Affirmative action, again

Matt Yglesias writes:

In his Washington Post column, Peter Beinart urges Barack Obama to urge the countrywhy he thinks it will pay dividends, namely that it will help Obama appeal to racists: to move from a system of race-based affirmative action to a class-based system. This, he says, will pay political dividends. What’s interesting is

Notre Dame political scientist David Leege estimates that 17 to 19 percent of white Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents will resist voting for Obama because he is black. […] Obama needs to bring Leege’s number down. That may be possible, because even racists can be wooed. Think about it this way: Many of the voters who right now won’t vote for Obama because he’s black would probably vote for Colin Powell even though he’s black. That’s because they don’t see Powell as a racial redistributionist, a guy who would favor his community at their expense. There’s no rational reason to believe Obama would, either. But because, unlike Powell, Obama is a liberal Democrat who enjoys overwhelming black support, that’s what many racially hostile white voters assume.

But of course on the merits of the issue, abandoning race-based affirmative action makes sense to the extent that we don’t think present-day racism — as opposed to economic issues that may in some cases reflect the legacy of racism — is a substantial problem. But if racism really is a huge barrier to Obama’s electoral prospects, that suggests that present-day racism really is a substantial problem and we should probably maintain some focus on race per se.

I have lots of problems with all this.

First of all, Beinart labels as "racists" any white people who are wary of "racial redstributionists." According to him, "racists" wouldn't mind voting for Colin Powell. Sorry, folks, that's not a racist. A racist judges people based on their skin color; judging them based on their politics is something else entirely.

Second of all, Yglesias assumes that race-based affirmative action is necessary to the extent that racism is still a problem in this country. Affirmative action is often thought to "correct for" the inequality that results from racism. But if it creates more racism (as I believe it does), it may be doing more harm than good. And many of the problems caused by racism (de facto segregation, hate crimes, general ill will) aren't addressed by affirmative action anyway.

Finally, as an aside, I think "class-based affirmative action," if that means reserving college spots and/or job spots for poor people, is a generally bad idea, since it gives people an incentive to stay poor instead of an incentive to become middle-class. Much better ideas for alleviating income inequality exist - investment in poor areas, improved public education, etc.

Basically, affirmative action as we know it is dead, and it isn't coming back, because most people really don't like the idea. It's politically stupid to call people who don't like affirmative action "racists," because A) that's not a fair accusation, and B) that's an awful lot of voters. So why are we still talking about affirmative action as if it's an issue? There are much better ways to help America's poor black people.