| James N. Markels | ||||
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Personal
Information Constitutionalist
Party Political/Policy
Writing Creative
Writing Resume |
by
James N. Markels Sometimes
the best way to get at the heart of an issue is to reframe the
debate—especially when the basics of a policy problem are taken for
granted. A good example of
this is the estate tax. When
you die, the government taxes the estate that you pass on to your heirs
if it is above a certain aggregate value. Opponents of the estate tax termed it the “death tax,”
creating the counter-view that the government is taxing you for dying.
When put in those terms, support for ending the estate tax
increased, as many could not see how it’s right for the government to
tax a natural, unavoidable occurrence. What’s next, a tax for being born? Getting taxed for being a teenager? It
was in this vein that a conservative student group at Southern Methodist
University in Texas decided to put on a bake sale.
Not just any bake sale, mind you, but an Affirmative Action Bake
Sale. The students charged white males $1 per item, while white
women were only charged 75 cents, Hispanics were charged 50 cents, and
African-Americans only 25 cents. The
idea was to, in a rather blunt way, protest the use of race in college
admissions—something SMU happens to engage in. While
certainly not the most tactful or gentle mode of discourse, the bake
sale succeeded in its intended effect: Pissing people off and starting
conversation. It was
short-lived, however. Only
45 minutes after being open for business, the bake sale was shut down by
SMU after two African-American students complained that the sale was
“offensive.” SMU
claimed that the bake sale was creating a “hostile environment,”
despite there being no evidence of physical aggression or anything
beyond the expected heated debate. Regardless
of how you come down on the affirmative action issue, it should make you
feel uneasy that a college would be so quickly willing to smother what
is obviously political speech. Almost
any given protest features some rather crude and inflammatory rhetoric,
and proudly so. How else to
ensure some media coverage? Colleges
are supposed to be a haven for speech of all kinds, and the Dallas
Morning News was quick to tell SMU’s officials that they should be
“ashamed of themselves.” This
goes doubly so for the fact that SMU’s own press release claimed that
“SMU has a long tradition of encouraging open debate and considers
such dialogue central to its academic mission.”
Guess that tradition just got broken. Despite
being closed down, the bake sale did spark some pretty interesting
speech from those who were among the offended.
Matt
Houston, a 19-year-old African-American
sophomore at SMU, said, “They were arguing that affirmative action was
solely based on race. It’s
not based on race. It’s
based on bringing a diverse community to a certain organization.”
Yes, but a diverse community based on race.
That’s how diversity is being defined—by whether there are
enough African-Americans or other minorities present in the student
body. Diversity, however
defined, is merely the goal, and on its face diversity is a good thing. But the ends shouldn’t obscure the means. And then there was SMU junior
Kambira Jones, also African-American, who said, “I felt they were
attempting to make Hispanics and blacks feel inferior.”
It’s funny she should say that, especially in light of Justice
Clarence Thomas’ repeated argument that affirmative action programs
“stamp minorities with a badge of inferiority.”
When a minority group is openly being given a bonus simply for
being a member of that group, it’s hard for them not to interpret this
benevolence as anything but “we don’t think you’d be able to do it
without help.” In
truth, to bring the bake sale’s message up to date with the kind of
affirmative action program found constitutional under Grutter v.
Bollinger, what ought to happen is this: The bake sale sign says
“All Items: $1.” Then,
as people come to buy muffins and cookies, the organizers simply give
more goodies to minorities for their dollar—say, African-Americans are
given four goodies, Hispanics three, white women two, and white men one.
That way, on the outside everything looks equal, when in the end
minorities wind up getting more for less. You’ll
get less protest over this, naturally.
People won’t figure out the inequality until they start talking
to one another and actively investigate who got what for how much.
Although the end results are no different from the original bake
sale, people won’t get so ruffled when the discrepancies are done
under the table instead of in their face.
And
that’s precisely what makes the bake sale such an effective
protest—it sweeps away the hush-hush that’s been swept over
affirmative action and lays out in stark terms what’s happening.
It’s easy to think that college applications flow into a
college and then, bingo, out pops a nice, “diverse,” student body.
What isn’t so nice is to realize that in between those two
points somebody had to choose Person A over Person B because of skin
color. Even those who favor
affirmative action get uncomfortable over that prospect, which is why
they, like Mr. Houston, concern themselves only with the ends and not
the means. This is why reframing the debate, even in a crass
way, is valuable to political speech.
Sometimes parts of the policy equation are glossed over or swept
under the rug. There
can’t be a full and fair discussion until all sides grapple with the
realities. Life isn’t all
cake and cookies, you know. |
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