I should have checked my copy of the Roemer book before I submitted my comment; my memory is rarely as accurate as I’d like it to be. The correct version of the abovementioned José Ortega y Gasset quote is:

“Yo soy: yo y mi circunstancia.” (I am: I and my circumstances.)

I let myself go a little below this point. I only share this stuff here because I don’t have a blog of my own (largely due to my lack of blog-appropriate or interesting things to share with entire world) and because I suspect at least one other person might find something in this particular rant interesting.

The quote struck me because I have long suspected something was amiss about some of the arguments made by well-filmed, well-quoted, and well-read Black public intellectuals. I have long sensed that folks such as Steele, Sowell, McWhorter, Connerly, Cosby, Armstrong, Juan Williams, and Ridley were failing to account for some important subtleties in their writings, speeches, and extemporaneous responses to interview questions. And, I have observed that those who inherited modest socioeconomic circumstances, yet who also share many of the ideological standpoints the abovementioned express, often spend so much time patting themselves on the backs for their achievements (I’d agree that most of them deserve to be proud of themselves), that perhaps, in that quest to validate their self-esteem (or indirectly boast of their above-average intelligence or divine blessings), they fail to analyze all the things that made their paths to success, despite unjust structural barriers, possible. Hard work explains a lot of it; I don’t grudge them that. Solid moral educations at home and emphasis on academic achievement surely helped; I don’t grudge them that. However, after having read many of their essays, books, and their biographies (if available), I think many of them fail to fully acknowledge key aspects of their life circumstances that gave them their most important opportunities or helped them find the motivation to do things most underclass and working poor Blacks don’t.

While they fail to acknowledge or grasp the whole set of circumstances that made their successes possible, they also all but dismiss the magnitudes of the structural hurdles that kids born into our Black working poor and underclass still face. They preach their “if I was able to do it, you should be able to do it” sermons. Some of them are heedless enough to tell us that all that is needed by our working poor and underclass are a change of mindset or a change of culture and the paths to success would open wide for all of our Black kids in our most deprived (and depraved) communities. Some of them (even those who inherited middle-class and upper-class households, and never lived as the working poor or underclass live) tell others that they know the formula, the panacea, the medicine, and are living proof that it works: good character, good parenting, less promiscuity, and hard work in school gets it done. They mislead so many folks with their oversimplified social science, that when their half-told stories combine with powerful media ready to spread this controversial gospel wide and far, they begin to change a lot of minds. They begin to convince a lot of successful and influential Blacks (and a lot of ambitious middle-class Whites who want to believe they deserve awards they might not have earned in light of their circumstances and resources) that they achieved great things against great odds and had no special advantages.

They fool others. Perhaps they even fool themselves. Because their Horatio Alger stories are often incomplete. They fail to mention the little things, the little quirks, that aspiring academic heroes often leave out in order to make themselves appear more heroic than they actually were. And, by painting these inspiring pictures of their self-reliant, quasi-heroic lives they are succeeding in directing much-needed attention away from all those who probably won’t catch enough lucky breaks to overcome the unjust structural hurdles that still hinder millions of Blacks.

I, like other Blacks who inherited the circumstances of America’s urban working poor yet found a way to get a great education and climb up the social ladder nonetheless, could tell my story one of two ways. Like many others, I could justifiably speak highly of my heroic single mother, the value she placed on education (even though she herself had little), and my work ethic (even though I don’t really believe I worked much harder than most competitive and ambitious folks). And, like some others, especially those who are getting so much media attention these days, I could leave a whole bunch of stuff out, such as my overwhelming distaste for my poverty (a distaste few of my peers shared to the same degree); a long list of lucky breaks and chance encounters that gave me above average good fortune for someone in my situation; my ability to imitate others’ mannerisms and public speaking techniques; my appearance: especially my height, my athletic build, and facial features; the diversity of people who took an above average interest in me—largely because of the mannerisms I imitated, my physical features, and my athleticism; my above average exposure to and interaction with people from the middle-class and the upper-class; my city’s good public transit system; my inborn competitiveness and willingness to try new things; etc.

