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By Seymour Martin Lipset Ideas Despite the great civil-rights triumphs of the 1960s, the politics of race once again occupies center stage in American life. Yet what appears to be a conflict between blacks and whites, Seymour Mar- tin Lipset argues, is more a struggle between the American public and the nation's political elite over the true meaning of equality. by Seymour Martin Lipset o achievement of 20th-cen- Affirmative action was born in 1965 in tury American politics sur- the spirit of the first civil-rights revolution. passes the creation of an Soon thereafter it was transformed into a enduring national consen- system of racial preferences, and today af- sus on civil rights. This firmative action is rapidly polarizing the consensus was forged dur- politics of race in America. The editorial ing the past quarter century by a civil-rights and op-ed pages bristle with affirmative ac- movement that compelled Americans fi- tion polemics and analyses. In the 1990 nally to confront the wide gap between contest for the governorship of California, their treatment of blacks and the egalitar- Republican Pete Wilson focused on the ian values of their own cherished national "quota" issue in defeating Diane Feinstein. creed. In the same year, Senator Jesse Helms won In recent years, however, the leaders of reelection in North Carolina with the help the civil-rights movement have shifted the of the quota issue, and in Louisiana ex- focus from the pursuit of equal opportunity Klansman David Duke exploited it to gain a to the pursuit of substantive equality majority of white votes while losing his bid through policies of preferential treatment. for a Senate seat. His failed campaign for This has brought matters to a difficult pass, the governorship last fall became a national because most Americans, including many drama. When Congress began its 199 1 ses- blacks, have not shifted with the leaders of sion, the first bill introduced by the Demo- the movement. The reason is not hard to cratic leadership in the House of Represen- find. While the civil-rights movement of the tatives was a civil-rights bill described by its 1960s asked Americans to live up to a sin- opponents as "quota" legislation. Even af- gle unassailable ideal, today it sets up a con- ter a version of that bill became law in No- flict between two core American values: vember, controversy over its meaning and egalitarianism and individualism. import continued. WQ WINTER 1992 AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Ugly political campaigns and even uglier ra- cial incidents everywhere from Bensonhurst to Los Angeles sometimes make it appear that there has been a resurgence of racism in America. But the old consensus in favor of civil rights and equality of opportunity remains intact. Americans, including many southern whites, categori- - cally reject the kind of racial discrimination that was common in this country only a few decades ago. A 1991 Gallup-Newsweek poll reported that "72 per- cent of blacks and 52 percent of whites said that they would prefer to live in a neighborhood that was ra- cially 'half and half-more on both sides than felt that way three years ago." Over two-thirds of whites and four-fifths of blacks claim to "know many members of another race well." Almost no whites (six percent) report that they would feel "uncom- fortable working with members of another race" or "for a boss of another race." At the same time, most Americans endorse some forms of compensatory action to help blacks and other disadvantaged groups per- form at the levels of competition set by the larger society: Head Start and other special educational programs, federal aid for col- lege students, job training, and community development. But a large majority of whites and roughly half of all blacks draw the line at preferential treatment, at suspend- ing standards and adopting quotas or other devices that favor citizens on the basis of their membership in groups. If most Americans oppose such preferential treatment, who backs it? As it turns out, the support comes largely from a segment of the national leadership class. Indeed, the policy was conceived and is still promoted almost entirely by political and social elites, Republi- cans as well as Democrats, against the wishes of a majority of the American public. The struggle over preferential treatment is in reality less a conflict between whites and blacks than between people and their leaders. ore than 150 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the American version of egali- tarianism emphasized equality of opportunity and of respect, rather than equality of result or condition. This version of equality is one of five related ele- ments in the American Creed, including liberty, in- dividualism, populism (the rule of the people), and laissez faire. In the Europe of Tocqueville's day, with its heritage of feudalism, societies were structured in strict social classes. The emerging working class of 