If, as W.E.B. Dubois said, the biggest problem in America is the color line, then the second largest is class. The best recent demonstration of this is the contretemps generated by Judge Arthur Garrity's decision to allow Julia McLaughlin to attend Boston Latin in anticipation that its racial quotas will be judicially overturned. Not one commentator or reporter has seen this event through the eyes of class, though it has all the earmarks of a typical consolidation of class interests when those interests are challenged by outsiders -- in this case, the 35% of Latin's student body allowed in the door because of quotas.
First, look at the nature of Boston Latin: one of three public schools that require entrance exams, which automatically separates it from all other public schools, which have open admissions. Defined as a unique place, it fulfills its role as a social gatekeeper, providing opportunities that are not available to other students in the system to a group of specially selected people. These advantages spawn other advantages that can lead to greater success in society, which is exactly why people like Michael McLaughlin have fought hard to make sure his daughter sits at Latin's table. No one would have fought like this to get someone into one of the city's non-exam high schools.
Second, who comes to Latin? Almost half the school's population, according to the Globe, will come from private schools, that is, from schools where families have enough disposable income to opt out of the public school system and pay for an alternative. This sets them apart from the bulk of families in Boston. Furthermore, students in both public and private schools who apply to Latin need the kind of education that will prepare them for the entrance exam, an education that again is not offered to the majority of students in the system. (If it were, there would be no need for a Boston Latin.)
Thus we have an elite institution drawing its student body from a selected population and offering these "winners" of the Latin lottery opportunities for advancement and success not available, at least as a matter of curriculum, in the system's other institutions. How else could this situation be described except as an example of class interest?
Third, look at the players. The only people who have had faces and histories ascribed to them is the McLaughlin family and Judge Garrity, people one would have to consider successes in the system. The students, and their families, who comprise the 35% set-aside have remained mostly nameless and faceless; they've simply been known as the minorities who got in without toeing the line. And despite Michael McLaughlin's demurrals to the contrary, he and his family, just as with Judge Garrity, exist in a stratum of American society where they have access to advantages and opportunities they have "earned" mostly by being in the right historical place at the right time.
Why is it surprising, then, that this situation has gone the way it has? The set-asides were always a kind of noblesse oblige, backed by federal authority, to be sure, but still an act of dispensation. When that public authority wanes, as it has today when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3d Circuit states that diversity is not a compelling enough reason to establish policies that create preferences, then the class interests reassert themselves, as they have all over the land, and want to take back what they had unwillingly given up. That is the rationale behind reverse discrimination; it is the rationale behind the case of Boston Latin.
The prognosis for diversity is not good. The only realistic policy the city can come up with that will pass muster is a tepid declaration to make reasonable efforts to find qualified students without declaring any guarantees or measures that those students have been found. (After all, what is a quota but a way to measure that you did what you said you were going to do?) Anything else will be attacked as discriminatory, that is, discriminatory against a class of interests that has no real commitment to equality.
In a column some time ago George Will wistfully mused how nice it would be to go back to the year 1900. With the advent of Judge Garrity's decision, Will may have gotten his wish.
(August 1996)