DEALING WITH MERITOCRACY IN DEMOCRACY
483
Dr. Kurzweil's assignment to me-to layout "What Can We Do
Concretely to Achieve Equality?"-brings forth all this recent history,
tumult, and resolve toward equality, and Dr. King's question: "WHERE
DO WE GO FROM HERE?" Will it be community or will it be chaos?
To chart the future, we must know where we have been. As Jerry
Martin yesterday put the question: does the past matter anymore? This is
the question African-Americans are asking about the demise of affirmative
action as a governmental inducement to equal access. One black woman
the other day said to me, "Okay, let's acknowledge that affirmative action
has, in some instances, been flawed. But, how can Americans posture so,
and assume that nothing at all is owed to blacks as a group?"
If the past matters, it cannot be said with truth that affirmative action is
"the same" as invidious discrimination. That would be like saying an inclu–
sionary strategy to ensure a racially diverse campus population, to make a
once all-male campus co-ed, is the same as the exclusionary policies and
quotas that once denied equal access on the grounds of race and sex.
We easily understand the concept of accountability when individuals act
unlawfully. When governmental power has, over a long period of time, con–
tributed to pervasive, intensive discrimination against a group, it often is
necessary--strategic, and, yes, moral, to place the power of government on the
side of those seeking remedies to that discrimination. Dr. King analogized this
to how the Untouchables in India received admissions preferences in their
universi ties.
In the franlework of the American system, passage of the Thirteenth,
Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments alone did not,
and could not,
deliver
equal rights, much less
civil rights
to the black underclass. Hence, those in
and outside of government who controlled decisions about qualifications
devised the very methodologies for
affirmatively including
the once exclud–
ed. Those decision-makers included the guardians of the academy-who
managed the academy both as a community of learners and teachers, and
as a workplace. They themselves devised the particular means for evaluat–
ing, admitting, and educating minority students. And, in several instances,
they, who presumably got their own jobs through merit, messed up. As
they say, "Mistakes were made."
At one university, a black political scientist got tenure who had never
published a single book, and then the college appointed him as chairman of
the black studies department. Other colleges marginalized blacks' education
by creating such questionable departments. On such campuses, supposed aca–
demic disciplines were colorized, such that the academy sanctioned "Black
Psychology," "Black English," and "Black Studies." In effect, the academy
gave aid, comfort, and authenticity to dilettantish voices who argued that
there is such a thing as "White Psychology:' "White English," and "White
