Thinking Out Loud: On The Personal, The Political, The Public And The Private (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF Page A

affirmative action programs say they are opposing the rank unfairness of preferential treatment. But there was no great hue and cry when colleges were candid about wanting to have geographic diversity, perhaps giving the kid from Montana an edge. There has been no national outcry when legacy applicants whose transcripts were supplemented by Dad’s alumnus status—and cash contributions to the college—were admitted over more qualified comers. We somehow discoveredthat life was not fair only when the beneficiaries happened to be black.
    And so the chasm widens. The old myth was the black American incapable of prosperity. It was common knowledge that welfare was purely a benefits program for blacks; it was common knowledge although it was false. The percentage of whites on public assistance is almost identical with the percentage of blacks.
    The new myth is that the world is full of black Americans prospering unfairly at white expense, and anecdotal evidence abounds. The stories about the incompetent black co-worker always leave out two things: the incompetent white co-workers and the talented black ones. They also leave out the tendency of so many managers to hire those who seem most like themselves when young.
    “It seems like if you’re a white male you don’t have a chance,” said another young man on a campus where a scant 5 percent of his classmates were black. What the kid really means is that he no longer has the edge, that the rules of a system that may have served his father well have changed. It is one of those good-old-days constructs to believe it was a system based purely on merit, but we know that’s not true. It is a system that once favored him, and others like him. Now sometimes—just sometimes—it favors someone different.

TYSON IS NOT MAGIC
February Q, 1992
    Consider the case of two champions. Both are the best at what they do; both are black. And both are considered heroes to kids in communities that sorely lack them. Magic Johnson is the one who has taught young men to use condoms. Mike Tyson is the one who has taught them to use women.
    Mr. Tyson is on trial in Indianapolis, charged with raping a contestant in a black beauty pageant. People line up to shake his hand as he enters the courtroom, his atomic torso packed into a fine suit. He gets millions of dollars for doing within the perimeter of a ring what in the real world brings you an assault charge. This must be confusing.
    People say his eighteen-year-old accuser is a gold digger, that a man so sought after by women need not force anyone to submit to him. Such a remark not only confuses sex and rape but ignores the central fact of Tyson’s life: his profession is aggression. His trial is, inexplicably, being covered in the sports sections of many papers, as though it were just another bout. Perhaps thatis how he sees it. Perhaps that is how he saw the night in question: I got her on the ropes now.
    The Tyson trial brings to mind the prosecution of William Kennedy Smith, who was acquitted of rape in Palm Beach. There is the same bedrock suggestion that a woman who goes to a private spot with a man in the early morning hours should know that sexual contact is inevitable and any story of force incredible.
    Mr. Smith’s lawyer, Roy Black, has predicted that Mr. Tyson will be acquitted and has said he would have liked to defend him. (At a bar-association luncheon he also added that Mr. Smith’s testimony describing two sexual encounters within a half hour had “helped him with dates,” illustrating that an attorney must have many skills, but having good taste need not be among them.) Part of the Smith defense was that his behavior was perhaps caddish but not criminal. Mr. Tyson’s lawyers have taken this even further. They suggest that their client is such a notorious lech that any woman who goes near him knows the risks.
    I’ve got only eight hundred words, so I can’t recount all reported Tyson maulings. There was the woman from