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McCain, Obama Respond To NAACP

Roger Clegg points to the very revealing responses from McCain and Obama to a questionnaire from the NAACP.

McCain was refreshingly straightforward, direct, and hard-hitting. Noting that ?[t]he affirmative action remedies designed forty years ago should be re-examined,? he identified himself completely not only with the philosophy of ?without regard? colorblind equality but also with the actual language of the pending anti-preference state initiatives:

I believe that government should ?not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, and individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.?

?Obama?s answer,? as Clegg drily noted, was, ?as usual, anything but categorical.? Actually, as usual, Clegg was too kind. Obama?s answer was actually what one scold has variously characterized in other contexts as ?waffling obfuscation, muddled, lacking any commitment to his own announced vision.? He said, in part:

Affirmative action programs, when properly structured, can open up opportunities otherwise closed to qualified minorities without having an adverse impact on the opportunities for whites. Given the dearth of black and Latino Ph.D. candidates in mathematics and the sciences, for example, a scholarship program for minorities interested in getting advanced degrees in these fields won?t keep white students out of such programs, but can broaden the pool of talent that need to prosper in the new economy. To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in the socio-economic disparities that we often observe turns a blind eye to both our history and our experience ? and relieves us of the responsibility to make things right.

If this tripe sounds familiar, it?s because you?ve heard virtually these same words before, quoted here. And after quoting them, I posed a series a questions about he meant, questions that are still unanswered and hence still relevant. Two of them:

? How can affirmative action programs that treat race in a preferential manner be ?properly structured? so that they give additional opportunities to blacks without ?without diminishing opportunities for white [or Asian] students??

? How would ?a scholarship program for minorities interested in getting advanced degrees in these fields ... broaden the pool of talent that we need to prosper in the new economy? more than a scholarship program that was not racially restrictive? If such a program were racially restrictive, why would it not ?keep white [and Asian] students out of such programs? who could not attend without a scholarship?

Obama still hasn?t explained how it is possible to discriminate in favor of blacks and Hispanics without discriminating against whites, but in addition he appears oblivious to the fact that the main victims of the racial preference policies he supports are not whites but Asians. His position might also be more credible if he could identify any ?opportunities? that would be ?closed to qualified minorities? in the absence of race preferences for them.

It is of course true that ?qualified? applicants of all races are quite often rejected ... in favor of applicants who are deemed more qualified. Since Obama obviously believes that less qualified black and Hispanic applicants should be preferred over more qualified Asian, white, Arab, Indian, Pakistani, etc., applicants, he should have the courage to say so.

But that is about as likely to happen as some journalist from the mainstream media pressing him to explain exactly which race preferences he supports and to identify some, if there are any, he opposes.

Full post as published by Discriminations on August 12, 2008 (boomark / email).