On Wednesday October 22, 2008, the Spencer Foundation began its October meeting of the Board of Directors by hosting the annual Bixby Lecture. Eponymously named for Lyle Spencer’s friend, attorney, and former member of the Board of Directors, Frank Bixby, the lecture is given each year by a nationally recognized scholar of education. This year’s lecture was delivered by Elizabeth Anderson, the John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, and was titled “The Imperative of Integration: Race and Education.” Before delving into some of the details of Professor Anderson’s argument, it is worth reviewing some of the ideas which situate her work.

Among the many arguments for affirmative action and racial integration, the most prominent in scholarship and popular imagination derives from what is know in philosophy as fair equality of opportunity, roughly the idea that children from every race and socioeconomic background should have a equal chance at achieving positions of prestige, power, and wealth. With the ruling in Brown v. Board, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, black Americans have fair equality of opportunity on a formal, legal level. However, they disproportionately experience poverty, are educated in underperforming schools, and face disparate rates of incarceration. So while fair equality of opportunity is no longer denied black Americans de jure, it is denied de facto.

Given these disparities in life chances, affirmative action and racial integration in education have been seen as ways to increase fair equality of opportunity for black Americans. The hope is that granting access to better schools and increased educational resources will improve black Americans’ chances of achieving positions of prestige, power, and wealth. Of course, affirmative action programs are remarkably controversial – not because anyone thinks racial disparities are unproblematic but because people disagree vehemently on the best way to remedy them. Where proponents of affirmative action programs think racial disparities would be best remedied by increasing black Americans’ access to valuable educational resources, opponents think racial disparities would best be remedied by prohibiting government from using race for any purpose, however salutary the effects. Hence Justice Thomas in Missouri v. Jenkins: “It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.”

Professor Anderson’s talk was innovative in part because it avoids this usual paradigm for discussions of affirmative action and racial integration. Instead of arguing directly that integration will increase fair equality of opportunity for black Americans, as most proponents of integration do, she provided an independent argument, grounded in democratic theory, for racial integration. In what follows, I trace her argument.

Anderson’s key insight is that for democratic reasons, integration is beneficial not only for black Americans, but also for white Americans. Drawing on democratic theory, she argues that one of the important qualifications of democratic citizens and a democratic elite (where “elite” is defined as those holding positions of power and influence) is awareness of the interests of all other citizens and a disposition to serve those interests, as well as the technical knowledge to make good decisions and competence in respectful interaction. Her argument, then, is that segregation deprives citizens and elites of these democratic qualifications and that education in integrated settings is a necessary condition for achieving these qualifications.

More specifically, segregation deprives all citizens, and especially elites, of knowledge of disadvantaged groups through three cognitive deficits: 1) ignorance of the problems faced by and constraints on the disadvantaged group; 2) lack of cultural capital to interact respectfully with the disadvantaged; 3) perpetuation of stereotypes of the disadvantaged. Moreover, these deficits exist even among people who explicitly endorse equality, and “group blind” norms. Anderson used several visceral examples to drive the point home, the most poignant of which was the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans. Photos taken of New Orleans citizens were differentially captioned based on the race of those pictured. White residents who understandably stole food and water to survive were said to have “found” those goods, black residents who did the same were labeled “looters.”

Integration is an appropriate remedy for these cognitive deficits because of what is known in philosophy as second-person knowledge, or recognition of and responsiveness to the claims others make on us during the course of interaction. The prototypical illustration of second person knowledge is when Person A steps on Person B’s toe, and Person B exclaims something that makes Person A moved his or her foot. In this example, Person A has not merely learned that Person B was in pain (a descriptive, impersonal statement), but has also acknowledged that Person B is making a claim on him or her to move. Person A recognizes Person B as someone with a separate point of view and separate interests that must be taken into account. This sort of second-person knowledge can only be produced through interaction.

Professor Anderson cited an impressive array of empirical scholarship to support her argument that integration enhances second-person knowledge and promotes democratic citizenship. For example, racially integrated juries deliberate for a longer period of time than racially homogenous juries, are more attentive to missing evidence, make fewer factual errors, and are more likely to consider the possibility that race and racism have influenced the trial. These benefits are thought to follow from the fact that in a racially integrated jury, jurors have to justify their opinions to a more diverse group of people and are therefore more likely to consider various perspectives. As one influential study put it: “Knowing that they would have to justify their judgments to a diverse group may very well have increased Whites’ sense of accountability, an experience which previous research suggests would lead to more complex thought processes and affect how individuals weighted the trial evidence.” The second-person advantages of integration are apparent in other contexts, including police behavior, fluidity of social interaction, and facial recognition.

Arguing for integration on the basis that it enhances qualifications for democratic citizenship sits perhaps uneasily with the fact that integration and affirmative action programs have had increasingly dismal success at the ballot box and in the courts, a point made by audience member Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. How then should we fit together Professor Anderson’s convincing, independent reason to support affirmative action and integration programs with preexisting arguments for integration?

Professor Anderson herself answers this question in noting that her arguments about race are based on disadvantage. The reason integration is valuable is because it gives those in positions of power second-person knowledge of those less fortunate. It is ultimately disadvantage that we ought to combat. If you think that affirmative action programs and integration are necessary for breaking the intergenerational perpetuation of socioeconomic disadvantage, then Professor Anderson’s argument is a welcome intellectual bulwark. If, on the other hand, you think the best way to get rid of race based disadvantages is to have the government ignore them, her argument is likely to have little traction. In either case, the Spencer Foundation has been integral in funding research in education that bears on these questions and Professor Anderson’s talk was a welcome addition to that canon.

Matthew A. Smith
Research Associate
The Spencer Foundation
October 2008




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