GENEROUS OLD LADY, OR REVERSE RACIST?

By Michael Kinsley

There was a wonderful story in the newspapers this month about an 87-year-old black woman in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, named Oseola McCarty. Working all her life as a laundress, never marrying, living very plainly, McCarty managed to save an astounding $150,000. Facing life's end, she has decided to give the money to a scholarship fund for black students to attend the University of Southern Mississippi. Inspired by her example, Hattiesburg business leaders have pitched in an additional $150,000. The first beneficiary of McCarty's largess has "adopted" her, and vows to help the heroine through her frail and lonely old age.

But wait a minute. Is this story inspiring? Or dismaying? For what McCarty is practicing, after all, is reverse discrimination, sometimes even called reverse racism. Indeed, McCarty has even set up a quota--a 100% quota. No whites need apply for one of her scholarships. It is closed to them because of the color of their skin. Is this not the very thing that all the Republican presidential candidates, and sundry moral scolds upholding the alleged "true meaning" of civil rights, have been clamoring to denounce? Where is Pete Wilson while this woman proposes to travesty the principles of racial equality that our country holds dear? Why is Pat Buchanan not out there on the stump denouncing this elitist exercise in anti-white social engineering?

No person with a heart--and no politician with or without one--would dream of criticizing Oseola McCarty's magnificent gift. Yet what is the difference in principle between McCarty's gesture and the more common forms of affirmative action that are routinely excoriated? There is only one: McCarty's reverse discrimination is private and "voluntary," not practiced or imposed by the government. But there is less to this distinction than it seems.

Actually, the sweeping denunciations of affirmative action that you hear nowadays rarely trouble to distinguish between affirmative action practiced by the government and affirmative action in the private sector. And this is reasonable enough. After all, the allegedly poisonous effects of affirmative action are the same, no matter whether it is private or government-sponsored. In either case, there is a white (or male) "victim." A white student cannot qualify for an Oseola McCarty scholarship because it is restricted exclusively to blacks. Since the premise of the scholarship is that it makes college possible for those who otherwise could not afford it, that white person will lose an opportunity to attend the University of Southern Mississippi simply because of his or her race. The decision to exclude whites from this opportunity may be "voluntary" for McCarty, but it is not voluntary for the whites who are thus excluded.

Furthermore, opponents of reverse discrimination insist that it does harm even to its intended beneficiaries, by stigmatizing them in the eyes of others and teaching them the wrong lessons about race and effort. If that is true, it is equally true whether the reverse discrimination is public or private. Is Oseola McCarty's blacks-only scholarship really sending the wrong signal? Is it really doing the young blacks of southern Mississippi who will benefit from it more harm than good? Well, that's the argument.

We quite rightly hold the government to a more austere standard of behavior than we do private citizens. That's because the government, when it acts, is operating on behalf of all of us, with our involuntary tax dollars. But Oseola McCarty's scholarship fund is not just a form of misbehavior that we're allowing her to get away with because this is a free country. We think it is a positive, good thing. Don't we? So what's the difference between her admirable endeavor and all that "bad" affirmative action?

In fact, even McCarty's modest private effort implicates the government in overt racial discrimination in several ways. It will be administered by a state university. The business contri bu tions presumably will be tax-de ductible. Above all, the Oseola McCarty Scholarship Fund--and in deed all private, so-called voluntary affirmative action--causes the govern ment to be racially biased in its po l icy toward private discrimination. The government would quickly step in to stop even a sweet old lady from setting up a whites-only scholarship fund. That would clearly violate about 18 laws, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act. So those who insist that the 1964 act--and civil rights principles generally--ought to be interpreted as race-neutral are left with a dilemma. Either they must modify their principles and accept that the world is a bit more complicated than they pretend, or they must haul Oseola McCarty into court for breaking the civil rights laws. I dare them.

The only sensible escape from this logical dilemma is to acknowledge that--pending the arrival of perfect and universal racial justice--the true meaning of civil rights principles does not require either individuals or the government to act in ways that are strictly race neutral. Specifically, and to be crude about it, it is O.K. to favor blacks in ways it is not O.K. to favor whites. To be sure, this is a troubling and potentially perilous conclusion. It does not provide carte blanche for all forms of reverse discrimination. But it is the beginning of any honest debate on the subject.