Affirmative action opponents viewed it as a form of reverse discrimination and believed that college admissions and hiring should be based on the merit of individual applicants, not on a previous history of racial discrimination against any single group. Nathan Glazer, a sociologist, was part of a group of neoconservatives who insisted that affirmative action led to the imposition of racial quotas and a departure from the color-blind goals that Martin Luther King Jr. was said to favor. In the following excerpt, Glazer explains his objections to affirmative action.
We have created two racial and ethnic classes in this country to replace the disgraceful pattern of the past in which some groups were subjected to an official and open discrimination. The two new classes are those groups that are entitled to statistical parity in certain key areas on the basis of race, color, and national origin, and those groups that are not. The consequences of such a development can be foreseen: They are already, in some measure, upon us. Those groups that are not considered eligible for special benefits become resentful. If one could draw a neat line between those who have suffered from discrimination and those who have not, the matter would be simpler. Most immigrant groups have had periods in which they were discriminated against. For the Irish and the Jews, for example, these periods lasted a long time. Nor is it the case that all the groups that are now recorded as deserving official protection have suffered discrimination, or in the same way. . . .
The protected groups include variously the descendants of free immigrants, conquered peoples, and slaves, and a single group may include the descendants of all three categories (e.g., the Puerto Ricans). Do free immigrants who come to this country voluntarily deserve the same protected treatment as the descendants of conquered people and slaves? The point is that racial and ethnic groups make poor categories for the design of public policy. They include a range of individuals who have different legal bases for claims for redress and remedy of grievances. If the categories are designed to correct the injustices of the past, they do not work.
They do not work to correct the injustices of the present either, for some groups defined by race and ethnicity do not seem to need redress on the basis of their economic, occupational, and educational position. The Asian Americans have indeed been subjected to discrimination, legal and unofficial alike. But Chinese and Japanese Americans rank high in economic status, occupational status, educational status. (This does not prevent members of these groups from claiming the benefits that now accrue to them because they form a specially protected category under affirmative action programs.) If they were included in the protected category because they have faced discrimination, then groups in the unprotected categories also deserve inclusion. If they were included because they suffer from a poor economic, occupational, and educational position, they were included in error. So if these ethnic and racial categories have been designed to group individuals with some especially deprived current condition, they do not work well. Just as the Chinese and Japanese and Indians (from India) do not need the protection of the “Asian American” category, the Cubans do not need the protection of the Spanish-surnamed category, the middle-class blacks the protection of the Negro category, in order to get equal treatment today in education and employment. The inequalities created by the use of these categories became sharply evident in 1975 when many private colleges and universities tried to cut back on special aid for racially defined groups, who did indeed include many in need, but also included many in no greater need than “white” or “other” students. But the creation of a special benefit, whether needed or not, is not to be given up easily: Black students occupied school buildings and demanded that the privileges given on the basis of race be retained. This is part of the evil of the creation of especially benefited ethnic and racial categories. . . .
Compensation for the past is a dangerous principle. It can be extended indefinitely and make for endless trouble. Who is to determine what is proper compensation for the American Indian, the black, the Mexican American, the Chinese or Japanese American? When it is established that the full status of equality is extended to every individual, regardless of race, color, or national origin, and that special opportunity is also available to any individual on the basis of individual need, again regardless of race, color, or national origin, one has done all that justice and equity call for and that is consistent with a harmonious multigroup society.
Source: Nathan Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 98–100.