services and benefits? Isn't one then bound to grow resentful of other groups? In time, aren't the essential building blocks of democracy itself - individual rights and equal opportunity - sure to be weakened?
Which direction is America headed?
