The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, affirmative action should be based on class, not race

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

In a landmark ruling, The United States Supreme Court rejected affirmative action at US colleges, determining that race should not be a factor in achieving educational diversity. The controversial decision is expected to lower the admission rates of black and hispanic students at elite universities. Many supporters of the court's decision believe that affirmative action - that is, policies that aim to increase opportunities provided to underrepresented members of society - should be based on class, not race. Focusing on the disadvantaged of all races would create a more fair environment that is based on real need. Furthermore, they argue, affirmative action in its current form lowers standards for black students applying to universities, promoting different criterions based on race and therefore perpetuating a system of racism and inequality on campus. Others argue that replacing race-based affirmative action with economic need will hurt black students more as they will now be judged against a much bigger population percentage of poor whites and asians. Affirmative action was introduced in the 1960’s in order to address the country’s history of systemic racism towards black Americans that victims of class-based inequalities did not face. The decision by SCOTUS reverses years of racial progress and ignores the reality of racism in modern America, because, as Justice Ketanji Jackson wrote in her descent, “deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.” Arguing for the motion is John McWhorter, Associate Professor of English at Columbia University, and the author of Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America Arguing against the motion is Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law Professor and the author of For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law SOURCES: Associated Press   The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran LynchBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved, affirmative action should be based on class, not race. The opinion issued today by the United States Supreme Court marks the beginning of the restoration of the colorblind legal covenant that minds together our multiracial, multi-ethnic nation. Hi, I'm your moderator, Reddier Griffiths. Well, that was Edward Bloom, president of students for fair admissions, reacting to the United States Supreme Court's rejection of affirmative action in the selection

of students for places at prestigious American colleges. This controversial ruling, which forbids race-conscious emissions policies, in higher ed is expected to reduce the numbers of black and Hispanic students, Adelae universities. Many supporters of the court's decision believe that an affirmative action, that is policies that aim to increase opportunities provided to underrepresented members of society, should be based on class, not race. Focusing on the disadvantaged of all races would create a more fair environment that is based on real economic need. Others like President Joe, Biden believe that the Supreme Court's ruling will undo many years of racial progress.

We should never allow the country to walk away from the dream upon which it was founded. That opportunity is for everyone, not just a few. We need a new path forward, a path consistent with the law that protects diversity and expands opportunity. Critics of the Supreme Court's ruling argue that replacing race-based affirmative action with economic need-based assessments will hurt black and Hispanic students more in that they will now be judged against a much bigger population of poor whites and Asians. The decision by SCOTUS ignores the reality of racism in modern America. Its deep legacies extending back to the institution of slavery because as Justice Jackson wrote in her dissenting opinion, deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so

in life. On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved. Affirmative action should be based on class, not race. Arguing for the motion is John McWhorter, Associate Professor of English at Columbia University, and author of woke racism. Arguing against the motion is Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy, the author of for discrimination, race, affirmative action, and the law. John, Randall, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Really looking forward to this conversation with you both today, so topical, so timely. The motion in front of our members, be it resolved, affirmative action, should be based on class, not race. John, you're speaking in favor of the resolution, so let's have your opening statement, please. My opening statement about this topic is actually pretty simple. We use expressions like taking race into account when we discuss affirmative action. But that's a euphemism. It's useful. It's understandable, but it's getting old. And we have to understand that what we mean by taking race into account is admitting especially black and Latino students under lowered standards, not different, but lowered standards than other students. Now, the question is whether you do that. And for how long do you do that? I think that that was a strategy that made perfect sense in the 1960s, maybe the 70s. It was getting old by the 80s. But the idea that you admit black and Latino students under lowered standards until there is no such thing as racial inequities is a proposition, but only that, and I find it fragile. The question is, for how long

do you subject black people to that condescension, for example? Now, the original idea was that blackness and disadvantage were essentially synonymous, not perfectly, but that wasn't necessary. But to be black in 1966, no matter how much money you had, was a disadvantage in countless ways. However, that's changed and partly because of affirmative action. It's been a very long time. And so what it means is we can go back to what affirmative action was supposed to be for. Affirmative action was addressing a people's disadvantage. And today, there's a proposition that what we're going to do is address inequity in very much the Reverend King vein and change standards. And yes, lower standards in view of the obstacles that people have faced. But the problem is. And we have to say lowering standards,

