FANCY NAME FOR TRIBALISM
by George Jonas
National Post
May 20, 2005

News item: An electrical company is
petitioning a Kansas City judge to
stop city officials from awarding a
contract to another electrical
company just because it's owned by a woman. Hard on the heels of this comes
a
reader's letter asking me to reprint my Six Reasons Why I Dislike
Affirmative Action.
She thinks I published such a list somewhere. "I cut it out for my
husband," she
writes, "but then we moved to the country."

Yes, moving to the country is the dickens. There are boxes in my garage I
haven't
unpacked from three moves ago, and I've never even moved outside my own
postal
code.

The clipping my correspondent has in mind is probably in one of those
boxes. One
could grow mushrooms in my objections to affirmative action by now, for
I've been
listing them since 1978.

I won't go rummaging through boxes of mouldy clippings. Whatever I wrote
must
have been venomous, for I've always had a dim view of affirmative action. I
don't do
venomous anymore -- you need a certain youthful energy for venom -- but I
still do
contemptuous.

I could do contemptuous this week about Bolting Belinda and her Mentor
Martin --
God knows, they cry out for contempt -- but plenty of Canadians are rising
to the
occasion. So, instead of joining the chorus, I'll recreate my reasons for
disliking
affirmative action, a.k.a. reverse discrimination, for my reader.

One, I dislike reverse discrimination for the same reason I dislike
discrimination: It's
unfair to individuals.

Two, I dislike affirmative action because it highlights the least important
aspect of
people's identities, ethnicity and gender. We don't go to the theatre to
see a Danish
male; we go to see Hamlet.

Three, I dislike preferential treatment programs because they perpetuate
the myth
that is the basis of prejudice, namely that some groups are inferior.

Four, I dislike remedial measures because, far from fostering social
harmony between
diverse groups, they have the potential of setting them against each other.

Five, I dislike "goal-oriented schedules of inclusivity" -- to cite the
sort of
euphemistic boilerplate that stands in for affirmative action -- because
they lead to a
debasement of standards in crafts, arts and industry. They cause people to
spend
their energies on seeking advantages for their ethnic or gender groups
instead of
striving to achieve their personal best in their chosen fields.

Finally, I dislike quotas by whatever name because they seek group parity
rather than
individual equality. They replace the worthy aim that any woman should have
a
chance to become a boilermaker with the bizarre idea that 50% of all
boilermakers
should be women. While the first goal can be realized in a free and fair
society, the
second can only be realized in a state of Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

Encouraging people to define themselves by their membership in some ethnic
or
gender group is noxious and nonsensical. It lets group-status decide how
people fare
at important junctures in their lives, such as being hired or promoted,
instead of
letting achievement or conduct decide it. Even letting looks or chance
decide it would
be better.

Race- or gender-derived identity bolsters the dimwitted notion that people
must bear
a physical resemblance to their role models. It reduces individuals to
tribal
appendages. It makes them pay more attention to where they're coming from
than
where they're going -- an especially divisive fallacy in a country as
non-homogeneous
as Canada.

These are the kind of things I would have said in that moldy clipping. I
would have
added, though, that there is a type of affirmative action I like. It's what
it was
supposed to be when people first started talking about it. Affirmative
action was
meant to spread the word that in our society everybody is welcome at the
starting
gate. It was meant to encourage any person from any group to try out for
the team.

Affirmative action was about raising motivations, not expectations. It was
about
helping all people to meet standards, not about relaxing standards for
some. It was
about unlocking every door, then inviting every individual from ever group
to turn
the knob for himself or herself. It wasn't about barring the doors for some
and
carrying others across the threshold. That's only what it turned out to be.

During the Clinton years, there was some kind of a rhyming slogan about
curing the
ills of affirmative action. It was something like "mend it, don't end it"
or maybe it
was "don't nix it, fix it." The Clinton-administration was big on rhyming
slogans.
Anyway, it was fatuous. Affirmative action can't be fixed because it isn't
broken. It's
simply different from what it was advertised to be. It's an ugly duckling
that emerged
from what was supposed to be a swan's egg.

By now, it's also a lame duck. It's overdue for a swan-song, then a swift
waddle into
the sunset. Which brings me to my correspondent's final question: Do I have
a recipe
for a cure?

I'm afraid not, madam. What I have is a recipe for confit de canard. Or
toasted duck,
if you prefer.

© National Post 2005

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