Discussants of these issues have been making a muddle, confusing
themselves and others. Let us try to sort things out.
1. The original concept of "affirmative action" was to make efforts
to encourage underperforming students to meet common standards, not
to lower standards so that more of them could have the appearance of
success but not the substance of it. It did not contemplate quotas.
2. But "efforts" can't be measured, so because minorities were not
immediately advancing in proportion to their numbers, and because it
was presumed that aptitude and motivation were equally distributed
among every group, there was a leap to using quotas as a way to
measure effort, to remediate the conjectured effects of past unfair
discrimination, and to attribute continuing underperformance to
further unfair discrimination. These are mistakes that need to be
corrected.
3. Each individual is solely responsible for educating himself. The
young are not passive vessels into which education can be poured.
They have to want to learn, and to have the ability to learn. If
they don't, no amount of effort or resource expenditure will educate
them to any particular level we might set for them.
4. More talented and industrious people tend to marry similarly
talented and industrious people and are more likely to produce more
talented and industrious offspring. Over the course of generations,
this will tend to result in stratification of society by talent and
industriousness. Of course there will always be some from the lower
levels who will have what it takes to rise to higher levels, and
they should be encouraged and the way cleared for them, but this
stratification can be expected even if there is no unfair
discrimination against the less fit. Discrimination based on merit
is not unfair.
5. Lack of motivation to become educated is not just the result of
family or community cultures that don't value educational
advancement or that discourage educational achievement, and those
things are not just the legacy of past unfair discrimination. Many
groups have suffered unfair discrimination throughout history and
responded with increased determination to advance. We need to
examine how the lack of such determination may be a rational choice
based on accurately perceived lack of personal aptitude. The
less-talented generally are aware they are less talented and adjust
their expectations accordingly. They may also hate themselves for
their shortcomings and angrily inflict that hatred on others. We
might want them to try harder, but there are limits to how much that
desire will increase their motivation, and legal interventions are
likely to be counterproductive.
6. We also need to confront the evidence that aptitude is not
uniformly distributed among all groups. That is not just the result
of flawed measures. Some of the measures might be flawed, but even
if we correct for flaws we still have the evidence that does not
support the aspirations almost all of us share that there be no such
differences. If there are differences we need to deal with that
reality, not ignore it or attempt to explain it away. "Nature cannot
be fooled."
7. In this case the Supreme Court was being somewhat disingenuous in
holding the decision should be left to the voters, because they
agreed with this decision by the voters. If the voters had decided
to do something unfairly discriminatory, they would have overturned
that decision, and properly so.
8. These issues may not have satisfactory solutions until we can
genetically engineer our offspring to all be superior by present
standards, not only in aptitude but in character. But we also have
to anticipate that such engineering will not always be done or have
salutary results. For at least the next century things are likely to
get rough.