not taking race into account. That's dishonest. Lowering standards today for all black applicants is obsolete. You lower standards for black applicants who suffer disadvantage and meaningful disadvantage. No one's life is perfect, but meaningful disadvantage. My proposition is that the time is passed for changing standards, as in lowering them, for middle class and affluent black applicants. It made sense then it's time not to reconsider it now, but to stop doing it, and to go into a world where, standards are lowered at selective institutions for people who face obstacles that make it such that it's morally unreasonable to expect them to submit the kind of dossiers that a certain elite and fortunate other people can do. And in closing, I will also say that we're hearing that

it's absolutely necessary to lower standards for black and Latino students, no taking race into account, honest language, that we have to lower standards for black and Latino students because if we don't have a representative number of them graduating from selective schools, then we're blocking those students from opportunity. That sounds good, but I'm not sure it's been proven, and I think that we need to think of that this way. There are many, many other schools than those few dozen selective institutions. And at all of those institutions, there are people working very hard to shunt their graduates into meaningful opportunities. At how many of those institutions would people not be rather surprised to hear that their black and Latino graduates are cut off from

opportunity or might as well be compared to if they got degrees from Princeton or Harvard? So I want us to watch out for that line that we often hear because it hasn't been proven. It just sounds good and I think we're all afraid to speak against it. But it's not true that Harvard and Yale are the only way that a black or a Latino student has opportunities to get into the highest echelons of the country. Or if that's true, I'm not sure that it's ever been proven. And until it's been proven, we have to stop using that as an op-ed mantra to resist the progress of moving on to preferences being based on disadvantage and not melanin. Made sense in 66? In 23, it's obsolete.

John, thank you for that opening statement. A great opening to our debate. Our motion today, be it resolved, affirmative action should be based on class, not race. Randall, you're speaking against the motion. Let's have your opening statement now. Yes, thank you very much. Very pleased to be part of this program. First of all, this is exactly the debate that should be going on. but last week, the United States Supreme Court cut off such debate. It should be the case that various jurisdictions in the United States have arguments, have discussions, have conversations, have conversations just like the one we were having. Is it a wise thing to try to help certain marginalized groups in society, even if, you know, their test scores or their grade scores, are lesser than some of their competitors. That's a good debate to have. Last week, the United States

Supreme Court took that issue out of a regular conversation, took it out of the realm of regular politics by saying that as a matter of constitutional law, you cannot take race into account in allocating scarce resources in higher education. That's the American. and backdrop against which this debate takes place, and that is a grievous loss to American society. We should be having this debate. Now, to get to the debate that we're having, my position is that class should be taken into account, race should be taken into account, gender should be taken into account. There are all sorts of things that should be taken into account in seeking to create classes in higher education. With respect to race, it may very be the case that my colleague,

Mr. McWhorter, it may very well be the case that we're not so far apart because in his presentation, he ended up by saying, well, you know, class should be taken. into account, we should not give any sort of preference. We should not be reaching out our hands to help, let's say, affluent black people. Well, you know, maybe so, maybe so. Maybe a well-designed racial affirmative action plan would not help out. For instance, my children, that my children don't need that sort of help. And maybe it's the case that racial affirmative action should actually exclude my children. Okay, but that's not all of racial affirmative action. What about people who are not as privileged? What about black people who are not as privileged

as me, including middle class black people? Because, you know, middle class black people, in, you know, black people who might earn the same amount as white people might still be suffering from the invisible disadvantages that our horrible history of racial oppression in America has imposed on black people. So you can have black people who make the same amount as their white counterpart lives in a very different part of town, does not have access to the same human capital, does not have access to the same human capital, does not have access to the same. history of education, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, in my view in the United States, it is still the case that with respect to every indicia of well-being, with respect to every indicia of disadvantage, there is still a racial hierarchy, such that we still need to be very attentive to the myriad ways in which people of color, particularly African Americans, are still subject to racial oppression or the

vestiges of racial oppression. And to the extent that that is still so, we do need to be attentive to race as well as class, as well as other markers of race of disadvantage in American society. For a reminder to our Monk debate supporters and curators right now on our web website, www.w monkdebates.com, you can access a high-definition video version of the entire main stage Monk Debate on artificial intelligence, which took place recently at Roy Thompson Hall. Simply log on to the website using your membership credentials. Go to the page for the artificial intelligence debate. You'll see a big red arrow there. Click on it, and you've got

