I think we should indeed try to more sympathetically understand where
neo-conservative students are coming from, avoiding easy and dismissive
explanations. But we do also have to remember the dilemma that Melanie
articulated: there is an asymmetry between calls for representation of
disempowered viewpoints vs. representation of powerful ones. In one of my
seminars last week we were discussing M K Asante's essay on the afrocentric
principle in education, where the issue of asymmetry is quite critical. Why
is Afrocentrism in curriculum not just as bad as the Eurocentrism it
criticizes? Not because African culture is good and European culture bad,
but because Eurocentric curriculum represents a dominant viewpoint that
does not center African-American students, while Afrocentric curriculum
presents an alternative which does -- and does in the context of the
domination of so many aspects of society by eurocentric culture.
(Personally, I think of Afrocentrism as a valuable experiment which needs
to be judged by results, by multiple criteria of success, and which may
well tell us in its evolution to what extent 'multicultural' curriculum is
itself a Eurocentric artifact.)
But disempowerment is relative; many of our conservative students see
themselves as disempowered relative to comfortable liberal upper-middle
class diversity advocates. _We_ are not paying the price for diversity by
and large; they are. I know some younger European-American male scholars
who have watched academic positions for which they were well qualified by
traditional criteria, perhaps even sometimes better qualified if diversity
were not a consideration, go to women, to people of color, to scholars with
non-dominant cultural backgrounds. In some cases these guys came from
working-class backgrounds (also underrepresented in the academy, but class
as an explicit category of diversity is still taboo in the U.S.), or were
gay (not yet clearly recognized as a category of diversity that is needed
or _wanted_, due to still other biases in the culture of those with the
power to define desired diversity). But close to home as it may hit, this
'reverse discrimination' (aka lapse of expected privilege) is a small
factor in the overall social picture. For the most part, marginally
privileged groups are the ones who are being disprivileged to provide for
diversity. More powerfully privileged groups are proportionately less at risk.
To some extent perhaps we can see the backlash against diversity policies
as representing a quantitative effect. When the number of non-traditional
candidates for positions (of all kinds) was a small pool, only the least
powerful candidates of most marginally privileged status were displaced by
hiring the well-qualified non-traditional candidates. But as that pool has
grown (especially rapidly in the case of middle to upper-middle class
women, who already possessed a lot of the requisite habitus to be judged
competent for middle-class jobs), the displacement or disprivileging effect
has reached higher and higher into the ranks of well-qualified traditional
candidates. The backlash has spread from the hardhats to the white collar
groups, reaching the point of a political majority, ready to be captured by
conservative rhetoric that disguises the very different agendas of the real
powerbrokers (who don't care who does the work as long as they control
where the money goes).
But I do not want this to be read as just another dismissive 'explanation'
of false consciousness. I would rather emphasize that people like these
conservative students, from their point of view, have a real grievance --
against _us_ (the not-at-risk diversity advocates). I think that
conservative ideologues have cleverly seen that the frustration of these
people need not be directed in socially explosive ways against racial and
ethnic 'minorities' -- that's too risky. It is much safer to direct it
against its other natural target: 'liberals'. And especially academics and
intellectuals. The anti-Gay campaigns of the right target a vulnerable
social category which it is still safe to attack (as it is no longer safe
to attack African-Americans or Hispanics), and which can stereotypically be
loaded with some of the same markers (liberal, intellectual, etc.). Not
long ago the group that fit this bill best was Jews.
This creates a serious structural dilemma. It _is_ unfair to the marginally
privileged for the highly privileged to divert their jobs to the still less
privileged, simply because _our_ values favor diversity and because we have
the power to do it. It is also unjust that any social category inherits a
level of privilege unrelated to achieved merit, whether by class, race,
gender, etc. One can see diversity preferences as working to diminish
undeserved privilege, but one can equally see them as conferring undeserved
privilege. Conservative African-Americans and Hispanics, as well as more
(but still marginally) privileged European-Americans, see the second view.
Diversity is not the only argument for preferences. Redress of categorial
injustice is another, social engineering for a more just future is one
more. Diversity seem to _me_ to be a powerful argument in regard to
university faculty, teachers, policymakers, and probably a host of other
quite specific categories. I'm not sure I would see diversity as a valid
basis for preferences (or proportional allotment) in the case of, say,
hiring minority contractors for building sites. I'd be more likely to offer
one of the other rationales.
Redress is the province of Powers (like God, the King, the Judges) who
stand above and outside of social conflicts of interest and neutrally award
justice -- but who has this status among us? If liberals-with-power claim
it, without legitimation by overwhelming social consensus, do not those who
pay the price of our justice have just grievance against us?
Social engineering should also be the province of Seers, and in complex
ecosocial systems I am very dubious that the consequences of policies are
determinate much less predictable beyond the very short run, but also would
seem to require substantial social consensus, else again, there is just
grievance against the usurper Engineers.
I am speaking here only of legally enforced and coercive policies. I think
we are each morally free to locally argue for or act for redress, or better
futures as we see them, or for diversity. If individual power were equal,
and all unequal institutional power freely delegated and revocable, the
dilemmas would vanish at the level of individual action. But they do not
because many of us have power accumulated, or delegated, under social
arrangements we don't consider just. If we use our power for moral ends as
we see them, and outside of substantial social consensus, can we weigh the
justice we dispense to some against the injustice that inevitably accrues
to others? Have we the right?
Somewhere down near where I hit bottom on these issues is this basic moral
question: Is it just to use the power conferred on us by unjust social
arrangements to enforce our own vision of justice, when we know that those
who suffer by our judgment neither understand it nor consent to its
principles? Can we use the Master's tools to build a Master-less house?
Are we privileged to forget those who pay the price for our efforts at
justice? Are they wrong who hate us for the blindspots in our moral fervor?
jay.
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JAY L. LEMKE
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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