THE BLIND ALLEY of affirmative action: An older man arrives at work early, but his attempt to enter his law firm's suite of offices is challenged by a younger man, a junior member of the firm. The older man is black, the younger man, white.
For many successful black Americans, this kind of slight, chronicled in "The Rage of the Privileged Class" by Ellis Cose, occurs all too often.These stories are disturbing because they indicate that even successful black professionals are never free of the harassment of discrimination and petty affronts.
Racism still exists, and it would seem logical to argue that affirmative-action policies aimed at counteracting its effects should be strengthened, as U.S. Civil Rights Commission member Arthur Flet-cher recently suggested.
But Fletcher is wrong on this point, and his thinking is a good example of the flawed logic of many affirmative action backers.
Often, the argument boils down to: Racism still flourishes, affirmative action is the chosen remedy, therefore those who critique the remedy don't care about the problem. Whatever else it accomplishes, President Clinton's decision to review these programs should help discredit this view.
Many backers fail to acknowledge the extent to which racial nose-counting by government leads to abuses.
It would be interesting, for example, to hear Fletcher try to defend the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's old habit of filing lawsuits against companies that fail to hire ex-convicts in numbers bureaucrats deem appropriate.
This has been perhaps the most egregious example of a policy gone wrong. The theory is that because blacks and Hispanics have disproportionate conviction rates, a refusal to hire ex-offenders could result in a "disparate impact" and a violation of the law. So much for judging by content of character.
Then there's the infamous Daniel Lamp Co. case, in which the EEOC bullied a small company with a work force made up entirely of minority employees. Unfortunately, they weren't the correct minorities; EEOC said the company should have had 8.45 black workers, and the company was ordered to pay $123,000 to various black people who may have been refused jobs.
California is heading for a showdown on race preference because its Legislature has repeatedly passed legislation - vetoed by the governor - that would have forced state colleges to graduate classes reflecting the state's overall racial mix.
It isn't racism that drives the growing opposition to preference but government overreaching and the law's tendency to encourage the creation of new subgroups seeking victim status.
What affirmative action defenders ignore is that the enshrinement of group rights over individual rights is a two-edged sword that subtly encourages the stereotyping they decry.
Is it surprising that thoughtless individuals such as the white man in the example above are sometimes unable to imagine black Americans as eminent lawyers, when the rhetoric of victimization continually portrays black people as universally disadvantaged and helpless?
Cose, in fact, acknowledges this side effect. "Making someone feel sorry for you," he writes, "is somewhat different from getting them to recognize you as an equal - or even as a human being."
There are no easy answers to the dilemma of race in America, but it seems clear that when we abandon the hard challenge of a democracy of individuals, we are heading into a blind alley.