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way, the US government replaced the old state-sanctioned
privileged class with a new state-sanctioned privileged
class, this one with the potent moral authority of victimhood
validating its existence. Affirmative action therefore
is a form of cronyism in the same way that early policies
that primarily benefited white Americans were a form of
cronyism: affirmative action employs government force
to tilt the scales of employment decisions in favor of one
group at the expense of another. Judging people as members
of groups rather than as individuals lays the foundation
for cronyism. When some groups can be favored
over others, people enter the political process to establish
relationships that create privileges for their groups.
Affirmative action in university admissions has
changed the application process from a meritocratic one to
a system that also judges applicants based on arbitrary factors
of race or class in order to engineer a state-approved
level of diversity among the student body. In addition to
the ethical issues involved in granting government privilege
to one group over another, affirmative action has
resulted in many negative unintended consequences for
both its intended beneficiaries and for members of those
groups who do not enjoy government privilege. A survey
of college freshmen found that over half of the students
surveyed opposed affirmative action policies and that the
students who affirmative action policies most often discriminate
against—whites and Asian Americans—were
the most opposed. 11 Additionally, many scholars have
questioned the proposition that affirmative action benefits
minority students. Economist Thomas Sowell, for
instance, points out that many African American students
are admitted to more prestigious universities than their
84 LIBERALISM AND CRONYISM