Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Well it's happening again. We are going
Speaker 1: back to school and this week's episode is all about education.
Speaker 1: At Stuyvesant High School this year, one of the most
Speaker 1: competitive exam schools in all of New York City and
Speaker 1: indeed in the country, eight hundred and ninety five slots
Speaker 1: were offered to freshmen and only seven of those slots
Speaker 1: were offered to African American students. At Bronx High School
Speaker 1: of Science, out of eight hundred and three accepted students,
Speaker 1: only twelve were African American. These outcomes were treated as
Speaker 1: a crisis throughout New York City. They cast light on
Speaker 1: a deep question about the nature and need for affirmative action.
Speaker 1: Mayor Bill de Blasio, on the side running for president,
Speaker 1: waited in earlier the summer with an op ed arguing
Speaker 1: that the city's exam schools should essentially be abolished in
Speaker 1: the form of which they exist. They should be changed.
Speaker 1: He said, to schools that admit the top percentage of
Speaker 1: students from all of the middle schools around the city
Speaker 1: instead of relying on an exam, a fundamental shift in
Speaker 1: a mechanism of choice that has existed for decades is
Speaker 1: inherently fascinating, and it raises the fascinating question about whether
Speaker 1: a debate around testing and affirmative action should be the
Speaker 1: debate that we're having right now. I was lucky enough
Speaker 1: to discuss it with a colleague and friend of mine,
Speaker 1: pressor Randy Kennedy of Harvard Law School. Randy's the author of,
Speaker 1: among many other books, a terrific book called four Discrimination, Race,
Speaker 1: Affirmative Action, and the Law, which you wrote about five
Speaker 1: years ago, and the title of that book says it all.
Speaker 1: Randy has always been a very strong supporter of affirmative action.
Speaker 1: So I began my conversation with him by asking what
Speaker 1: were his initial thoughts watching this drama in New City unfold? First,
Speaker 1: why is it that we are spending so much time
Speaker 1: and effort on these schools, wonderful schools where they educate
Speaker 1: relatively few people. All of a sudden there is a crisis. Well,
Speaker 1: the way in which we even talk about this, we
Speaker 1: talk about these schools are so important. It's so important
Speaker 1: to get in these schools because these are the schools
Speaker 1: from you know that provide a ticket out of well,
Speaker 1: what do they provide a ticket out of? They provide
Speaker 1: a ticket out of substandard schooling. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: why everybody is going nuts about this, why people try
Speaker 1: so hard to get in these schools, is because they
Speaker 1: want to escape regular school. So number one, why aren't
Speaker 1: we thinking more about the character of regular school? Why
Speaker 1: are we so willing to countenance a system in which
Speaker 1: we sort of accept that the regular schools, the schools
Speaker 1: that the great majority of people go to, are substandard,
Speaker 1: And what we're focusing on are the conditions under which
Speaker 1: people can escape those schools. So number one, we need
Speaker 1: to focus more on let's make regular school a lot
Speaker 1: better so that there's not this obsession with escaping them.
Speaker 1: So I agree with you, of course that we need
Speaker 1: to focus more on making every school in New York
Speaker 1: City a good school, a functional school, a better than
Speaker 1: average school. But at the same time, I want to
Speaker 1: push back about why we're obsessing over this. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's just that other schools are perceived as substandard,
Speaker 1: although that's part of it. I think that elite schools
Speaker 1: like Stuyvesant, like Bronx Science, like Hunter are the public
Speaker 1: equivalent of elite private schools, which are very important to
Speaker 1: the cultural life of elites. And that's because they proportionately
Speaker 1: send so many kids to fancy colleges, which are themselves
Speaker 1: the focus of elite accomplishment. And so nationally people are
Speaker 1: obsessing because they think that access to that elite determines
Speaker 1: who are our national leaders. They do, and I will
Speaker 1: still say we are overinvesting in this part of the debate.
