HOME / the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

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Re: Affirmative Action

By Katha Pollitt
Posted Wednesday, May 6, 1998, at 5:09 PM ET

Dear Andrew,

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In an ideal world affirmative action would be beside the point. But in real-life America, where blacks have never had real-life equality for two minutes, I don't see how you can write as if a level playing field existed. Many studies have shown that schools with large black populations have the least experienced, least qualified teachers--who are usually paid less than teachers in nice white suburbs. They have inferior equipment, and a host of other problems. You didn't really respond to the concrete example I gave: of black students who did extremely well in school but lost out in Berkeley admissions because their schools did not offer advanced placement courses.

I don't see too much evidence, either, that California is committed to making better schools for black and Hispanic kids. This would require a tremendous investment of money and energy--in a system that since the passage of Proposition 13 has gone from being tops among the states to down there at the bottom. I don't see Shelby Steele and Ward Connerly and the other anti-affirmative action babies raising a ruckus about inequality of educational opportunity.

An interesting sidelight on the supposed nonexistence of racism in our enlightened age was cast a few months ago when white parents in (I think I've got this right) Riverside, CA, got all upset when it looked liked their high school might be renamed for Martin Luther King Jr. They said they were afraid their kids would be taken for black!

More soon,
Katha

p.s. to your p.s. It's nice that more black and Hispanic students got into Boalt Hall this year--but the numbers are still way down from pre-Prop 209 days. I'm not sure what your point is. A slight raise in the numbers doesn't mean the numbers are good, or fair, or sensible public policy--and they certainly don't mean, as you imply, that the candidates for admission themselves support Prop 209 and regard its opponents as bleeding-heart busybodies.

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