90 minutes of in-depth insight and analysis of artificial intelligence. If you're a big red arrow there, click on it, If you are not already a supporter or a curator and you'd like to get access to on-demand versions of not just the artificial intelligence debate, but our 10-plus year archive of debates, dialogues, and conversations do that right now by becoming a monk debate supporter or curator. We'll also throw in advanced ticketing privileges to all of our in-person debates and other great perks and privileges. Again, you can do that right now on our website, Triple W. monkdebates.com. Now back to our program. Really strong opening statements from you both. Now a chance for rebuttal. So same opportunity. A couple minutes on the clock. Over to you, John. Let's have you react to what you've just heard from Randall. Randall, I think you know that I massively respect your analytical mind and your ability to split differences. I know no one who does that the way

you do it. But I have to say, with all due respect, that I don't agree with most of the most of the of what you just said in that. I hope I don't sound like a broken record, but not taking into account lowering standards for. We have to think of it that way. And the question is, do we lower standards for just race alone? And this is the thing. We have to always think about degree. Yes, it's different to be a middle class black person than a middle class white person. There are forms of disrespect you might suffer. There are influences that might be near you. that might not be near the middle class white person, although that's not absolute. There are all sorts of vestiges, as you say, that's true.

But the question is, it's one thing to say, do those things mean that we take race into account? But honestly, and I mean no disrespect, that phrase makes it sound like you're saying whether you bake blueberry muffins. The issue is, do those vestiges justify lowering standards for middle class black kids? Instead of saying it gets to a point where, frankly, most people, including these shiny, happy white kids from Connecticut, have problems. And that the idea is that beyond a certain point, it is human to surmount those problems. And so I can certainly say I grew up, you know, very middle class in the 70s and 80s. I wanted for nothing in particular. But I had some obstacles.

I ran up against a little bit of this. My family atmosphere was a little bit of that. I was underestimated a little bit here and there. Wasn't enough to submit me to lowered standards. And I certainly talk about children. I am certainly chilled at the thought of my own children growing up in the 2020s and having some admissions officer think about the disadvantages that they suffered because of the vestiges of racism. No, no, no, whatever those vestiges were, they deserve, they, not all black people, but they deserve to be obsessed as if they were shiny, happy white kids from Connecticut. So it should be about class because that will bring in lots and lots of black people who have suffered disproportionate numbers of black people who've suffered, as Richard Collenberg tells us almost every day these days and as he should. But the issue is disadvantage, not color, despite the fact that no matter,

what level of socioeconomics you're on as a black person. Certainly some vestiges of 1952 are going to persist. But I don't think that in 2023, that those vestiges justify, and we can't say taking race into account, lowering standards. Okay, a couple things. First, I don't mind the lowered standards talk. I think that you were right. I think on that point. I think that there has been sort of an effort to prudify and to evade, you know, what affirmative action is about. So I don't, fine, let's talk about lowered standards. Question, is it still the case in the United States of America in the intense competition

for scarce resources at the most elite institutions that we should lower standards for the purpose of bringing in black kids who will do well, who will do well, but they might not get in if it was just completely unrestricted competition. And my position is that we're still in a point where I think, yeah, fine, lower the standards, to a degree. Now, again, you can have stupid affirmative action where you lower the standards so much that, you know, there really is mismatch, where there really are people flunking out, where the, you know, the black kids are always in the bottom of the class. You know, no, I don't want that because affirmative action, you know, does have downsides to it, a stigmatizing effect to it, which we should be very careful about.

But is it still the case, in my view, that we should be attentive to the racial demographics of certain institutions? And it's my position that we ought to. And here, you know, I mentioned the Supreme Court case a week ago. The Supreme Court of the United States in the fourth footnote of the court's opinion said our opinion does not address the institutions of the armed services. We are not talking about the Army's Military Academy at West Point. We are not talking about the Naval Academy.

Now, they did not elaborate. They did not say why they weren't talking about them. I think one can be very confident, however, in knowing why they weren't talking about them. they weren't talking about them because at those institutions, if you're talking about the officer corps of the military, they want to make sure that they're going to be, you know, black majors, captains, colonels, generals. And if that necessitates messing around a little bit with the requirements or with the competition to get into West Point or the Naval Academy, they are willing to do it because they think that it's so important that that be done.

