Colleges, affirmative action, and the quest for cosmic justice
Affirmative action is a subset of what the brilliant Thomas Sowell called The Quest For Cosmic Justice (and if you’ve never read that book I highly recommend doing so). Here’s Sowell:
Cosmic justice is not about the rules of the game. It is about putting particular segments of society in the position that they would have been in but for some undeserved misfortune. This conception of fairness requires that third parties must wield the power to control outcomes, over-riding rules, standards, or the preferences of other people…
In short, all are not to be judged by the same rules or standards within the given process; pre-existing inequalities are to be counter-balanced. Note also that…the quest for cosmic justice focuses on one segment of the population and disregards the interests of others…
Implicit in much discussion of a need to rectify social inequities is the notion that some segments of society, through no fault of their own, lack things which others receive as windfall gains, through no virtue of their own. True as this may be, the knowledge required to sort this out intellectually, much less rectify it politically, is staggering and superhuman. Far from society being divided into those with a more or less standard package of benefits and others lacking those benefits, each individual may have both windfall advantages and windfall disadvantages, and the particular combination of windfall gains and losses varies enormously from individual to individual. Some are blessed with beauty but lacking in brains, some are wealthy but from an emotionally impoverished family, some have athletic prowess but little ability to get along with other human beings…and so on and on. Add to this the changing circumstances of each individual over a lifetime – with relative advantages and disadvantages changing with the passing years – and the difficulties of merely determining the net advantages increase exponentially.
There’s much much more, but the point is that assessing advantages and disadvantages and portioning out rewards based on balancing the two is a literally impossible task, and will lead to miscarriages of actual justice in the quest for justice of the cosmic kind. Human beings are incapable of dispensing cosmic justice.
But that doesn’t stop them from trying – oh, how we try, especially the left, who plug in various kneejerk formulas such as race in order to reward their constituents and cloak themselves in supposed virtue, while castigating the right for being both mean and unfair and racist into the bargain.
Which brings us to colleges and yesterday’s affirmative action ruling. It will stop the kneejerk use of race as a category that ignores individual differences, but there are plenty of other ways to attempt to allot cosmic justice, and race can easily slip in the backdoor as well. Using race as a category by which to discriminate is forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment, but colleges are allowed to discriminate in other ways as long as they supposedly tailor that discrimination to individuals and don’t overtly base it on racial categories.
The real question is what a college is for: to select the smartest and most able people, and educate them further in order to take their places as leaders in various fields? To create well-rounded individuals? To redistribute wealth? To further cosmic justice, as defined by the left?
The reality is that colleges can select whomever they want as long as they follow the new rules – which allow for plenty of attempts to dispense a cosmic justice that cannot really be just, not on this earth.
Quest is certainly one of the finest of many fine books from Sowell, whose new book (Social Justice Fallacies) is set to be published in September.
P.S. It is being widely reported that the increasingly worthless Fox agreed to settle the frivolous suit from Abby Grossberg for twelve million. Just how many idiotic decisions can one corporate behemoth make in one year (just as Elon’s recent purchase is restricting the ability to read “tweets” only to registered users of the platform)?
well more like enemy action at this point, so revenge or retribution is more in the vein
Thomas Sowell’s best line is “I am so old that I remember when most racists were white.”
Glenn Loury is a potential replacement when the inevitable happens. I subscribe to his substack.
The modern left does seem to operate on the principle of cosmic justice, but it’s much easier than you give them credit for. They don’t dispense cosmic justice to individual people. They dispense cosmic justice to groups.
A white male born to a single mom in a trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks will still be denounced for his “privilege” and made to yield his college slot to one of the Obama girls. It’s all about the group, not the individual.
I had to look up who Abby Grossberg is. I have no way of knowing how legitimate her stories are. Of course my search turned up a CNN site which goes into Maria Bartiromo’s “lies” about the 2020 election. I do sometimes watch Bartiromo and I think she one of the very few trustworthy figures on Fox. I think Megyn Kelly might regret her trashing of Fox but she get a nice stash from NBC. I guess it is hard for me to visualize all this sexual talk in a business. I do know that the only people who talked about sex in operating rooms were lesbian nurses. Mostly that was in nurses lounges to taunt the straights.
mkent:
I don’t think you read my post very carefully, because the Sowell quote is mostly about the left using categories/groups of people, which he refers to as “segments.” My point about individuals was just that colleges, according to yesterday’s ruling, will supposedly not be able to use the category “race” and will have to tailor their decisions more to individuals – but that they will almost certainly manage to sneak in categories (groups) anyway.
she was whining about tucker or something, but she never actually met him,
I think they are still getting mileage out of some stories, about roger ailes, some maybe true, but considering the propagator, gabriel sherman,
of course what she considers ‘truth’ are the truth, and vice vera
Frederick Douglass was one tough nut.
