“Blacks and Mexican-Americans are not academically competitive with whites in selective institutions,” said law Professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas at Austin recently. “They have a culture that seems not to encourage achievement. Failure is not looked upon with disgrace.”
Talk about pushing buttons. Politicians who roam the halls of the nearby state Capitol went ballistic. “This is not the kind of academic riffraff that our taxpayers should be supporting,” argued an African-American state senator from Dallas. A Hispanic colleague of his wrote University of Texas Chancellor William Cunningham to argue that Graglia’s remarks “amount to cultural character assassination” and should not “be protected by academic freedom.”
Reactionary students who also value political correctness more than open debate called for Graglia’s dismissal. And knees wobbling, even the law school faculty disassociated itself from their colleague’s remarks. Some genuflected in the direction of free speech, to be sure, but the emphasis was on disagreeing with Graglia without actually pinpointing why.
And therein lies an important point: Today, Americans who are supposed to be the stewards of our political and academic traditions are still debating whether there should be free speech, rather than accepting that right as a given and using it as a tool for seriously addressing the major public policy questions of the day.
In truth, Graglia’s concern about the underachievement of minorities at “selective institutions” was not unfounded. Hispanics and blacks are not doing as well as mainstream students, a point made long ago by Hoover Institution senior fellow Thomas Sowell, who is black. Likewise, scholars have noted that certain Asian-American groups appear to have a culture that does produce high academic achievement.
Graglia has a right to oppose affirmative action, which was the real object of his opinions. But where he erred was in leaving room for the interpretation that minority underachievement is inescapable because minorities are by definition underachievers. Leaving aside the issue of tautologies, isn’t it likely that disparate socioeconomic circumstances might be a relevant factor? Doesn’t the disproportionate convergence of race and poverty have a bearing on minority achievement in America today? Isn’t chronic low-skill immigration in states such as Texas to be considered as a factor?
Graglia may wish to recall American history. During the third great wave of immigration to the United States earlier in this century, low-skill immigrants from places like rural Italy came in for an enormous amount of prejudice and discrimination because it was assumed that being poor and uneducated they could not improve themselves.
Over time, however, a number of factors came together to catapult millions of Italian-Americans into the mainstream. They became mayors, governors, Cabinet members and federal judges. Is it just possible that Graglia might soften his views toward Hispanics against such a backdrop? Is it possible that he might consider that racism and other factors have played a disproportionate role in keeping blacks down?
I was having lunch in Santa Monica, Calif., the other day after a panel discussion on immigration, race and education, when I heard an articulate person at my table say that bigots needed to be shown up for what they are, or else they may be taken seriously. There is some truth in that, but it also seems to me that people who can’t identify a bigot on their own or who are prone to allege bigotry where none exists are nearly as dangerous as the bigot. That is precisely why the country is more in need of education through dialogue rather than exhortation, peroration or condemnation.
Of all people, President Clinton needs to be reminded that such a dialogue must take in a variety of points of view. But on issues of race, don’t look for nuance from Clinton. “Those kinds of remarks don’t go down well with the president, period,” said White House press secretary Mike McCurry in condemning Graglia’s opinions out of hand.
Yes, Graglia hurt a lot of people’s feelings in how he said what he said. In ignoring America’s past and overlooking the redemptive promise this country has held out to groups that have triumphed over time after having started at the bottom, the truth about impoverished minorities and their potential has eluded him. Even so, he deserves tolerance from a society willing to engage in a complicated discussion where hurt feelings are inevitable.