If that's what's behind footnote four, good. And all I'm saying is that sort of thinking should be expanded to some degree. Again, I'm not running away from lowered standards. Again, it's important, you know, how much lowered standards? If it's just a little bit, I'm willing to live with it. Now, I have one, I have a question for you, John. if you say class not race, does that mean that you are not bothered at all if we have a class criterion and the class criterion yields an all white, you know, you work at a great university, Columbia

University. Let's suppose that Columbia University had a class criterion and it yielded an all white entering class. Would you be concerned about that? I'm not sure what the point of the question is, because in real life, Columbia wouldn't allow it, and or even if we were just talking about brute numbers, and there was no adjustment made. Nevertheless, there would still be black and Latino kids there. I think more realistically, you mean, suppose there was this great washing flood of poor white kids and it really didn't look like black and Latino kids had gotten too much of benefit. All of this is very hypothetical, but frankly, yes, if the idea were that at Columbia or any selective school, anybody for whom standards were lowered, and I'm glad we agree on this

phraseology, was given that because of the way they grew up, I think that would be a healthier culture. And I know that there's a repost that we're hearing lately that even if that's the way it was people think black people are stupid and they'd continue to. Good line. I'm not sure if that would be true after a generation. And I don't think anybody can know whether that's true. It just sounds good to say it. And in general, as far as the military, I'm an armchair person. I know nothing of the armed forces, but I'm not sure we need to bring that into it. The issue is, apparently there is some reason that lowering standards make sense with the army and the Navy. What I know is my world where I'm not sure what those reasons are, unless we're talking about role models,

in which case I would have to say, Randall, and you know this as well as I do, that no Chinese American students says that I need to have Chinese professors before I can feel comfortable in class. And I'm going to touch on something very delicate, and I hope it doesn't get me into trouble, but this is necessary in this debate, especially because you're a law professor yourself. Amy Wax, U-Pen, what she said about black kids and where they rate you. in the class. I wouldn't have said that about black students clustering at the bottom. I'm not a law professor for one thing. And even if I were seeing such a thing, I would not say it in public, but she did say it. And everybody thinks Amy Wax is the worst person in the world. But the thing is, no one, except for that one dean without giving data, says that she was wrong.

Another example, Sandra Sellers at Georgetown, who gets caught on a Zoom saying the same thing and loses her job. everybody thought that she was a terrible person for having said so, and then she says it to somebody who nods and that God pulls himself out of the running, knowing full well what's about to happen to him. Okay, that was unfortunate. That was a grimy little conversation they were having, but no one has denied that issue as to what that tendency is. Now, Randall, if I know you, your view may be that if there tends to be that performance gap, that there's nothing wrong with it, because really the issue is what. what kind of jobs those people get once they leave law school. But I would just have to say that there's this issue. We're always hearing that black students decry that people think they got in on the basis of affirmative action. There's a little poly tests that we're expected to observe, which is to never consider that one solution to that might be not to have preferences that are based on anything except disadvantage that somebody could readily defend themselves on the basis of,

as opposed to a black person who is the child of doctors and lawyers, having to defend why they were evaluated according to lowered standards, which, let's face it, they can't really. And so I think that we just need to face what the realities are. And so we're about to get into a conversation about degree. To what extent do you, quote, unquote, take race into account. Do you lower standards for race? And as far as I'm concerned, I would rather have race sensitive policies that are about disadvantage and there are various ways of doing it, be that about socioeconomics, be that about

wealth, be that about zip code, rather than just saying, here is a brown person, okay, they don't have to hit as high a bar because they're brown and it makes us feel good to let them in. That was okay for a good 50 years. Time to let that go. A couple of things. Number one on the question of people decrying, you know, being labeled affirmative action babies. There are people who decry that. I am not one of them. I am an affirmative action baby. I certainly was helped by affirmative action. I would not have gotten into Yale Law School, but for affirmative action. Well, you know what? And, you know, I'm perfectly happy to put what I've done up against anyone. I got into Yale by debt of affirmative action.

