Repeal of race preference programs: Effects on Asians andpublicreactions

[Volokh, Eugene]

    It's a pretty fair bet that Jennifer Gratz didn't devote a couple of
years of her life to the MCRI simply because of her self-interest in the
sense of her interest in not being treated worse as a result of race
preference programs.  My guess is that the expected future financial
benefit to her of abolition of those programs is a tiny fraction of the
value of the time and effort she invested in the campaign.  Maybe she
was acting out of a different kind of self-interest, for instance if she
was a paid employee of the campaign (I have no idea whether she was) or
if she expects to leverage this into a political career (I have no idea
whether she does).  But pure self-interest of the "race preferences hurt
me, so abolishing them will help me" isn't enough to explain her
actions.
 
    Now it's quite possible that her being disadvantaged by race
preferences in the past made her feel emotionally committed to fighting
them, but that would reflect precisely the principled opposition that
Rick describes, though a principled opposition that may have been
catalyzed by one's past experience (along the lines that a conservative
is a liberal who's been mugged, or a liberal is a conservative who's
been wrongly arrested).
 
    It's also possible that her concern isn't *self*-interest, but
*racial* interest -- the desire to advance her racial group, or to
correct perceived wrongs because they are to her racial group.  I would
not lightly infer such racial thinking on anyone's part, whether that of
Gratz or of a black supporter of race preferences.  But this isn't
self-interest either in the literal self, or in the sense that Sandy
describes below.

	Eugene


 
Sandy Levinson writes:
 
Rick writes, "There is no more reason to think that white opponents of
affirmative action oppose it out of self interest than to think that
black supporters of affirmative action support it out of self interest.
"   What is wrong about assuming that some (many) black supporters of AA
do it "out of self interest" and, similarly, that some (many) "white
opponents of aa oppose it out of self interest"?  Isn't self-interest a
good starting point for trying to figure out why people feel
passionately about certain public policies that have distributive
conseuencees?  If affirmative action wasn't perceived by many (most)
African-Americans as serving their interests (putting to one side
whether they are correct in that view), then why indeed would they
support it.  Similarly, if aa wasn't perceived by many (most) white
opponents as disserving their interests, why would they care so deeply?
We'll never know if Ms. Gratz would have devoted a couple of years of
her life to getting rid of it had she not been rejected by Michigan and
felt that she had been dealt a material blow.