President Bush certainly isn’t the most popular figure in Massachusetts, and his view against affirmative action is practically heresy here. Senators Kennedy and Kerry sharply rebuked Bush’s brief to the Supreme Court as a ‘decisive’ measure that will perpetuate racism and societal divisions. The way the media plays the angle, it’s almost as if every intellectual, academic and civil rights leader is in agreement, while only a small enclave of über-conservatives and militant racists dare protesting.
However, poll after poll taken of the American public solidly reflects broad-based opposition across racial lines, in fact to any preferential treatment on the basis of race. While universities are hardly known to be representative of mainstream America, Boston University is in many ways a diamond in the rough.
Though BU technically employs affirmative action, the administration’s policies stand out because they do not pursue diversity for diversity’s sake a paradigm that’s practically second nature around this country’s campuses. Many colleges operate under the philosophy that educating someone isn’t the most important goal but rather, diversity is diversity of culture, opinion and race.
While political correctness may dictate the necessity of a race-conscious attitude, Chancellor Silber has courageously argued for years that the biology doesn’t make the man the man does. He is far from a perfect man, but he has nobly helped transform this school into a first-rate institution of higher knowledge, truth and justice. A variety of external factors may have led to BU’s supposedly ‘disproportionate’ number of black students, but any claim of racial discrimination is grounded in mere fiction. This university should be heralded as a leader in the fight for color-blindness, which is the ultimate goal of the civil rights movement or is it?
However, the administration of the Student Union clearly has a different agenda. The very institution of a Multicultural Affairs committee seems suspect, but the committee’s recently announced plan to study reportedly low minority enrollment will take it down a very dangerous road indeed. (Only evidence of institutionalized racial discrimination could merit such a task.)
The mere initiation of the study spells out its inevitable conclusion: that there should be a greater effort to increase minority enrollment. Regardless of what policies the study recommends to achieve such a task quotas, targets, lower academic standards its implementation would forever eviscerate our spirit of color-blindness. The committee wants black enrollment on the basis of the students being black. A purer form of racism simply doesn’t come to mind.
It’s an utter travesty that this announcement had to be made the same week as the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. However, the student government wasn’t alone in desecrating the spirit of a great man those who came to honor him at a campus ceremony followed suit. Erroneous and insulting assertions were made that King would have supported the University of Michigan’s policies, but mischaracterizations of King hardly seem surprising anymore. I may never have suffered racial discrimination, and I may never have marched sideby-side with King, but his views on race are a matter of public record and the great history of this nation: it doesn’t make a difference. He believed that only character makes a man a notion so antiquated it may surprise the Al Sharptons of the world that he ever advocated it.
Bush’s brief won’t have much effect with the court. The justices are rarely convinced when a president makes an argument. But hopefully the reason and righteousness behind it will make an impression. The court is known for its conservative bent, but this isn’t a matter of left or right; it’s an issue of constitutionality and morality.
Regardless of the decision’s effect, little will change on America’s campuses. Admissions officers will scheme news ways to view students as blurs of color instead of thinking beings. Student activism has been waning over the years, but there is a place for it here and now. If they wish to make a better world, they must refuse to be seen as splotches of paint. Students must demand to be treated as beings who wish to be taught and enlightened, not as players in a twisted game of misplaced revenge and collectivism.
The external effects of racism may largely be a thing of the past – lynching and outright job discrimination – but the insinuation that the race makes the man still retards society. It would be foolish to believe minorities will still receive the same education opportunity (at least initially) without affirmative action. But it is equally naïve and dangerous to punish sons for the sins of their fathers and then regard the sons as mere animals and actually predict everything will be all right one day.
[Jacob Cote, a freshman in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press and can be reached at favtak@bu.edu.]
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