“Everybody has asked the question, … ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! You’re doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, … let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also.”
Frederick Douglass
Imagine the reaction of liberal progressives – especially blacks – if someone today said what Douglass said.
Oops, that’s right; Clarence Thomas’ opinion affirming the majority basically implied the same thing.
But, as I have said before, if blacks had access to charter schools (an option vehemently opposed by black and white liberal progressives) it would certainly help blacks close the academic achievement gap.
What I do not understand – maybe someone can help me here- is why the NAACP and other black organizations are so against charter schools.
Maybe it’s because the teacher’s union gives millions of $$$$ to the demonkrats; sort of like president joke bidet taking pay-off $$$ from the Chinese and Ukrainians.
hank rodgers, ibrahim kendi totally misunderstands douglas, no surprise,
the goal is about creating a lumpen proletariat who cannot right or read or speak effectively, ‘full of passionate insensity’ as yeats said,
Cosmic justice shifts as the favored groups shift.
After the Pulse night club shooting, when the gay community might have expected some sympathy, AG Loretta Lynch said, “We’ve got your back,”. To the Muslim community.
So far, no happy couple anticipating some fun in a reception for their gay marriage has contacted a Muslim florist, baker, photographer, or web site designer.
Be interesting to see which side gets the cosmic justice in that situation. But, the conflict being irresolvable–is that a word?–nobody is going to gin up the possibility.
For now.
To be sure cosmic justice is, or is supposed to be, a motivating principle for the left, just as Allah is for Muslims, but for me it all blurs into “This is my side and we’re the best and we’re supposed to win … by any means necessary.”
The left seems to be a sort of protoplasmic Blob, as in the Steve McQueen 50s sci-fi movie, whose mission is to engulf and digest whatever it encounters.
If one could communicate with the Blob, it would likely have some high-minded rationale for what it was doing. But really, it’s just growing and gaining power by absorbing others.
Once upon a time the Left was about integration, color blindness and freedom of speech. Today it’s about de facto segregation, racialism and censored speech.
Has the Left changed? Or is it just doing its job with new narratives and strategies?
Meet the New Blob, same as the Old Blob.
JohnTyler:
One reason is teachers’ unions, I think.
The SCOTUS ruling functionally only applies to the few highly selective colleges, like Haavaad and Princeton, where entry competition is high.
It does not apply to most colleges for that selectively reason. Nor does it apply to state schools and land-grant universities; if you wish to attend as a state resident, just apply, and you are in! That’s the data.
On yesterday’s SCOTUS thread, TJ on June 29, 2023 at 8:46 pm said:
Here’s Thomas Sowell in “Commentary” in 1989: “ ‘Affirmative Action’: A Worldwide Disaster”
I just finished reading that essay (it’s very long), and Sowell successfully (IMO) rebuts every one of the dissenters’ “arguments” – if his evidence and analysis had been considered by prior courts, we would have been set on the correct path to lifting up minority students 40 years ago.
Pay particular attention to the later sections where he explains WHY the activists agitating for “social justice” are actually sabotaging every possible way to actually achieve what they claim are their objectives.
And also why politicians go for the easy fixes, rather than the more effective but more difficult ones (hint: it’s the elections).
Here’s the link again: https://www.commentary.org/articles/thomas-sowell-2/affirmative-action-a-worldwide-disaster/
Bonus from Kate on same thread:
From Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion, citing Thomas Sowell (twice!).
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/06/29/clarence_thomas_put_aside_skin_color_focus_on_achievement_149427.html
…if his evidence and analysis had been considered by prior courts, we would have been set on the correct path to lifting up minority students 40 years ago.
AesopFan:
Aside from the constitutional problems, a terrible tragedy here is the destruction of minority youths who were affirmed into schools over their heads, scrambled to make it and failed.
Then they had to live with that failure and that debt for years after.
Which Sowell may have covered but TL;DR.
Neo: “The real question is what a college is for: to select the smartest and most able people, and educate them further in order to take their places as leaders in various fields? To create well-rounded individuals? To redistribute wealth? To further cosmic justice, as defined by the left?”
