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After captivating America and the world with its courage and
heroism in putting out the monstrous fire of September 11, the
New York City Fire Department was recently forced to extinguish
the flames of a public relations disaster. Developer Bruce
Ratner commissioned a statue for the FDNY headquarters based on
the inspirational photo of firemen Billy Eisengrein, George
Johnson and Dan McWilliams hoisting the American flag at Ground
Zero the afternoon of September 11.
However, there was one modification to Hackensack Record
photographer Thomas E. Franklin's image: the three white firemen
morphed into one white, one black and one Hispanic. Thus, the
two white firefighters were replaced by fictitious firemen of
color who did not actually rise from the rubble and unfurl Old
Glory.
While the purpose of this falsification was to achieve some
artificial proportionate diversity, the fact is that of FDNY's
11,495 firefighters, only 2.7 percent are black while 3.2
percent are Hispanic. Nevertheless, had the statue been a
general tribute to firefighters, it would have hardly been
objectionable, but because it aims to depict an actual
occurrence, it is fraudulent.
Although the public uproar has now led Ratner and the FDNY to
reevaluate the statue, this is not the first time that truth has
been sacrificed on the altar of diversity. Last year, according
to the March 16, 2001 Chronicle of Higher Education, the
University of Wisconsin at Madison digitally inserted the face
of a black student, Diallo Shabazz, into a picture on the cover
of a brochure. The picture portrayed Shabazz amid a sea of white
faces at a Wisconsin football game he had not attended.
University officials subsequently apologized to Shabazz and
acknowledged their purpose was to make the campus appear more
diverse.
As disturbing as these two incidents are, far more troubling
is the fact that they symbolize the intellectual dishonesty of
racial preference programs. These two intangible affronts to
truth pale in comparison to the countless people everyday who
lose a place in college, a job, or a contract because of
preference programs. Whether used in college admissions,
employment, or contracting, racial preferences are built on
lies.
First, they necessarily involve a double standard. For
example, at the University of Texas School of Law prior to the
U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Hopwood decision, minority
applicants were placed in a different pile, reviewed by a
different committee, and were automatically accepted at lower
grades and test scores than whites and Asians were automatically
rejected.
The practice of racial preferences is also dishonest because,
more often than not, minorities who receive a position because
of the preference are not told that they were selected over a
more qualified candidate by virtue of their race or gender.
Instead, the disclaimer at the bottom of most employment
applications simply contains the contradictory cliché that
"we are an equal opportunity/affirmative action
employer."
Ultimately, the truth must be faced. As a new study by the
Center for Equal Opportunity demonstrates, minorities who are
admitted to medical school through preferential policies are
more likely to fail the licensing exam. Similarly, in his book
Illiberal Education, Dinesh D¹Souza documents statistics
showing minorities admitted to the University of California at
Berkeley undergraduate program using preferences had a drop out
rate several times higher than that of whites, Asians, and
minorities admitted based solely on merit.
The dishonesty of racial preferences even affects those
minority group members who never received a preference. In his
classic book Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, Yale
University Professor Stephen Carter describes the stigma that
black professionals must cope with as a result of racial
preferences. For example, prospective patients will often
assume, many times wrongly, that a black doctor is not as
competent because he or she must have received a preference in
college and medical school. One can only imagine the horror that
many highly qualified minority professionals feel when they
realize that their competence is being unfairly questioned
because of their race and the existence of racial preferences.
While programs under the rubric of affirmative action that
merely involve concerted efforts to recruit qualified minorities
are less objectionable, those programs that give a preference
based on race or gender in the evaluation of candidates are just
as dishonest as the FDNY statue and the Wisconsin brochure.
Fortunately, two cases involving racial preferences in
college admissions, one at the University of Georgia and one at
the University of Michigan, are now pending before the United
States Supreme Court. A decision that finally and unequivocally
declares that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution does not permit government-imposed
racial preferences would be a victory not only for equality, but
for honesty.
Levin is President of the Houston-based
American Freedom Center (www.americanfreedomctr.org) and can be
reached at [email protected].
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