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HOW MANY DEGREES DOES IT TAKE?
Both Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan have attacked Sonia Sotomayor as an "affirmative action hire." The suggestion here is that Sotomayor is somehow academically or intellectually undistinguished. But let's assume for a minute here that Sotomayor was accepted to Princeton partially on the basis of her race--she then proceeded to distinguish herself by graduating summa cum laude and earning the Pyne Prize, which is the highest undergraduate award Princeton can bestow. AA might get you into college, but there's no AA point system that helps minorities get to the top of their class. In other words, if Sotomayor benefited from affirmative action, then she's nothing other than an example of affirmative action working the way it's supposed to, precisely because whatever boost she had gaining access to these institutions, she then proceeded to distinguish herself as an exceptional student by any standard. (Dana makes a similar argument here.)
There's also a conservative catch-22 here -- conservatives argue that AA "stigmatizes" minorities by suggesting they haven't earned their accomplishments, but any time a person of color is in the running for a prominent position they proceed to stigmatize them as furiously as possible. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So, I'm curious. I wonder, for Limbaugh and Buchanan how many Ivy League degrees does a person of color have to have before they're as good as a white person, and no longer reducible to an "affirmative action hire"? Clearly it's more than two, since Sotomayor and the president each have two and they've faced similar criticisms. Is it three? Four? How exactly do we score academic prizes and such? Do they count?
-- A. Serwer
COMMENTS (5)
If ever there was an affirmative action hire for the Supreme Court, it was Clarence Thomas
Posted by: Danny Gail McElrath | May 27, 2009 1:11 PM
"...conservatives argue that AA "stigmatizes" minorities by suggesting they haven't earned their accomplishments...
Turns out this is less an argument than a threat, that they personally will disparage qualified minorities whenever it serves their purposes. If, as their "argument" suggests, they think unjust stigmatization is a bad thing, they should stop doing it.
Posted by: K | May 27, 2009 1:38 PM
And of course, let's not even talk about legacy affirmative action. How else would George W. have gotten into Yale? arvard accepts 40 percent and Princeton accepts 35 percent of legacies but only 11 percent of all applicants. The University of Pennsylvania rakes 41 percent of legacy applicants yet only 21 percent overall. [See http://ivysuccess.com/washingtonian_legacy.html]. And what about the different admissions standards that apply to sports admittees to Ivy League colleges [see http://www.browndailyherald.com/2.12230/for-ivy-admission-athletes-face-a-different-standard-1.1671107]. Why is it that only non-white "special treatment" arouses the ire of people like Buchanan and Limbaugh, as if "whiteness" was not a special privilege in and of itself?
Posted by: derek | May 27, 2009 2:39 PM
Could we justifiably consider GW Bush as the first Affirmative Action/ADA president? After all he ably demonstrated that despite a subpar academic career, a subpar National Guard stint (would love to know how politicking equates to military service), a subpar business career, an intellectually impaired person is fully capable of being elected to the highest political office in this country, not once, but TWICE. Wonder what that says about the US populace as a whole - are we also intellectually impaired?
Posted by: Greytdog Δ | May 29, 2009 10:27 AM
42
Posted by: kahner | May 29, 2009 2:17 PM