Or, I could add all those important little things to my story, and try to account for their influences. Even though I inherited an urban working poor socioeconomic status and household, I also inherited many other valuable things and caught a lot of lucky breaks. Most, if not all, of the valuable things I inherited as well as all those lucky breaks enabled me to overcome many of the structural hurdles I inherited. Indeed, even the combination, sequence, and timing of those little things and lucky breaks might have been necessary. And, if I were to tell my story the honest and complete way, then I would probably surmise that very few would have been able to do what I did, having inherited my structural hurdles, if they did not also inherit the other things and catch all my lucky breaks. So, I don’t take too much pride in the fact that I succeeded, where so many others failed.

And, I know that at my level of effort, had I been given even more resources—the resources my middle class children were given—I could have done even more (academically) or the same amount faster. And, I certainly know that had I been given the resources given to America’s wealthiest 15%, that I could have done even more still. So, I am inclined to give people credit where credit is due, and to distribute our nation’s educational resources based as much on effort as on test scores, if effort can be measured even roughly.

Roemer gives us the mathematical tools we would need to measure and compare the effort levels of individuals across circumstances. People deserve what they work for in light of their circumstances. Blacks and Hispanics still make up a disproportionate share of those who inherit below average circumstances and below average opportunities. And if we as a nation can’t be decent and noble enough to level the playing field at birth and during the first 18 years for our “equal” citizens, then we should at least respect the amount of effort our working poor, lower-class, and lower-middle class kids have to put in order to get themselves ready to get mostly Cs or better at schools such as the University of Michigan. We should let them in, even with their lower numbers, if their numbers reveal that they are ready to get at least mostly Cs. Or else, we would continue to hypocritically boast of how much we value hard work in America even as we continue to distribute our most coveted awards to those who didn’t necessarily have to be among the top 15% hardest working students in their circumstances-based peer groups in order to get impressive cumulative GPAs or score above the 85th percentile on the SAT I.

If race-based affirmative action supporters do eventually lose this national rhetorical, semantic, political, and legal battle over the fate of race-based affirmative action policies at our colleges and universities, then we should view it as losing only one of many arrows in our quivers.

“Yo soy: soy y mi circunstancia.” (I am: I am and my circumstances.)—José Ortega y Gasset

John E. Roemer includes this quote in the front matter of his outstanding 1998 essay/book, Equality of Opportunity. This book is one of several I’d recommend (I’d also highly recommend the 2007 The Inequality Reader: ISBN 0813343453 and the 2000 Meritocracy and Economic Inequality: ISBN 0691004681) to all who would influence the management of university student, faculty, and staff recruiting and retention resources for, set hiring or admissions policies and procedures for, or wield discretionary power over the educational or social climbing opportunities offered to students, faculty, and staff by our top schools.

Most, who desire a fair, desert-based distribution of our nation’s educational resources, would lean toward an egalitarian theory of distributive justice (best explained in John Rawls’ Justice as Fairness: A Restatement) more than we would a utilitarian theory (one that might value economic efficiency far more than equality of opportunity). And, those of us with egalitarian leanings, who have studied justice, meritocracy, sociology, social psychology, human intelligence, economics, university administration, and public administration are painfully aware that most public debates over race-based affirmative action are grossly oversimplified and tend to lead their audiences astray with fallacies and half-truths, giving misguided or hypocritical social engineers the illusory rhetorical and political advantages they need to wound the institution of race-based affirmative action.

So, we must remain nimble and strategic, if not entrepreneurial and industrious, in order to continue to help our universities defend themselves against others’ attempts to misappropriate our nation’s educational resources by eliminating race-based affirmative action policies without replacing them with policies as or more just. UM is responding nimbly and strategically. Their actions might help others respond as nimbly and strategically to future losses of the race-based affirmative action institution, if there will be any.

We are preparing to defend ourselves against Connerly’s misguided and benighted brand of justice in AZ. He would not succeed here without having reached very, very deep into the pockets of his ideological or political allies.