In my view, it was a good call. And my career has substantiated that good call. And I don't think that I'm alone. I think that if one takes a look over the broad expanse of American life, there are many, many, many examples of African Americans in the past 50 years who have gotten a boost from affirmative action that enabled them to do things that they might not otherwise have been able to do. Just like, by the way, just like, you think, you know, George Bush, the younger, our last president wouldn't have gotten in Yale but for his.

Don't compare us to him. We have to. Listen, all I'm saying is let's not make it seem as though, you know, all of a sudden, the United States is a place of tremendous altruism for black people and they're the only people that are getting, you know, so-called preferences. But hold it. Just a couple things, John. Just a couple things. So number one, I think it's a mistake for people to run away.

from any reality. Number one, yes, I've been benefited by affirmative action, not ashamed of it at all. Number two, you talked about performance gaps. I think it's been a big mistake for the champions of affirmative action to suggest that there are not performance gaps. There are performance gaps. That's why we have the, that's what presents the dilemma. And I think that when we take a look at performance gaps, we need to ask, well,

why are those performance gaps there? And don't we need to do something about it? I'm not in favor of, you know, sort of closing our eyes to that. I think that we ought to grapple with that. And we ought to ask what strategies are best for enabling people to actually better themselves. Now, if you say to me that actually the affirmative action route is counterfeiting. productive, I'm listening. And frankly, in some context, I think it is counterproductive. So, for instance, if people have the idea that they don't have to work as hard, that they really don't have to work as hard, and so they relax a bit, seems to me that's counterproductive. I'd rather have the kid that was told, tie, tie, you lose, you're going to have to be better. That's what I was

told. And I think, actually, that's a very useful thing to be told. Now, one last, point, one last point, one last point that I'll give you the floor. We're going to have to be very careful in the time, in the months and years to come about the attack that is now going to come launch your way, John. So you say that you're for class, not race. There are already people, as you know, who are coming after the programs that you challenge. because what they're saying is, well, this guy, John McWhorter, these people are saying class, not race, but actually, actually, really, race is there. Class is the pretext for race. And to the extent that anybody is advancing a class regime with the hopes of drawing in minority kids, that too is race conscious. That too. two should be viewed as unconstitutional. That too is invalid. It seems to me that you need to know that that's what's coming for your camp. One thing I want to know is what are you going to say to those

people? Okay. Let's take it all backwards. First of all, the idea that you shouldn't even adjust for disadvantage is going to be a much harder argument to make. And any smarty pants who come along and it's going to be a subset of those who have not liked the current situation. The smarty pantses who come along and argue that we shouldn't even think about disadvantage because partly that is raised through the back door, those people will be vanquished. Those people will be pushed down into the ground like cartoon characters. It will be a much harder argument to make. I worry about them not a bit. Now, you say that you got a boost from affirmative action.

Randall, with all due respect, and I can pretend that I'm pulling the thing that I'm a linguist here. And so therefore I can ask, but really, I'm just black me. What do you mean by boost and what are you talking about in terms of affirmative action? Because I'll say I got a boost from affirmative action when I was admitted to Stanford's linguistics program in that I didn't have that much experience in the field. I couldn't talk the kind of game that most applicants could. But, and also I didn't have a GPA of 400 and whatever because I really couldn't be bothered. I had a very good but not excellent GPA.

But my grades in language classes were our top class. And I happened to test well. I don't know why, but I might do a good GRE. And it was clear that I could get in and kind of dust myself off and be worthy. I've written recently about how affirmative action affected me differently as things went on. But I would call that a boost. But what are you talking about? because standards were not lowered for me in any significant way.

They took a little chance based on my qualifications being slightly different. But what do you, we're talking about lowering standards, and you're saying affirmative action, you're saying boost, but who wouldn't like to hear the word boost? What are you talking about? Well, you know, quite precisely. I remember it very clearly when the person from Yale came, I went to Princeton as an undergraduate. it. When the guy from Yale showed up and was looking for, you know, I represent Yale law school, asked me questions, people who were interested in going. There was a, on the back of the sheet,

there was a chart of LSAT scores. My LSAT score was not on the chart in a bad direction. So much was it not on the chart that I went up and asked. I said, listen, my score isn't on the chart, should I even apply? And the guy's the man, wonderful man, by the way, director of missions, a wonderful person, said, listen, how are your grades? I said, oh, I've got really good grades. He says, oh, apply. My point, John, is, you know. And we're not done with the second thing. I did the third and the first, and I want to address the second thing, but keep going. Okay, my point is affirmative action is like any other social policy. You can have dumb affirmative action that accentuates the various drawbacks of affirmative action.

