Friday, November 17, 2006

What You Cannot Say, Part Two

This piece by Jonah Goldberg is interesting for what it does not say rather than for what it does. He is worried about qualified Asian students getting passed over for less qualified blacks and Latinos due to affirmative action. He also points out that affirmative acion was intended to be temporary, but is now permanent.

But notice that nowhere does he speculate as to why affirmative action didn't work when it was done as a temporary measure, or why blacks and Latinos stll can't see to meet the normal wualifications for elite law schools at rates approaching their representation in the population.

Nor does he offer any real solutions to helping blacks and Latinos (1) improve their performance, or (2) to participate in our society productively in other ways if their performance in this area cannot be improved.

Until we deal with the issue of why racial disparities exist and how to either fix them or deal with them, there will never be any real clear debate on affirmative action, just a bunch of nibbling at the fringes.

That is all.

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