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Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

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Re: If not discrimination, what?

By Andrew Sullivan
Posted Wednesday, May 6, 1998, at 12:52 PM ET

Katha,

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Honestly, I don't think that lower test-scores among candidates from some minorities is a consequence of institutional racism at universities. Do you? At Berkeley? And I don't think that race-blind admissions policies is racism either. So, frankly, I don't see the alleged problem of racial discrimination that we need to remedy. The only discrimination I think we need to address is the recent attempt by many universities to deny many people admission purely because of their race. Now there's discrimination. But it's directed primarily against hard-working, newly immigrant Asian-Americans.

The solution to lower test-scores among blacks and Latinos is better public high school education, and more engaged and dedicated parenting. Period. Like you, I would like to see much more money spent on public education, as long as the teachers' unions don't throw it down the toilet. And I think we should do all we can not to encourage family breakdown among minorities. But even then, I doubt whether we would have a perfectly balanced racial mix at our universities. And frankly, I don't see why we should care. Why should we be concerned what race someone belongs to at college, as long as there isn't any systematic system to prefer some races over others, and as long as half-way decent public high school education is also widely available? This racial obsession is a legacy of past evils, and decreasingly relevant to the polyglot, multi-racial century we're about to enter. So I hope Proposition 209 is repeated across the country. And I hope we make a better effort to educate black and Latino kids in the cities. And I hope the black family recovers. And I hope we stop the futile attempt to make amends for past injustice by wreaking new ones on innocent people.

As to an all-male priesthood, I do think it's an unconscionable and irrational form of institutional sexism, and I oppose it on the same grounds that I oppose reverse discrimination. And if we attempted to remedy it by instituting an all-female priesthood for the next two millennia, I'd be equally opposed. Two wrongs don't make a right.

cheers,
Andrew

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