“Every talented and qualified student deserves an opportunity to attend the college of their choice. Affirmative Action existed to support that notion. Legacy admissions exists  to undermine it.” 

So says NAACP President Derrick Johnson, pictured below. I don’t think he meant that. I think what he meant to say is that the outcomes of practices like “legacy admissions” are at odds with the outcomes of practices like Affirmative Action. The effects of one principle go this way; the effects of the other, go that way.

So, if that is what he meant, why did he say what he said? I have two explanations, both drawn from my own treasure chest of types of explanations. The first is that he got trapped in the sentence and either didn’t notice what he was saying or wasn’t willing to give it up.

I have done both of those.

Look at the parallelism of “exists to support that notion” and “exists to undermine it.” And if I could just export some of my own vulnerabilities onto President Johnson, I suspect that that line came from a speech—probably a speech given many times. It’s nice in written form, but it’s really powerful in a speech. You can almost hear the oral cadence in the words.

I don’t give a lot of speeches, but I have given a lot of lectures and I can tell you that a line that “worked” last semester comes back to my tongue when we get to federalism or civil rights or whatever in this semester. It waves its hand. “Use me again,” it calls. “Remember how well I worked last time.” I’d call it “seductive” except that the whole transaction is almost entirely unconscious.

I took this quotation from Vox Sentences, where it was featured. Someone thought it was clickable. They were right in my case, of course, but I think that parallelism probably did it’s work at Vox Sentences just as it attracted me and all those people in President Johnson’s previous audiences who responded noticeably to it.

So the first explanation I offer is that either he was in thrall to the parallelism of the sentence and couldn’t bring himself to give it up or—more likely—just didn’t notice that he had said that the purpose of legacy admissions as a policy was to undermine Affirmative Action. Legacy admissions is an ancient practice. Affirmative Action is an innovation. Really?

The second explanation I offer is that the notion of effects on the one hand and intention on the other, has gotten blurry. Let me offer a recent illustration.

The alder helps to improve poor wet ground for the benefit of other plants.

That is the first sentence on a sign at an abbey we visited in Ireland recently. It was part of a family trip [1] When I saw the sign, I took a picture of it and began looking for a chance to have a conversation with the grandson. I wasn’t looking for a fight, but I was looking for a discussion in which he could plausibly take one side and I the other and both feel good about it. It was an ideal topic for that kind of argument. Who cares that much about alder trees? Who cares that much about inadvertent attributions of intention? Beside me, that is.

It worked just as I had hoped. I showed him the sentence. I explained why I didn’t like it. I argued that it wasn’t exactly wrong as it was, but that it didn’t draw a big bright line, as I would prefer, between the intentions of the alders and their effect.

I will argue momentarily that we have gotten accustomed to just ignoring the difference and that shows up in sentences like the one the NAACP president used. I don’t care all that much about legacy admissions and even less about alder trees but inadvertent allegations of intentionality drive me nuts.

I offered my grandson an alternate phrasing. “Let’s change it,” I said, “to
‘The alder helps to improve poor wet ground TO the benefit of other plants’.” That makes it clear that improving the soil may be the effect of the alder trees, but it is not their intent. He didn’t immediately see the difference between between “to” and “for” in that sentence, and when he did, he said he preferred “for.” I pushed a little. I made sure that he understood that using “for” allowed the interpretation that “improving poor wet ground” was the intention of these alder trees. He said it was a risk he was willing to take.

A lot of people are willing to take that risk and in consequence, the difference between “to” and “for” has become nearly invisible. And that is my second explanation for how the NAACP President managed to put his stirring charge in the language he did. What was once a bright line—effect v. intention—has become a dim shadow and in the bright light of composition, even a careful user of language can ride right across it and never know.

It is not, of course, that great civilizations rise and fall on such matters, but it makes a difference to me and my status as a dilettante needs a little buffing from time to time. This should do it.

[1] The grandson who is the occasion for this part of the story is the son of one of my many step-daughters. When he reads this he will call and I will say, “You know who you are.”