And if you have, affirmative action is going to have some drawbacks that are going to be almost impossible to erase. There are going to be some drawbacks, but just like anything, any social policy is going to have some drawbacks to it. All I'm, my position is that, you know, racial, affirmative action, intelligently done, has been good, and can continue to do good. And I say that it has been done in a very sloppy way and has created a lot of flotsam and jetsam, especially over about the past 30 years. And this is why, maybe someone would say,

And I'm often told this that, you know, there's a good kind of lowering standards that it can be done in favor of somebody who gets in and dust themselves off and makes a worthwhile contribution. And you're saying that you are that person and I would with all due arrogance say that I am that person. But this is the problem. That's not the way it always works. And it doesn't not work that way so seldom that we don't need to talk about it. And Randall, if I may, and this is the last time I'm going to push a button here. You know this. And I know this because of your career.

And I don't know whether you want to answer this question or not. But let's say that you're looking at the legal scholarship of the people who originated critical race theory. And I'm not saying that critical race theory is some evil miasma that needs to be fought. But you have had your criticisms of it. They were very trenchant, the most trenchant of any black. writer in the history of the United States. I get the feeling it's something you would rather not talk about these days because of the whole history of how it was responded to. I fully get that, but I've got to bring it up. You said some things which were correct. And I don't think

that you could honestly say that the criticisms that you made of that work don't suggest a certain lesser stringency of argumentation than you, for example, make when you examine the history of Brown v. Board. When any number of legal scholars examine legal doctrine and take things apart with a thoroughness that makes me always wish partly that I had become a legal scholar, that tight, close kind of reasoning. Haven't you seen a lot of that? because frankly, in my world of humanities academia, I've seen too much of that. And I'm not saying that it means that the world stops spinning, but it makes it painfully clear that there is a double standard that nobody talks about, but it's obviously there. And it's not right. It maybe was

collateral damage for some decades, but it's never been right. It's never been proper. And it always will illicit complaints from the Edward Blum types, especially today when unlike in 1966, you could say as caricature that there were white people and black people and then some very few people kind of nattering around the edges. That's a vast exaggeration. But after the Immigration Act of 1965, there are too many other kinds of people. And they have a right to feel that they're being excluded, that they're not being judged on their merits. And you can tell them the reason for it is redlining and Jim Crow. That argument is never. ever truly going to go through, nor will the argument about wealth, because a lot of those very

same people don't have very much wealth either, and they wind up at Princeton, Yale, and Harvard. So that's all three of your points. And I'm not sure what your responses are, but that's what you make me think. Okay, a couple things. Number one, yes, we have to be very attentive that the racial demographics, you know, the demographics of the United States of America are different in 23 than they were in 1978. They are tremendously different, and we need to be attentive to that. We need to be attentive to the non-black, non-Latino racial minorities, and their interests have to be taken into account with the same amount of respectfulness as all these other groups. And so, you know, that's one point. Number two, we do need to be.

flexible. We need to have our eyes and ears open to evidence. We need to be willing to revisit. We need to be willing to be experimental. We need to be willing to, you know, recalibrate. All I'm saying is that, you know, what's happened in the United States last week with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court didn't recalibrate, the Supreme Court erased, and I think that that was a mistake. Now, your point about me, by the way, John, I'm not at all, I am not at all unwilling or embarrassed about, you know, anything I've ever written in my life, including my critique of, you know, so-called, you know, critical race theory. And your, you know, which you, you know, sort of the sentiment that you express, yes, I.

I definitely expressed some of that. I don't like it. And in fact, in your comment, you said, you know, I didn't like what you said about my writing. At one point, you said, oh, Randy Kennedy has written some of the most trenchant stuff that a black writer, black writer. It's at that point that I think there is a problem. In American magazines and American newspapers, you'll have people referred to as black. and I'm saying, well, what does that have to do with anything? Why does the fact that, you know, I'm a black, right?