Speaker 1: And I think that I have two and interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: people on the right I'm thinking of Clarence Thomas, and
Speaker 1: people on the left, I'm thinking of polemicists that we're
Speaker 1: writing in the late nineteen sixties agree on this. There's
Speaker 1: a way in which we're so focused on the rules
Speaker 1: and regulations and you know, the selection devices for these
Speaker 1: elite institutions, that we're not paying enough attention to the
Speaker 1: institutions that are going to educate the great mass of people. Secondly,
Speaker 1: second point, I think that we are suffering from a
Speaker 1: type of scarcity that need not be you know, we
Speaker 1: keep talking about the few schools that are the select
Speaker 1: elite schools. Well, to the credit of New York City,
Speaker 1: I think they have tried to expand the number of
Speaker 1: them over time. But wouldn't you agree that at some
Speaker 1: point the expansion ceases to be mean, yes, it does.
Speaker 1: And then okay, so that's right at some point and
Speaker 1: if we're talking not at six, but it's some larger
Speaker 1: not fine, and at some point we're still I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to get through the dilemma. At some point,
Speaker 1: you're going to have scarcity. You can't have a million
Speaker 1: seats for elite schools. If you're going to have an
Speaker 1: elite school, there's necessarily going to be cut off points.
Speaker 1: There's necessarily going to be dilemma. So let me go
Speaker 1: to that, you know, to put it bluntly, I am
Speaker 1: not with Mayor Deblasio and what he's talking about. The
Speaker 1: Mayor has said pretty expressly he thinks the problem is
Speaker 1: the test. It could be. I don't think that anything
Speaker 1: should be off the table. I think that people, you know,
Speaker 1: is this test testing for what we're looking for? Fine,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not saying that the test should be
Speaker 1: beyond question. I do think, however, in these discussions, it
Speaker 1: is often the case that people stone the messenger. In
Speaker 1: my view, in this debate, the messenger is the test.
Speaker 1: It's the test is a Seis McGraph. The test is
Speaker 1: telling us things that are happening in society. What this
Speaker 1: test is telling us is that in terms of mastering
Speaker 1: all sorts of subjects, some kids are doing a lot
Speaker 1: better than other kids. And it seems to me a question, well,
Speaker 1: why is that? How can we help the kids that
Speaker 1: are not doing so well do better? But can I
Speaker 1: try to answer Randy Kennedy with Randy Kennedy. So you've argued,
Speaker 1: and you argue this very explicitly in your book for Discrimination,
Speaker 1: that there's a shorthand answer for why we're getting this message,
Speaker 1: and that is the systematic history of race based discrimination
Speaker 1: that extended from slavery through segregation until very very recently.
Speaker 1: And I think you were born in nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, So that means that you were
Speaker 1: born in the year when segregation was made illegal. But
Speaker 1: it didn't end for decades efforts, and in some places
Speaker 1: in the United States schools are still de facto segregated,
Speaker 1: even if it's not according to law. And you also
Speaker 1: argued that given this systematic, ongoing structure of oppression, that
Speaker 1: we need to diversify elite institutions in response to this historical,
Speaker 1: demonstrable phenomenon that's ongoing. So why isn't that the answer
Speaker 1: the test. We're not stoning the test. We're acknowledging that
Speaker 1: the test is representing some systematic injustice, and we're saying,
Speaker 1: let's find some alternative mechanism. Call it discriminatory if you will,
Speaker 1: you call the discrimination, you didn't mind calling it that,
Speaker 1: in order to remedy those structures. It's not a remedy
Speaker 1: for those structures. It's a mistake to think that the
Speaker 1: affirmative action regime is the panacea for the problems that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. The affirmative action regime makes a small cut.
Speaker 1: It gives some benefit to those who are at the
Speaker 1: upper levels of the marginalized and the oppressed, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't do a whole lot more than that. And I've
Speaker 1: seen it. That's right. I mean, I am an affirmative
Speaker 1: action baby. It is too easy to have the affirmative
Speaker 1: action regime in place, get year after year after year
Speaker 1: you're ten percent, and then forget about it. I don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen. In fact, the problem with affirmative action,
Speaker 1: as far as i'm concerned it's far too conservative and intervention.