19th-century Europe therefore viewed the class system as immutable and sought equality of results WQ WINTER 53 AFFIRMATIVE ACTION as a group, through socialism. But in Amer- the common American experience. They ica-or at least in white America-the pur- spent their first two-and-a-half centuries in est bourgeois and classically liberal society this country as slaves and another 100 years in the world. class has been treated as an after the Civil War serving as a strictly seg- economic construct, and the solution to in- regated lower-caste group-social arrange- equality has been seen as economic oppor- ments that were, in both cases, much more tunity: explicitly hierarchical and hereditary than During the late 1820s, when the first anything in European feudalism. White stirrings of socialism were barely being felt America's treatment of blacks focused on in Europe, Workingmen's parties emerged group characteristics, on defining and treat- in New York, Philadelphia, and other Amer- ing people not according to their personal ican cities. But the Workingmen were not merits but according to their ancestry, their socialists; they believed in private property race, and their ethnic identification. and wanted people to strive to get ahead. Stressing group characteristics encour- The New York party rejected as inadequate ages group solutions. In Europe, the impor- the idea of common (i.e. public) schools tance of one's station promoted class con- then favored by many egalitarian refonn- sciousness among the lower strata and, to ers, proposing instead the creation of state- some extent, a sense of noblesse oblige financed boarding schools. The only way to among the privileged. Both the lower- create the proverbial level playing field, the class-based social democratic Left and up- Workingmen reasoned, was by raising the per-class conservative leaders, such as Dis- young of all classes in a common atmo- raeli in Great Britain and Bismarck in sphere 24 hours a day. Germany, favored government efforts to The American emphasis on individual- improve the lot of the less affluent without ism was reinforced early on by the coun- necessarily changing their position in the try's religious commitment to the "noncon- social order: welfare, public housing, pub- formist" Protestant sects that stress lic employment, state medical care. Eu- voluntarism with respect to the state and a rope's social democrats have frequently personal relationship to God, one not medi- held power since the 1930s, and they have ated by hierarchically organized churches, done much to improve the lives of workers. as in Eurone and elsewhere. The American But in most countries they have neither dis- embrace of liberalism and the market also mantled the elite high schools nor signifi- favored a different approach to equality. cantly expanded opportunities for working- The market calls for meritocracy and the class youths to gain a university education. rejection of nepotism and other forms of Americans, by contrast, have always put favoritism. Hiring the best qualified person, more emphasis on expanding individual whether he or she be black or white, Jew- opportunity through education. From early ish or Gentile, native or foreign born, is the in the 19th century the United States has best way to maximize economic return. led the world in the proportion of its popu- The implications of the differences be- lation completing elementary and high- tween ~uro~eand America were concisely school educations. Horace Mann and other put by political scientist Walter Dean education reformers of the 1830s and '40s Burnham: "No feudalism, no socialism: who proselytized for the concept of the With these four words one can summarize common school insisted that the schools the basic sociocultural realities that under- should be open to all, rich and poor, chil- lie American electoral politics in the indus- dren of immigrants and of natives-though trial era."-. not blacks. Such reformers rejected the Eu- But another reality, too, is undeniable: ropean class-differentiated education sys- Blacks represent the terrible exception to tem, scorning the German gymnasia, the Seymour Martin Lipset, a Wilson Center Senior Scholar, is Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover I?1.stitution. Currently president-elect of the American Sociological Association, lie has also sewed as president of the American Political Science Association, ainone, other posts. His most recent book is Continental Divide: The Values and Institu- tions of the United States and Canada (1990). Copyright @ 1992 by Seymour Martin Lipset. WQ WINTER 1992 54 AFFIRMATIVE ACTION French lyckes, and the English "public" only 55 percent of Britons and 31 percent schools, which educated at most only the of Germans feel this way. - top 10 percent of the population. Most white Americans now believe that The transatlantic differences, today are the nation's success ethic applies to blacks most striking in higher education.
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