Extra Ordinary Ideas

Augusta: One Last Round

On the heels of the Masters, Julian Sanchez bravely takes one last poke at the hopelessly overanalyzed Augusta membership row. Not only should Augusta’s choice to exclude women from membership be legal, he argues, but it’s really pretty unobjectionable given that both genders find it more relaxing to occasionally retreat to single sex environments. Women tend to indulge this desire more than men, he points out.

He concludes quixotically that - despite the foregoing - he “wouldn’t join a club like Augusta,” but fails to explain why he would not.

I think I might know why.

Augusta’s choice to accept only male members should absolutely be legal. Julian and I agree on this much. We also agree that there’s nothing wrong with a male bowling club, or a ladies-only supper club. Or even an all male golf club, for that matter.

The problem with Augusta is that it has become – mostly by virtue of the Masters – the pinnacle of the American golf world. It is a best-of-kind institution, and its choices have a large cultural impact on the whole sport. Accordingly, its reasons for excluding women from its membership are culturally, though not politically, important.

Even if Julian is correct that Augusta’s rule is motivated by the same harmless desire to dress badly and make obnoxious jokes that inspires other single sex social organizations, an absolutely top notch organization – one that stands for something large and aspirational – is not a classy place to exclude members in order to satisfy that need. Julian points to single sex colleges. Well and good. But if Harvard were still single sex, we’d hear about it, and rightly so.

But contrary to Julian’s suggestion, I don’t think Augusta’s membership rules have much to do with wanting to sneak away for a round or two in an all male environment. As Augusta representatives themselves endlessly point out: Women can play at Augusta! They also populate the clubhouse at lunches and dinners. They’re all over the place. They just aren’t allowed a voice in running the organization, or the status associated with membership.

That reality makes Augusta’s male-only rule a statement without substance. It accords status, and little else, unequally between genders. It is an assertion that running this best of breed golf club is still men’s business.

If I were a man, I wouldn’t join that club either.

Blog Vacation

I'm afraid that several factors - including a visit from my brother, some fairly significant personal decision-making and important deadlines at work - impel me to declare a "blog vacation." Please check back in a couple of weeks. My life will have settled down, and I'll have more content up by then.

Virtue, Honesty and Cinema

Last Friday night I went to see Phone Booth, a redemption/thriller set almost entirely inside what is supposed to be last free-standing phone booth in Manhattan. The movie opens with protagonist Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell), a vain and cheesy small-time publicist who plays loose with the truth in the service of his clients and discounted restaurant meals.

After several amusing minutes of watching Stu do his thing, we find him in a phone booth picking up a mysterious incoming call. The psycho killer/caller (Keifer Sutherland) is out to make him confess his sins to himself, his loved ones and the world under pain of threatened death. The movie unfolds pretty much as you would imagine.

Phone Booth is not great art, but one thing about it hits home. This guy is really not that bad. He spends too much money on clothes, abuses the free labor of a worshipful intern, and fibs to sleazy editors about the doings of his clients. His biggest sin is an inappropriately flirtatious friendship with a young actress, whom he calls from the phone booth every day after removing his wedding ring.

The psycho killer’s previous victims include a serial child molester and a multibillion-dollar corporate thiefton. You find yourself nodding along when Stu yells “Why me?” plaintively into the phone. The man hasn’t even really cheated on his wife.

This movie has bite because Stu is only a little bit worse than most of us. Yet he is a bad person in myriad small ways that trivialize his relationships and compromise his happiness. Phone Booth makes the viewer all too aware of his or her own small transgressions. Or perhaps – momentarily – just aware enough.

For my cousin U.S. Army Spc. Bryan Cross, who leaves for Kuwait tomorrow, and for his wife Ann and daughter Taylor:

Keep the Home Fires Burning

They were summoned from the hillside
They were called in from the glen,
And the country found them ready
At the stirring call for men.

Let no tears add to their hardships
As the soldiers pass along,
And although your heart is breaking
Make it sing this cheery song:

Keep the Home Fires Burning,
While your hearts are yearning,
Though your lads are far away
They dream of home.

There's a silver lining
Through the dark clouds shining,
Turn the dark cloud inside out
'Til the boys come home.

-Lena Ford

More Michigan

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in the consolidated cases challenging affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan. The linked article implies that Justice O'Conner was noticably leaning towards upholding the program. But having listened to the argument, I can't agree that she staked out any position.