Speaker 1: We need something considerably more radical to deal with this
Speaker 1: still massive problem that we have of you know, structures
Speaker 1: of racial inequality that are baked in to our society.
Speaker 1: What do you have in mind? What's the radical transformation
Speaker 1: that you would you would imagine because you're what you're
Speaker 1: talking about is abandoning w. Du Bois's talented ten rationale
Speaker 1: for creating an African American elite on the theory that
Speaker 1: that would in the long run, contribute to what he
Speaker 1: still called the uplifting of the race. First of all,
Speaker 1: you know, one thing I've seen in the commentary about
Speaker 1: the schools, there was a time in the recent past
Speaker 1: where there were more black kids at these schools. That
Speaker 1: has fallen down, and some people speculate that one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why it has fallen down, the numbers have
Speaker 1: fallen is because of the dismantling of various special pipeline
Speaker 1: programs to try to you know, nourish and push the talented,
Speaker 1: you know, the talented tenth Listen, I'm a talent tenth person,
Speaker 1: a talent tenth man, a Duboisian. But again, that is
Speaker 1: that that's that's something I don't want to. That's why
Speaker 1: I don't want to get rid of that. But that
Speaker 1: is not going to change enough to make me satisfied.
Speaker 1: You asked me, well, what do you want to do?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not I'm not a professional educator
Speaker 1: of this sort. I think though, that one thing that
Speaker 1: we need to do is not be satisfied with what
Speaker 1: we have and what we have had, namely this affirmative
Speaker 1: action regime. You know, for the past couple of decades,
Speaker 1: we need to think a new about things. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you something that I'm thinking a new about diversity.
Speaker 1: It has now become totally conventional, this mirror notion. You know,
Speaker 1: the schools don't look like New York City, the mirror idea,
Speaker 1: they'll look like America. Idea is okay if you are
Speaker 1: part of a group that is large enough to be
Speaker 1: able to claim a fairly big part of that pie.
Speaker 1: If you come from a small group, however, that mirroring
Speaker 1: idea doesn't look so good. What about the quote problem
Speaker 1: of overrepresentation, or to put it differently, is it the
Speaker 1: case that there are too many Asian Americans in the schools? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going to get No one wants
Speaker 1: to say that. No one wants to say it, but
Speaker 1: it seems to me, although our employer or Harvard University
Speaker 1: is being sued on the theory that intentionally or otherwise,
Speaker 1: our admissions office is similarly treating Asian Americans as this
Speaker 1: as though they were overrepresented and therefore has been restricting
Speaker 1: the numbers. Now, to be clear, our employer denies it,
Speaker 1: you know, three ways till next Sunday. But that is
Speaker 1: the allegation in this say, that is the allegation. And
Speaker 1: I must say, for me, this issue has taken on
Speaker 1: more prominence than it has in the past. For me,
Speaker 1: you know, this looks like America. It seems to me
Speaker 1: is quite problematic. First of all, the United States is
Speaker 1: too complicated and diverse for this looks like America metaphor
Speaker 1: to actually have real purchase. So now we're really getting
Speaker 1: into the meat of it. So the language of looks
Speaker 1: like America is the language of the diversity rationale, which
Speaker 1: you know, as you know far better than I, the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court treats as the only, at least for the moment,
Speaker 1: constitutional rationale to justify affirmative action. And it's not just
Speaker 1: that you can't be in any institution of higher learning
Speaker 1: without getting a steady diet of the word diversity is
Speaker 1: our key value. We've got diversity reports, we have diversity deans,
Speaker 1: we have diversity officers. It infuses our whole way of
Speaker 1: doing things at a university like Harvard where we both teach.
Speaker 1: And I hear you questioning that orthodox, Yes, very much
Speaker 1: one of the virtues, of course, of the word diversity.
Speaker 1: Who the people behind the coining of it? You know,
Speaker 1: I think well of them. They were onto something. They
Speaker 1: wanted to change things. They wanted to redistribute power and
Speaker 1: opportunity downwards, as do I. And sometimes in order to
Speaker 1: do that, you actual onto an idea, a slogan that
Speaker 1: has good strategic opacity. It is a wonderfully ambiguous strategic work.
