In her article, Cheryl Harris describes whiteness as a form of property. To accentuate her argument for whiteness as property, Harris calls on the Lockean view of property. Locke’s claim that "every man has a 'property' in his own 'person,"(Sec. 118, Two Treatises) prompted the assertion that an individual’s own physical self was her or his property. Harris continues with the idea that whiteness is property by asserting that being white or “passing” as white, provides an individual with certain legal, material and social benefits. For Harris, whiteness as property has permeated throughout the US’s legal system (for example through ideas of property laws). Furthermore, whiteness has permitted individuals to material privileges such as can be access to better higher education, and social entitlements such as the setting the standards for group identity.
Most notably, recent Supreme Court decisions regarding affirmative action have failed to dismantle whiteness as property. Harris argues that these cases fail to reconstruct the notion of who “merits” education. The point that I thought was particularly apt was Harris’ redefined idea of merit. Many of the recent Court cases claim that affirmative action creates a preference for diversity over merit, and that this preference undermines the quality of higher educational institutions. Most often, merit is equated with statistical data such as GPA and test scores, seemingly unbiased data (which one can argue is biased as there are significant barriers to exceeding in this criteria if one has not been afforded quality education or adequate test preparation). However, Harris questions why only these specific data points should be considered when assessing merit. Harris calls on the reader to rethink the definition of merit when she posits that the traditional definition of merit is a “part of the natural order of things that cannot legitimately be disturbed” (1778). Merit as a concept instead should be seen through the “distribute justice lens, …on…the proper allocation in the absence of the distortion of racial oppression” (1784). Echoing Harris, just because we have always recognized merit one way, what merits this particular definition of merit, especially if the concept was set up under a system determined by certain white ideals? I agree with Harris that the concept of merit is too narrowly defined and, if it is to be used as one of the highest weighted factors in higher education admissions, should be reevaluated.
Cool post. We will have to get clearer in class on what it is to view merit through a distributive rather than a corrective lens. It is one of the striking facts academic admissions that it can take into account geographic diversity, and does, but not racial diversity, and it can take into account leadership ability, alumni connections, musical ability, and likely beneficial contributions to society as components of "merit," but not racial diversity or any race related factors.
ReplyDeleteIsabella,
ReplyDeleteAt the end of your post, you say that if we are going to weigh merit heavily in decisions such as higher education admissions, merit needs to be reevaluated. I think that while Harris would agree with that statement, she has a very different idea of the role individual merit should play in such decisions, and should occupy in relation to affirmative action.
Harris quotes Fiscus’s rejection of the claim of white innocence, and I think that this is one point in her article where it is clear that Harris privileges corrective distributive justice over in-the-moment justice for every individual. Fiscus explains that although “The criteria [that seem to favor white people in decisions such as admissions] are likely to be right for measuring immediate merit …. They are wrong for measuring distributive justice” (1784). This quotation suggests that even if the conventional and accepted definition of merit correctly identifies the most qualified candidates, those candidates should not always be admitted or accepted solely on the basis of their merit. Harris adds. “a distributive justice framework does not focus primarily on guilt and innocence, but rather on entitlement and fairness,” (1783) seeming to imply that she is more interested in what is holistically fair than who is guilty or innocent. In all, I think that Harris would insist that no matter how effectively we reevaluate, reformat, or redesign the accepted conception of merit, we need to start weighing each candidate’s individual merit significantly less heavily in decisions such as higher education admissions.