I'm a writer for God's sakes. Well, all of the... Hold it, hold it. You should be judging me. I think that here, in a sense, I am here I'm with you. I think that people have gotten sloppy. There has been complacency. The rate people now, for instance, you read an article in a newspaper, and they'll say something

like, John Smith. a 14-year-old black youngster was shot. And I'm saying, well, if there's a reason to identify his race, identify his race. But we've gotten to a point now where the racial identifiers, people have become complacent. We do need to ask ourselves at each and every point, why are we doing what we are doing? Why are we identifying this person as black? To get back to our point, our question, you know, is it the case that in a competition we should be taking this person's blackness into account? Maybe the answer is, no, we shouldn't be taken into account. This person, you know, maybe this person over here, but not this person over here.

So it's not that I'm against revisiting the status of race in the allocation of resources in American life. What I am against is a wholesale effort purportedly, you know, to erase race. I think race, we need to think about it. We need to think about it clearly and rigorously. But at the end of the day, I think that the force of race in American life, is still sufficiently powerful that in a number of areas, it should remain as something to take into account in seeking to allocate scarce resources. You know, as far as the decision goes, it's draconian. That's true.

But I think the impact of that will be tempered by the fact that, despite how, how racist university cultures supposedly are. We both know that they are probably the least racist cultures on the planet and in the history of Homo sapiens. And so every self-respecting selective university will work as hard as it can to work around this and to, quote, unquote, take race into account in different ways. And so I'm not as appalled by the draconian nature of the decision as you are, I too find it naive when the way these things are written is that we can't pay attention to race, that race is not something that's supposed to be on our minds at all. That's not what I think. My issue is just that do we pay attention to race of middle class and affluent people in admissions?

I think that's different from whether we think about the impact of race and society in general. and it's just, it's one of those things. This decision has come down and it seems so extreme, but Randall, I think that in terms of how a society changes, it's pretty typical and probably even necessary, that there's what you might call punctuated equilibrium at times, that you have to take major lurches forward and see where all of the leaves and chips fall down.

What in the world is that metaphor? But I think you get what I mean. And so, for example, I get what you mean. I get what you mean. and I think you may very well be correct. I mean, yeah, a little bit more. I've been through this at UC at University of California when they banned racial preferences

in the late 90s. I was teaching there then as a young professor. And people then said that it was too draconian that you needed to mend it, not end it, as Bill Clinton said. And I remember thinking at the time, the problem is nobody was going to mend it until it was ended. You need it to be said, you can no longer do what you were doing in the past or you're going to jail or some equivalent. And then people rethink and the result is often something that

makes more sense. And so I was at Berkeley listening to people literally getting up on practically what were soapboxes in front of microphones and saying, we're going back to the segregation of 1960s. Serious, brilliant people. That never happened. Of course, the numbers of black and Latino students went down and severely for the first years. And then UC worked around it. And it's at the point now where and nobody could even begin to say that there's anything like resegregation, despite the fact that they can't do the crude, old school racial preferences that they had done before, where when I got to UC Berkeley in 1995, there was a two-tier system.

There were two classes of student, and any professor, especially after a glass of wine, who had had experiences with a wide variety of students, would say that you have to operate as if there's this whole other realm of students that you have a whole different set of expectations for. And that sounds horrible. But like many things that are horrible, it was also true. That changed with what Ward Connolly and the Regents did.

And in this case, I think we're dealing with more punctuated equilibrium. It's like the New Deal. Those things that happened in the early in mid-1930s wouldn't have happened if there hadn't been a depression that meant that for about 10 minutes, Franklin D. Roosevelt could slam those things through. And now we're in a situation where, well, the whole new deal didn't happen, but our expectations of what a welfare state does were indelibly shaped by expectations that settled in in the 1930s and the 40s as the result of that.

And so I don't think, and Randall, you are, your hallmark is moderation. Your idea is don't exaggerate. Deal with the reality. Don't go too fast. And I get that. But in this case, nothing else was going to happen. Nobody was going to mend anything. And so I think this is a good stimulus for looking at these things in a new way.

It's Rudyard here. If I can just jump in for a moment, this is a fantastic debate. And I just love it when I'm completely obsolete from the conversation because that truly is the sign of a great debate. When you don't need a moderator, I'm redundant. And thank you for making that happen. It's special. It doesn't always happen. So what it does, I'm thrilled.