Speaker 1: What does diversity mean? And all of our schools, for
Speaker 1: various reasons, some political, some legal, stay within the ambiguity
Speaker 1: and really play that ambiguity. So let's play out why
Speaker 1: they do that. I agree strategic opacity is the key
Speaker 1: term here. In the first instance, it's that if they
Speaker 1: say we have a quota, then they lose. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court strikes down it's illegal. They can't do it. So
Speaker 1: that's one reason. The second is no one wants to say, well,
Speaker 1: we want to use positive discrimination, which is what a
Speaker 1: lot of countries call it, and which you alluded to
Speaker 1: in the title of your book. And so no one
Speaker 1: wants to say that because no one wants to say
Speaker 1: we're discriminating, because discrimination sounds bad. And last, but Ali,
Speaker 1: no one wants to say that we're giving a leg
Speaker 1: up to anybody because it undercuts some underlying idea of
Speaker 1: fairness or merit whatever that exactly mean it, and it
Speaker 1: makes the people who were being helped feel bad, some
Speaker 1: of them anyway, They don't you know, No, I'm not
Speaker 1: getting a leg up. I mean I don't feel that
Speaker 1: way at all. I have gotten a leg up. Don't
Speaker 1: feel bad about it. You know, you get a leg
Speaker 1: up and you hope to vindicate yourself by doing good things.
Speaker 1: Seems to me that, you know, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's a bad thing about giving people a leg up. Well,
Speaker 1: it's also important to add in there that just about
Speaker 1: everyone walking around the NOD the university has had a
Speaker 1: leg up from somewhere, of course, And you know, I
Speaker 1: mean I certainly had a significant leg up. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I remember showing up in college and realizing
Speaker 1: that I knew things about professors, and you know, I
Speaker 1: knew what books are reading, I knew where to go,
Speaker 1: and not everybody knew those things, and that was a
Speaker 1: huge leg up. Ira katz Nelson. You know, when affirmative
Speaker 1: action was white. The fact of the matter is that
Speaker 1: white people, rich people, absolutely we have had legs up.
Speaker 1: It's it just becomes obscured. We don't call it affirmative action.
Speaker 1: We don't call it giving a leg up. They have
Speaker 1: all sorts of privileges, but we view it as you know,
Speaker 1: just sort of natural as right. One of the real
Speaker 1: big difficulties I think that we confront is we really
Speaker 1: don't know what we're seeking to accomplish. You know, we
Speaker 1: will use these terms racial justice, racial fairness, racially quality.
Speaker 1: Well what is that exactly? But so let me push
Speaker 1: back on that. Don't we all know that if we
Speaker 1: had a society that distributed opportunity in the form of
Speaker 1: education fairly, that what we would then see is results
Speaker 1: of tests like this one, where the excellence of performing
Speaker 1: well on this test. And I'm not saying that's the
Speaker 1: only excellence there is in life, but where the specific
Speaker 1: excellence are performing well on this test would be demonstrated
Speaker 1: to be roughly equal across every part of the population.
Speaker 1: And that's what racial equality would look like. An environment
Speaker 1: and where in which we had accounted for and repaired
Speaker 1: the legacy of discrimination so that every candidate really genuinely
Speaker 1: was on a level playing field. Isn't that the desert
Speaker 1: are on for everybody? I'm not, first of all, no,
Speaker 1: I do not think so, okay, tell me. I think
Speaker 1: that there is a real debate in our society about
Speaker 1: what we want. So you know, the majority of members
Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court would not embrace what you just said.
Speaker 1: I would embrace what you just said, or at least largely.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of people who would say no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. What racial fairness means is they have a
Speaker 1: procedural idea. Racial fairness means that you don't purposely discriminate
Speaker 1: against people. And if you're not purposely discriminating against people, hey, fairness.