Amy Phillips points out that preferences are usually functionally indistinguishable from quotas, a point made both in Cato's amicus brief and in my March 30th Washington Times editorial reprinted below:

On April 1st, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this term’s most contentious case. The Court must decide whether the University of Michigan’s affirmative action programs violate the Constitution. While the Court will decide the Michigan case on its legal merits, the suit has also brought some overdue transparency to the public debate about affirmative action.

Even public figures lose sight of truths about affirmative action in the self-generated haze of language intended to confuse. This thick rhetorical fluff is inspired by polling, and the need to capture the moderate middle of the electorate. “Affirmative action” polls pretty well, but “racial preferences” do not. “Quotas” poll worst of all. Are there meaningful differences between these things, and if so what are they? Politicians seeking to remain on the right side of their favorite constituencies have little interest in clarifying their terms.

The President has historically sought a moderate tone on this issue, balancing the demands of his base against a favorite political project of his – making the Republican Party competitive among minority voters. In line with this strategy, his administration has decided to file a brief in the Michigan case opposing the university’s admissions practices on the relatively narrow ground that they are “quotas.”

While probably politically motivated, the administration’s narrow position in this case has revealed an important truth about affirmative action as it is practiced today. Most programs, regardless of how they are structured, are intended to produce an entering class with a specific racial composition. Most programs are thus quota-like, whether disguised as preferences or hidden behind the Japanese Shoji screen of individual consideration.

Michigan’s undergraduate program, for example, looks like a preference. The Michigan admissions formula no longer sets aside a certain number of slots for “underrepresented minorities,” but instead adds 20 points to the admissions profile of each African-American, Hispanic or Native American applicant.

Nonetheless, the Michigan program functions like a quota if the size of its preference – 20 points rather than 5 or 10 – is designed to result in a freshman class with a certain percentage of minority students. Proponents of preferences tend to refer to this percentage vaguely as a “critical mass.”

The program’s defenders argue that the bonus points are awarded in order to ensure a diverse freshman class, and emphasize that points are also awarded for other diversity factors, such as an unusual home state or an interesting essay. But coming from an unusual geographic location is worth only six points in the Michigan system, and a great story garners only three points.

On an individual basis, it makes little sense to say that a Vietnamese violinist adds less than half the interest to an incoming class than does a member of a preferred minority group. Rather, Michigan must award 20 points to preferred groups in order to have them present on campus in percentages desired by the university. And a 20-point advantage is huge, equal to the difference between a C average and a B average in the Michigan system.

This is where the distinction between preferences and quotas falls away. A lower court ruled for the university on this issue despite this questionable structure, largely because courts traditionally defer to states’ plausible explanations for their actions. Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules, the public discussion surrounding how the Michigan point system works in practice should generate a more thoughtful debate about the results-driven nature of preference programs.

Michigan’s law school admissions program takes a different approach to affirmative action. Rather than employing a point system, Michigan’s law school uses what has been called the “Harvard system,” supposedly taking race into account as a part of an individualized analysis of each applicant’s qualifications.

At first glance, this system looks nothing like a quota, but daily reports provided to the dean and admissions director indicate otherwise. These reports break down acceptance and matriculation rates by race, enabling the law school to determine whether the school is on track to enroll a “critical mass” of minority applicants. The trial court found that the law school’s practices were designed to ensure that preferred minorities made up between 11% and 17% of law students. Admissions officers have referred to these percentages variously as a “goal” or “target.”

While most Americans appreciate individual consideration of students and value diversity in educational settings, we are deeply and justifiably uncomfortable with government policies that treat people unequally based on racial background.

Proponents of preferences know this, which is why they try so hard to obscure the nature of the programs they defend. Even private universities, which are not bound by the Constitution, strive to avoid public scrutiny by emphasizing the mystery and complexity of programs designed to achieve fairly simple goals and targets.

Whether or not affirmative action programs are good policy is an important question worthy of serious debate, and our national struggle to overcome the devastating social consequences of slavery and segregation is hardly over. But no meaningful debate is possible when schools won’t tell anyone how the programs work. So far it has taken lawsuits to get detailed information. Regardless of how the Supreme Court decides the Michigan case, the dispute has brought a welcome measure of clarity to a cloudy public discussion.

The Real Debate Is Joined

A few weeks ago I linked "The Pentagon’s New Map" by Thomas P.M. Barnett because I thought it reached the real foreign policy debate underlying the war argument. Joshua Micah Marshall agrees. Read his extremely interesting article in the Washington Monthly, "Practice to Deceive," for a counterpoint to Barnett. This is the discussion pundits should be having about American foreign policy instead of an endless debate about how many WMDs, exactly, Saddam may have.