Not quite an answer to Neo’s opening question there but worth posting anyway, in my opinion, here’s Richard Shweder, a cultural anthropologist who holds a named chair at The University of Chicago:
In 1967 Edward Levi, the president of the University of Chicago (Levi later became the attorney general of the United States), told the Citizen’s Board of the University of Chicago that it is not the role of the university to directly respond to the needs of the broader worlds of politics and commerce or to be popular with the general public, and that the true mission of an academic institution is intellectual, not moral. He told them that the university does not exist to develop inventions for industry, or to train technicians for society, or to counter the injustices of the world. The central purpose of the university, Levi avowed, the main reason for its existence, is “improving the stock of ordered knowledge and rational judgment.”
Cicero: “if you wish to attend as a state resident, just apply, and you are in! That’s the data.”
Back in the Stone Age of 1950, the University of Colorado took any state resident who had a C average or better. Very fair. The attrition was pretty high by the end of sophomore year. Do the work or go home. A meritocracy, imagine that.
But it’s just a hick school they say. Well, I was in a Navy OCS class that was 60% Ivy League grads. The Navy recruiter told me I was in for a rough time academically. Very tough competition for a hick from Colorado. Imagine my surprise when I finished 25th out 750 in the class.
Unless Universities have given up on their standards, it is (or should be) possible to get a quality education without attending an Ivy school. I know the Ivies have big reps and the post-graduation offers are excellent. I had a friend who moved mountains to get his son accepted to Harvard because “it’s the ticket to success.” Yeah, if you’re willing to work your butt off after you get that vaunted degree.
Case in point, Hunter Biden. Georgetown and Yale law school. He got the tickets but traded off his father’s name to make a living. Big success.
It’s a shame that these few schools are so sought after. It is, IMO, an immense charade.
Now that they’ve all become Woke, it’s probable that they’re a net detriment to the country. But don’t listen to me. I’m a hick from Colorado.
The real question is what a college is for: to select the smartest and most able people, and educate them further in order to take their places as leaders in various fields?
@ Paul Nachman has pointed us to Edward Levi’s explicit answer, and I can’t do better than that.
But down here in the world of political activist mobs, the assumptions are cruder. The lefties are doing their best to wipe out SATs and any other competitive measure of talent, capability and yes, brains in the students. Their picture of any University is that of a glowing country club where the chosen few spend their time assembling Rolodexes of contacts and connections, and are honored with inflated grades, and matriculate into the world of good ol’ upperclass boys and girls with assured careers and sinecures – and maybe political offices! – with never a care for the responsibilities of brain operations or the beam strength of prestressed girders in an earthquake. Others may take on those lowly chores, but per the DEI mantras, Admission is all it takes to launch Our Gang into the reparative world of the Harvard degree and the good life.
or take the covid marys, chris and andrew cuomo, those are two exemplars of this crony culture,
Two points: Our biggest rival in this century, China, when it comes to education sticks with meritocracy as we thought was the standard here. The universities can probably maintain their desired diversity by selecting students based on their parents level of income. That would probably pass constitutional muster.
JJ:
The hardest thing about Haavaad is to get admitted. I have it on good authority that almost all undergrad grades are As and Bs. (my daughter-in-law is a Harvard librarian; my son, born and raised in NC, has had his brain morphed by living in MA for 20 yrs).MA residents are so very smart: 78% of them voted for Biden.
Cicero, sorry to hear about your son becoming a MA resident. I don’t know why MA is so deeply progressive. It was at one time a bastion of freedom and individual responsibility. 🙁
“Cosmic justice” is still only rough justice. So much depends on what your family was like, and even within the same family, people have different talents, abilities, and personalities and react to things differently. What’s a great boon in one environment is a debilitating weakness in another. It is — with apologies to the Bible and Herman Melville — the Mystery of Inequity.
Why is Massachusetts the way it is? The Irish vote Democrat to stick it to the Old Stock Yankees. The Yankees vote Democrat to stick it to the Irish. Everybody else votes Democrat because everybody votes Democrat. Democrat voters are either punching up against the rich guys, or punching down against the great unwashed. Neither group realizes that it’s really the middle that they are punching against.
More seriously, perhaps, the way Massachusetts votes has a lot to do with the great influence of colleges and the fact that they’ve become propaganda factories. Unlike in other states, there hasn’t been a reaction against this by people who didn’t happen to go to Harvard.
Military service academies were also excluded from the ruling. There was some blowback against this — don’t we care about merit and excellence in the people who are supposed to defend us? — but given the admissions process to military academies, it’s hard to see how a 100% merit admissions system could have been implemented for West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs and New London.
Abraxas, Congressional prerogatives. They can appoint whom ever they wish.