Speaker 1: But if we both agree, that's not really fair, right,
Speaker 1: I mean true, I mean that's that's not defensible. I
Speaker 1: think you can only defend procedural fairness if you first
Speaker 1: raised everybody to a level playing field. Otherwise it's genuinely
Speaker 1: not fair. So I take it what we're arguing about
Speaker 1: is okay, given that we haven't done that, we should
Speaker 1: We both agree we should do that. We haven't done that. Now,
Speaker 1: what I mean, you know, my my, my opening gambit
Speaker 1: is we've had an affirmative action regime in place for
Speaker 1: a couple of decades. Man. That regime is in my view, inadequate, unsatisfactory.
Speaker 1: It has aspects to it that are real problems. I
Speaker 1: mentioned one before, the looks like America rationale another one.
Speaker 1: It's right, there is the whole problem of double speak.
Speaker 1: You know. The fact of the matter is we can't
Speaker 1: even partly because of the law, in particular the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court of the United States, people don't even speak frankly
Speaker 1: about what's going on. And so, you know, the diversity rationale,
Speaker 1: we don't even the universities can't even talk in terms
Speaker 1: of distributive justice or reparatory justice. The very man you
Speaker 1: say that losing court exactly. So people have glommed on
Speaker 1: to diversity as a pedagogical theory. Everybody knows that that's
Speaker 1: not really what's animating it. But but we're trapped, we're
Speaker 1: trapped in double speak. And I guess one of the
Speaker 1: things that is, you know, impelling me at this moment
Speaker 1: is I feel impatient with the double speak. I feel
Speaker 1: impatient with you know now decades long regime. I want
Speaker 1: something better for goodness sakes. So here's my question. And
Speaker 1: in some sense this is the thing that motivated me
Speaker 1: most to want to talk to you about this. It's
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, but in twenty thirteen you spent your time
Speaker 1: and your effort, and your concentration and your focus in
Speaker 1: writing a whole book defending the traditional conception of affirmative action.
Speaker 1: Now I'm wondering what has changed in the last six
Speaker 1: years that's pushing the evolution of your thought on this.
Speaker 1: I have a few candidate ideas, but first I want to,
Speaker 1: you know, get it straight from the horse's mouth. What
Speaker 1: do you think is causing your views to change? I
Speaker 1: am increasingly unwilling to settle for the double talk at school,
Speaker 1: and you've been around me. I say affirmative action. By
Speaker 1: the way, even that even that people don't say affirmative
Speaker 1: that phrase is gone. I say affirmative action. I say,
Speaker 1: why am I willing to countenance putting a thumb on
Speaker 1: the scale to help out certain people. You know, some
Speaker 1: people say, well, that's reverse discrimination, that you're putting a
Speaker 1: thumb on the scale to help certain people. I have
Speaker 1: a justification for that. Yeah, I'm not embarrassed by it,
Speaker 1: but I think it should be stated straight forwardly. So
Speaker 1: some of it is frustration growing frustration. Yes, So I
Speaker 1: was thinking in a big world of what's happened between
Speaker 1: you know, say twenty twelve when you were working on
Speaker 1: the book and then twenty thirteen when it came out.
Speaker 1: And now one thing I thought of immediately was we
Speaker 1: were eight years in office. To take the title of
Speaker 1: tany easy Coats's book, Obama was president during that period
Speaker 1: of time. There wasn't fundamental structural change with respect to
Speaker 1: the social position or economication of African Americans. And so
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, well, here in Barack Obama we
Speaker 1: have the ultimate manifestation of the talented tenth. So if
Speaker 1: there is a justification for the talented tenth theory, he
Speaker 1: was it. Do you feel frustration connected to the thought
Speaker 1: that that didn't seem to pan out at the broader
Speaker 1: scale of change. No, I don't know that. That's not it.
Speaker 1: That is not part of my thinking. I defend affirmative action.