I'm just conscious of our time and I'm conscious of your time. time. So Randall, let's get a final summing up from you. And then as per debate tradition, John, we'll give you the last word in this fabulous conversation we've been having about affirmative action. The motion before our proverbial house today has been, be it resolved. Affirmative action should be based on class, not race. Randall has been speaking against the motion, John four. So take us away, gentlemen, with your closing thoughts. Thank you very much for the discussion. I would say in closing that I feel as though I've gotten a very important concession from my colleague, because what my colleague has really said is that class should be taken into account

and the racial element of disadvantage should be viewed much more. narrowly than it has been. He has not said that race ought never be taken into account. He has just wanted to reduce its footprint a lot. It seems to me, for my purposes in this discussion, that is an important concession because he has distanced himself from a very important part of American political culture, which is on a rampage to attack any race consciousness at all. And it seems to me that that would be a very bad thing at this stage in American life. One last point, I would agree with my colleague that sometimes one of my favorite history, Richard Hofstadter said that any good point should be able to bear the weight of overstatement.

And it could be that, you know, the Supreme Court's critique of affirmative action, one might say is, you know, an overstatement, but that it was necessary to correct the pendulum swing. You know, the pendulum had swung too far over that way, so you had to swing it over this way. You know, Maybe so. One thing that gives me tremendous concern, however, is that the courts in the United States of America, with respect to the race question, the pendulum swing is not only with respect to higher education, it's not only with respect to employment, it's with respect to voting, it's with respect to various other things, which indicate to me that in important parts of American life, there's a denial, there is a denial of the continuing influence of bad racial sentiments, bad racial habits, bad racial vestiges of oppression in American life. And while we need to be attentive to change, while we need to acknowledge the very important progressive political changes that we've seen over the past half century. And my goodness, they are evident in American life. While we need

to be attentive to that, we also need to be realistically attentive to ways in which racial oppression and its vestiges, its scars are still with us. We still need to wrestle with those things. Any of it, thank you very much. my feeling? No, not my feeling. My opinion is that the scars that remain are very real, but the question is narrower than that. Do those scars justify lowering standards of admission for middle class and affluent black students? That's the question. And I think the answer is no. I think that in 2023, lowering admission standards for middle class and affluent black students, is condescending, it's obsolete, it's counterproductive, and it's dishonest. All four of those things. And with all due and sincere respect for my colleague, I concede nothing, nothing whatsoever. My point is that when we base these preferences, these lowering of standards on socioeconomics, we address racism automatically. It's baked in because a disproperprepared.

proportionate number of black people are disadvantaged. And so you address racism without even having deliberately done it, or even if you deliberately do do it, you're helping so many other people and warding off the objections of all of the new people who've come to this country since 1965 in terms of who gets admitted in for what reason, that everything is okay. Too many black people are poor in this country. So when you address poverty in your admissions, you will end up addressing part of the problem of racism and inequity in this country. I do not deny the other ones that are there, but I do not think they are effectively addressed by lowering standards and admissions to selective universities for middle class and affluent black students. And frankly,

I believe that the vast majority of people, including people who are left, of center, including people who are of color and all of them, agree with me. And it's getting to the point, and this is not a pot shot, Randall, but it's getting to the point that for us to continue to argue that there's something that all of these voters are missing and that it's appalling that all of them so consistently reject racial preferences is condescending. There are times when there is a such thing as the wisdom of crowds, especially when we're talking about the crowds being as brown as they are white and state after state over the past 30 years. It's over. Racial preferences in admissions is over. It isn't necessary anymore. And it's come to the point that it really isn't

very nice. I concede nothing. Well, gentlemen, it's such a pleasure to listen in on this conversation between the two of you. The civility, the substance, the rigor that you address this topic today. It was just refreshing. And again, so educating is exactly what we hope for in this debate. And so different, frankly, than so much of the conversation that actually happens on this topic. So what a refreshing change. And on behalf of the Monk Debates community, we thank you both for your time today. While that wraps up today's Monk debate on affirmative action,

I want to thank our participants, John and Randall, for a terrific conversation. Wow, wasn't that a great debate? If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. Also a friendly reminder that our weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus, which comes out, you guessed it, each and every Friday featuring me, your executive director, Ruddier Griffiths and Janice Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. We dig into the big issues and ideas shaping the news and driving the public conversation,

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