Wednesday, November 26, 1997

Mixed messages on affirmative action

By WILLIAM A. RUSHER

Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

It has been apparent for some time that the supporters of race preferences realize a solid majority of the American people disagree with them, and that accordingly, their only hope is to lie about what is at issue.

Polls indicate from 60 to 65 percent of Americans staunchly oppose preferring one applicant for a government job or a government contract or admission to a government school over another simply because of the lucky applicant's race or gender. Whenever a ban on such preferences is put before the voters, it passes with a handsome majority -- as in California, the largest state, in November 1996.

At the same time, polls indicate most Americans are favorably disposed toward "affirmative action." This is an umbrella term used for more than 20 years to describe the whole series of efforts that have been made to improve the economic status of various allegedly victimized minorities. At first it was applied only to efforts to help blacks. Then women were included, and Hispanics. Now a whole swarm of others, including even Pacific islanders, have been added to the list.

"Affirmative action" includes such universally approved efforts as outreach (aggressively hunting for qualified minority applicants), remedial education and Head Start programs. But being bland and vague, it has also been adopted as the term of choice when what is really going on is rejecting white and Asian applicants in favor of less qualified blacks and Hispanics.

When asked whether they favor "affirmative action," many of the same voters who strongly oppose race or gender preferences will reply that they do -- obviously meaning they favor non-discriminatory help for victimized minorities and not that they favor preferring them over others solely because of their race or gender.

Seizing on this ambiguity, the supporters of preferences never use that word, but constantly tout "affirmative action." That was their strategy in Houston earlier this month. A proposition was on the ballot declaring Houston would not "discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment and public contracting."

So stated, the proposition was a slam dunk. But the law allowed the mayor (who favored preferences) to rephrase the question, so it was transformed into a proposal to "end the use of affirmative action for women and minorities in the operation of City of Houston employment and contracting." The voters, or enough of them, were duly misled, and the proposition was defeated.

The strategic value of the deadly ambiguity in the expression "affirmative action" is now widely appreciated among the political forces that support race preferences, and they can be depended on to take advantage of it whenever circumstances permit. Conversely, those who oppose race preferences must make it painstakingly clear they oppose only these and that they are all in favor of such uncontroversial forms of affirmative action as outreach, remedial education and Head Start.

Another point. In this, as in so many political controversies, it pays to follow the money trail. Was Houston's Mayor Lanier, do you suppose, chiefly worried about expanding employment opportunities for women and minorities? Or was he intent on doing a major favor for the five black-owned contracting companies that reportedly get the lion's share of Houston's preferential business?

And in San Francisco, which hands out $2 billion worth of municipal contracts every year, is Mayor Willie Brown defying the victorious Proposition 209 because he wants to hire more minorities, or because he wants the power to favor his "victimized" friends in the contracting business?

As American governmental policy, race preferences are doomed. Their supporters can run, but they can't hide.

William A. Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.