Speaker 1: I think in fact that over the course of my life,
Speaker 1: affirmative action is one of the things about which America
Speaker 1: should be most proud. The problem is that it hasn't
Speaker 1: been pushed enough, and hadn't been pushed downward enough. It's
Speaker 1: not broad enough, it's not comprehensive enough. But if all
Speaker 1: that is true, why don't we look at using a
Speaker 1: single test for admission to some institutions and say, let's
Speaker 1: be radical. Let's do something radically different that will involve
Speaker 1: a thumb on the scale, so you could give more
Speaker 1: points on the test to people from disadvantage backgrounds. That
Speaker 1: would be overt it wouldn't be fake, and it might
Speaker 1: make it. It It would make a difference statistically, it might,
Speaker 1: And I'm not horror struck by that. One difficulty with
Speaker 1: that is the problem of obscuring continuing weaknesses at my school,
Speaker 1: my school, your school. I've been in you know, symposia,
Speaker 1: been in sessions where people talk about affirmative action, and
Speaker 1: I've heard students who, by the way, we're beneficiaries of
Speaker 1: affirmative action, get really haughty and indignant and and in fact,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen this where students who you know
Speaker 1: have been benefited deny and get even angry if somebody
Speaker 1: suggests that they were a beneficiary. In fact, that is
Speaker 1: part of the lore, the racial lore of elite institutions,
Speaker 1: where you know you'll have student, a Latino student, a
Speaker 1: black student. Well, you know, well, why are you mad?
Speaker 1: I'm mad because I was talking with my roommate, and
Speaker 1: my roommate suggested that, you know, the reason I'm here
Speaker 1: is because of affirmative action. You know, how dare he
Speaker 1: say that? And you don't think that student has a
Speaker 1: point to say that that. It's a kind of assault
Speaker 1: on the person's equality or sense of being there to
Speaker 1: say that. No, no, no, you know no, I think that.
Speaker 1: I think what's happened is it might also might not
Speaker 1: be true in any given instance. It might be true,
Speaker 1: it might not be it might not be true. And
Speaker 1: that's right. And I've seen any number of white people
Speaker 1: who failed to get what they wanted and their way
Speaker 1: of sort of you know, accommodating failure. Oh I would
Speaker 1: have gotten it, but you know that black one over
Speaker 1: there got it because of affirmative action. Now you think
Speaker 1: get an affirmative action, He just beat you out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but let's go back to what I was talking about,
Speaker 1: because there is the student who takes offense. What that shows,
Speaker 1: and it's it's one of the you know, I've defended
Speaker 1: affirmative action. Does affirmative action have certain costs? However, Yes,
Speaker 1: it does have certain costs, and we've got to look
Speaker 1: at those costs, and this is one of them. There
Speaker 1: is a certain sort of impulse for the nile. You know, No,
Speaker 1: I'm no, I'm not behind this kid to the left
Speaker 1: of me, whose parents, you know, went to college, who
Speaker 1: went to private school, who had all the benefits. My
Speaker 1: parents didn't go to college. Let's say my parents did,
Speaker 1: but let's let's imagine somebody whose parents did not. I
Speaker 1: grew up in a house that didn't have books. I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't. I was behind, behind behind. That
Speaker 1: kid on day one might very well be behind. But
Speaker 1: that's not a big deal, as far I would say
Speaker 1: to that kid, don't be ashamed that. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you're behind one day one. What matters is what's
Speaker 1: happening on day three sixty five. You're not going to
Speaker 1: push yourself to catch up if you don't know that
Speaker 1: you're behind. Eighteen sixty five is not that long ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew my grandmother for most of my life. My
Speaker 1: grandmother's parents were slaves. For God's sakes, in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: the great mass of black people were illiterate. Yes, black people.
Speaker 1: And you know, and another thing about this, and when
Speaker 1: people talk about this issue, and you know how few
Speaker 1: black people got into, you know, the special school, there's
Speaker 1: a way in which these sorts of discussions make it
Speaker 1: seem as though you know, well, you know, poor black people.
Speaker 1: Damn you know what's deficiency, deficiency deficiency. Black people in
Speaker 1: the history of the world have absolutely a remarkable history.
Speaker 1: If you take a look at where black people were
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five and where black people are today,
Speaker 1: black people have been coming on and coming on strong,
Speaker 1: will continue to come on strong, I think if they
Speaker 1: have to be clear eyed and the reality of racial oppression,
Speaker 1: continuing racial oppression is that's right, certain deficiencies. Don't forget that,
Speaker 1: don't overlook it, don't be ashamed by it. So you've
Speaker 1: got to be honest. You've got to be honest, that's right.
