Earlier this month, Wesleyan University’s Cardinal Conservatives club held an anti-preferences bake sale. To illustrate what goes on in the school’s admissions and hiring offices, club members priced items according to the race of the buyer. Other students protested the bake sale as offensive, apparently failing to see the irony of their counter-demonstration.
Someone quoted in the article said the bake sale was “misleading,” and the club members created “a straw man and then framing the debate to fight that straw man that doesn’t actually exist—partly because affirmative action isn’t practiced as such at Wesleyan and partly because that type of affirmative action [involving racial quotas] is outlawed everywhere now.”
To argue that a school with race-based admissions and hiring is practicing race-based admissions and hiring isn’t a straw man argument. That man is made of flesh and bone. An excerpt from Wesleyan’s site:
“The Wesleyan University’s affirmative action program is designed to achieve diversity among faculty, administrators and staff; to treat all appointments and promotions in a manner free from discrimination; and to correct any under-utilization of women and minorities in employment positions. Wesleyan, as an institution dedicated to excellence in liberal studies, has a responsibility to itself to seek out the most talented people and a responsibility to society to further the goal of achieving equality of opportunity.”
Note the contradiction, which is typical. The school claims that hiring and promoting practices are “free from discrimination,” yet the program exists “to correct any under-utilization of women and minorities” in employment. Setting out specifically to hire a minority or a woman, for whatever reason, is to discriminate against non-minorities and men. There is no way around it. The goal should be to hire the most qualified person for the job, regardless of race or sex, and despite “under-utilization” of women or people of a certain color. If the person turns out to be a woman, great. A black woman? Double whammy. But to “correct” the racial balance, which proponents presume is the right thing to do, is to consider race when hiring and promoting, and that is the definition of a racial preference.
Wesleyan alum Mytheos Holt, blogging at National Review’s Phi Beta Con blog, links to a statement by Wesleyan faculty endorsing “affirmative action,” although they denied the school used affirmative action.
The National Association of Scholars’ Ashley Thorne has an excellent post on the subject. She makes the point that the racial preferences bake sale offended some students, because racial preferences are offensive.
It should be noted that Wesleyan University is private. As such, it may continue to discriminate against students based on race.
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