Duke University Alumni Magazine

By Bryan K. Fair '82. New York: New York University Press, 1997. 211 pages. $24.95

f the title of Bryan K. Fair's Notes of a Racial Caste Baby: Color Blindness and the End of Affirmative Action sounds familiar, it is intentional. The title is a take-off on, and a rebuttal to, Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, a 1991 work in which the writer Stephen Carter bemoaned affirmative-action policies and their ill effects on the self-esteem of beneficiaries.

     Fair '82, an attorney and professor of constitutional law at the University of Alabama, has no such anguish. He calls himself a "racial caste baby," one whose need for affirmative- action help was directly caused by the lingering effects of American discrimination and exclusion. And he is glad such help was available. "Unlike Stephen Carter, I am not an 'affirmative action baby' who now, belatedly, disdains it and its supposed stigma," he writes. "I would never pull up the ladder that helped me climb out of racial poverty."

     In defending affirmative action, Fair asks how it is that after years of excluding blacks and other minorities from education and employment opportunities, we can now believe that just three decades of affirmative action has leveled the playing field.

     His slim book is part memoir, part history lesson, part legal brief--an ambitious effort that might have benefited from a narrower focus. Part 2, in which Fair discusses significant moments of American racial history, is the weakest section. Beginning with the racial, racist attitude of whites that made slavery possible, Fair meanders through American history, pointing out compelling but already well-documented incidents of white privilege and black caste along the way. He does make one interesting point: that those affirmative-action opponents who claim race-based policies denigrate our hallowed Constitution should remember the unseemly compromises and ugly exclusions that went into framing the original document. But in general there is little new here, and little to persuade either the scholarly opponent of affirmative action or the average white American who thinks he's paying for the sins of his forefathers.

     Fair goes on, however, to deftly critique the concept of "color blindness," a favorite with opponents of affirmative action. He argues that instituting such a system now in effect "preserves white rule in the United States, extending racial caste from one generation of blacks to yet another and maintaining America as a 'white' country. The color-blind doctrine ignores the reality that America remains a divided and unequal nation, that racial enmity is again on the rise, and that whites continue to hold economic and political advantages, in large part by virtue of their historical control over blacks."

     This critique is right on the money. But it might have been more persuasive had Fair spent less time proving the historical control and more time illustrating its lingering legacy.

     In the more interesting first section, Fair recounts his childhood in Columbus, Ohio, as one of ten children raised by a single mother. With no help from any of her children's fathers, Fair's mother struggled to raise her family on welfare and by working at a series of low-wage, dead-end jobs. At age seven, Fair began running errands and shoveling snow to make money; by age nine, he was working in a local rib joint.

     "Being poor, hungry, and on welfare did not make me idle or dependent," he writes. "I was never lazy, and I was dependent only when I was a child."

     Although he glosses over some important points--such as why his mother had ten children on a limited income--he reminds us how desperate life can be in our inner cities, and how little hope many children have of overcoming circumstances that are not of their making. For Fair, the turning point came when he was bused, voluntarily, to a predominately white junior high school with better facilities, more engaged teachers, and far higher expectations of its students.

     Fair was admitted to Duke in 1982 as part of a program designed to bring more diversity to the university. His test scores fell far below the median, and he quickly realized he was not as academically prepared as many Duke students. But although he struggled and sometimes failed, he says being an affirmative-action admit did not harm his self-confidence. "Indeed, all the harm that I suffered came well before Duke, during my years of educational deprivation in ghetto schools that lacked rigor and were run by teachers who had no idea how to improve their students' skills. Duke gave me a chance for more. I learned that its high standards were not beyond my capacity, but, rather, only beyond my training."

     But it is in the final section of the book that Fair makes his greatest contribution to the debate over affirmative action. He painstakingly analyzes the important Supreme Court decisions on the issue, beginning with Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

     Fair believes that, in education at least, the debate could be quieted if all colleges and universities adopted the kind of diversity program supported by Justice Lewis Powell in writing the decision. Such programs consider all applicants for all available places, based on qualities ranging from academic achievement to maturity, work experience, or a history of overcoming disadvantage. In such programs, race is but one of a number of "diversity factors" university officials may use in making decisions.

     Fair argues that none of the affirmative-action policies adopted in these cases had the purpose or effect of excluding all whites, and therefore cannot legitimately be compared to the discriminatory circumstances they were enacted against. He also addresses several of the most common complaints against affirmative action, including the belief that such policies push unqualified people up the ladder of success. What makes this claim pernicious, Fair says, is the implication that affirmative action is the only process by which unqualified people ever get hired, promoted, or admitted to college. In fact, incompetent people are advanced over more competent people all the time, in every segment of our society.

     Look at Dan Quayle. Imagine how Americans would respond to a black politician who couldn't spell potato and who bumbled his way through debates. "An inarticulate, poorly educated African American who was catapulted to high national office owing not to his family's political connections or his supposed ability to appeal to women (as Quayle was) but to affirmative action and his ability to draw black votes would be seen as a vindication of and a justification for every critique of affirmative action."

     The debate over affirmative action is one in which most people have long ago chosen sides. Fair's book may not change many minds on the subject, but his well-reasoned arguments will give opponents and proponents alike food for thought.

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