Speaker 1: And you can't be soft. You've got to be tough.
Speaker 1: You've got to be willing to say, Yep, day one,
Speaker 1: I come to this class, I look around, I'm talking
Speaker 1: with people. You know, Yep, these other people they're ahead
Speaker 1: of me. And because they're ahead of me, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to work harder. I'm gonna have to go to
Speaker 1: the teacher and say to the teacher, let'stland, teacher, don't
Speaker 1: tell me that I'm just the same as John over here,
Speaker 1: because no, I'm not. I'm behind John. What I want
Speaker 1: you to do, mister or miss teacher, is help me
Speaker 1: catch up. So in some sense, it's almost like you
Speaker 1: see the Deblasio's suggestion as an affront to the hard
Speaker 1: working efforts of people who are actually trying to double
Speaker 1: down and work harder. So saying let's eliminate the test
Speaker 1: somehow stick in your crawl because you think it's saying
Speaker 1: you can't succeed on the basis of I'm not. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not. The test is not a fetish to me.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, let's look at the test realistically. Again.
Speaker 1: The test, as far as I'm concerned, as a seismograph,
Speaker 1: it is registering something. Let's pay attention to what it
Speaker 1: is registering. And the problem I sometimes with you know
Speaker 1: de Blasio's suggestion and others who you know, Let's get
Speaker 1: rid of the test, right, Let's get rid of the
Speaker 1: message that the test is bringing to us. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I want to listen to that message. And what I
Speaker 1: want is to change the message. I don't want to
Speaker 1: just get rid of the machine that is bringing the
Speaker 1: message to me. It's a deeply powerful lesson, and I'm
Speaker 1: really grateful to you for giving me the chance to
Speaker 1: talk to you about it. Well, thanks a lot. I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope you're going to write about it. Well, I
Speaker 1: write about everything else, I'll write about this. Thank you, Rendy,
Speaker 1: and thank you for being here on deep background to
Speaker 1: be well. Since I talked to Randy Kennedy, a task
Speaker 1: force appointed my married Bill de Blasio has released a
Speaker 1: proposal recommending that New York City get rid of all
Speaker 1: of its gifted and talented programs and most of its
Speaker 1: selective admissions programs. The proposal wouldn't actually fundamentally change admissions
Speaker 1: at Stuyvesant or the other seven elite high schools, because
Speaker 1: admission in those schools is partly controlled by the state
Speaker 1: government in Albany, and to be clear, Mayr. De Blasio
Speaker 1: has not yet said what parts of this proposal he
Speaker 1: will consider adopting. So we're going to continue to follow
Speaker 1: this very fascinating and important story. In the meantime, though,
Speaker 1: there's something else that's been on my mind, something all
Speaker 1: the way across a continent and an ocean in Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: where protests that began by focusing on a specific law
Speaker 1: that involved the extradition of criminals from Hong Kong into
Speaker 1: China have blossomed if you like them, or ballooned if
Speaker 1: you don't like them, into a more fundamental challenge to
Speaker 1: the legitimacy of the Chinese government's sovereign control over Kong. Now,
Speaker 1: there's something fascinating about this, because if you see politics
Speaker 1: solely through the lens of pragmatic self interest, it's sort
Speaker 1: of hard to imagine that anyone in Hong Kong would
Speaker 1: really think that the People's Republic of China, an enormous,
Speaker 1: powerful country, would do anything other than treat tiny little
Speaker 1: Hong Kong as part of its zone of control. That's
Speaker 1: what the British Empire thought when they ultimately acceded to
Speaker 1: Chinese demands to hand Hong Kong over. They tried to
Speaker 1: get China to make some concessions in China, in fact,
Speaker 1: at the time, promised that it would abide by what
Speaker 1: it called one country, two systems. Hong Kong would be
Speaker 1: part of China one country, but Hong Kong would be
Speaker 1: allowed to maintain something of its distinctive British style government.
Speaker 1: That's the two systems part of it. Seen in terms
Speaker 1: of national self interest, no reason really to expect that
Speaker 1: China would stick with that deal when there was no
Speaker 1: one there to force them to do so. And of
Speaker 1: course no other can tell China what to do when
Speaker 1: it comes to Hong Kong. So if you were a
Speaker 1: pragmatist or a realist, you wouldn't think it was worth
Speaker 1: risking your life going to the streets to protest against
Speaker 1: Chinese sovereignty there. But on the other hand, if you
Speaker 1: see politics more broadly as a zone in which human
Speaker 1: beings try to express their highest aspirations, their ideals, their goals,
Speaker 1: then you can only look on with some degree of admiration,
Speaker 1: albeit in my case slightly horrified admiration, at these young
Speaker 1: protesters who really want Hong Kong to have some kind
Speaker 1: of de facto autonomy from the b A moth that
Speaker 1: is the People's Republic of China. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: it's not like a young Hong Kong or can be
Speaker 1: deeply nostalgic for British imperial rule. It's not like the
Speaker 1: British applied a democracy in Hong Kong. Sure there were
Speaker 1: some local choices of figures, but really the colony was
Speaker 1: run by a Governor General appointed in Westminster in London.
Speaker 1: It was an empire and Hong Kong was a part
Speaker 1: of that empire. Nevertheless, somehow the history of a period
Speaker 1: of time in which there was greater independence, greater freedom
Speaker 1: of speech, and greater opportunity to stand up and say
Speaker 1: what you like and don't like, has appealed to the
Speaker 1: minds of young people who are then making this very
Speaker 1: brave and from a realist standpoint, very foolhardy. Stand what
Speaker 1: does that mean for the rest of us? How should
Speaker 1: we feel when we watch the looming cloud of Chinese
Speaker 1: troops being transferred into Hong Kong to send the message
Speaker 1: to the protesters that if you don't back down, there
Speaker 1: could be very serious and violent consequences. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's an opportunity for us to realize that if our
Speaker 1: only conception of international politics is one that's framed in
Speaker 1: terms of pure power. Then you just have to say, oh,
Speaker 1: those poor SAPs, you know, why are they taking these risks.
Speaker 1: It's all going to end badly for them. That's a
Speaker 1: cynical attitude, and it's a cynical attitude that leaves us
Speaker 1: unable to address the more fundamental to me aspirational or
Speaker 1: moral question, which is how should humans live? Should humans
Speaker 1: actually deserve to have the right to have a say
Speaker 1: in their futures? Is it okay just to say that
Speaker 1: the People's Republic of China with its form of government,
Speaker 1: is the appropriate form of government for the people living
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong, And I want to say, no, we
Speaker 1: really isn't It is appropriate for human beings to try
Speaker 1: to govern themselves. It's inspiring to see people trying to
Speaker 1: do their best. It's moving to see people nobly taking
Speaker 1: a risk, risks to themselves in order to demand some
Speaker 1: form of independence. We shouldn't be pure cynics about foreign affairs,
Speaker 1: because if we are, there's not much left to our
Speaker 1: moral stance. All we can then say is the powerful
Speaker 1: do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.
Speaker 1: At the same time. The real world is the real world.
Speaker 1: The United States is limited in what it can do
Speaker 1: to influence China with respect to what's happening in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying give up on a pragmatism. You
Speaker 1: need to use pragmatic tools to get where you want.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is, when we set our goals
Speaker 1: for how we want the world to be, we can't
Speaker 1: just assume that the powerful get what they want. We
Speaker 1: have to also simultaneously believe in the possibility and the
Speaker 1: desirability of making the world a more just and fair
Speaker 1: place than it currently is, even under circumstances where getting
Speaker 1: there is very, very difficult. Indeed. Deep Background is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Genecott,
Speaker 1: with engineering by Jason Gambrel and Jason Rostkowski. Our showrunner
Speaker 1: is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music is composed by Luis
Speaker 1: gera special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. Is Deep Background