Now I'm watching with great interest the administration's recent ruling that they were going to reverse some Obama instructions about how to deal with college and college admissions. And the idea is that Asians and whites are being discriminated against in favor of other candidates because of racial, I don't know, quotas or rules or priorities or something.

So there's no question that the old rule was racist because it was actually designed to be. You know, nobody was hiding the fact that the rule was meant to be racist in terms of college admission. But the argument, if we're being fair, the argument is that a little bit of racism in college administration can get you to a better or less racist, more fair world. I'm not taking a side on that. I'm just saying that that was the argument.

And so the president has decided to go the other way and just say no to racism.

Now like most things, and for those of you who stayed with me I'll get to my good point, have you noticed that the world will treat this latest decision about how to treat college admissions in terms of race, they'll treat it as a binary. They're going to say that's a good idea or that's a terrible idea and you're a big ol' racist. You know there's no doubt that that's how it's going to be treated. It's either right and fair or you're a big ol' racist. There's no such thing as gray areas or in between in this case.

I would like to put the following frame on this, if I may. There in this great arc of racism where we have, let's say you do it in the right direction, where you're starting with maximum racism back in the days of the pre-Civil War and the Civil War where you had actual slavery, maximum racism. And then civil war's over, you don't have slavery but things are still really bad. And then you've got the civil rights movement and that helps a lot and things are getting better and better and it's approaching fair, right?

It starts way up here. Racism, big problem, Civil War, civil rights movement, people getting more awake, more aware, Obama's president, getting smaller. At some point in that path from horrible to fair, somewhere around here your best strategy is to get rid of the artificial rules. You don't want to wait until things are equal because if you've waited until there actually is something like equality and at the same time you've got rules favoring one over the other that's actually worse for the people who are favored.

Why? How would you like to be black, get a college education, you graduate, and then everybody who sees your college degree thinks probably not quite qualified, might have got a little help there. How the hell would you like that? You wouldn't like that a bit.

So my point is that the right time to get rid of these artificial rules about racism is not when you've achieved equality. That's too late. If you're being smart and you want to do what's best for both sides or all sides in this case, you want to get rid of the artificial constraints just short of fairness, just before you're fair. Because that's how you get the last part. You need to get rid of the artificial constraints so that the people who were helped by them can close that last gap just by effort and hard work. Because you want to get to the finish line equal. You don't want to get to the finish line equal with an asterisk. You don't want an asterisk on your equality.

So at some point you've got to get rid of the artificial rules, get rid of the asterisk, let people just compete on quality. And whether the outcomes come out exactly the same or not, they probably won't, just because nothing is ever completely equal.

But getting back to the college race requirement rules, the question should not be should we take these rules, the Obama rules, off or should we keep them. It's the wrong question.

Here's the right question: Is it the right time to take the rules off? Because there is a time to take the rules off, to just say look, race doesn't count anymore. We got close enough, not equal, not equal, but close enough. So it's just smarter to take the asterisks off because there are a whole bunch of completely qualified minorities getting into college on total skill, hard work, doing all the right things. And those poor bastards are graduating with an asterisk. That's not good because there's always going to be that little doubt. Yeah, that's a Harvard degree but did they get a little help getting into Harvard? That's an asterisk on your degree. You don't want that.

All right. So here's the point. I don't know and I don't know that anybody's smart enough to know when is the exact right time to take the asterisk off. It's before you get completely even. It's somewhere here and we might be there, we might not be. But that's what we should be arguing. We should be debating whether or not it's time to take the rules off, not whether rules should be taken off yes or no. It's not a yes or no. It's a now or wait. That's all it is.

As soon as you think of it in terms of yes or no you've missed the entire argument. You're completely missing the whole conversation. It is a path and at some point the asterisk needs to come off for everybody. We might not be there and that would be an argument I would certainly listen to. Or we might be close enough that doing it now is going to get you to where you want to be. But let's not be giving black people degrees with asterisks on them forever.

All right. There was a time when it made perfect sense, I'd have to say. And by the way let me give you some background on my own experience. A number of you have read this in my book, etc.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s I was working for a bank and I was picked to be a higher management person. Yeah, I was identified as somebody who was going to work their way up the ranks. I had the right education, etc. And my boss called me into her office one day and told me that the company was getting a lot of pressure because they didn't have any diversity in upper management. They didn't have enough women. I think there was one woman in upper management and zero minorities.

And so the press noticed that, put some pressure on the company which was a big bank, Crocker Bank at the time. And my boss called me in her office and said look, let me get rid of the mystery here, and said I have to be honest with you. The order came down. We can't promote any white males. And some people don't believe that they told me this directly but I promise you they told me that directly. We can't promote you because you're white and male and there's nothing we can do about it because the order has come down that we need to have some diversity in senior management.

So I quit because it wasn't my job to make the world a better place. It was my job in a capitalist world to maximize my own situation and it wasn't going to happen there.

And by the way, I always appreciated that they told me that directly. Imagine if they hadn't told me that. Imagine if I had to just wonder, you know, maybe I'm not working hard enough. Why is my career not going right? I thought I'd be promoted by now. So I always appreciated the honesty.

So I quit and then I went to work for the phone company, Pacific Bell at the time, the local phone company. And I got on the management track and as soon as I got on the management track I was like yeah, I'm gonna get promoted to the big time. I was finishing my MBA in the evenings at Berkeley. So I had a Berkeley MBA. I had some decent job experience by then. I was an up-and-comer. I said the right things. I wore the right clothes and I was on the track. They put me on the management fast track.

And then my boss called me into his office and said exactly the same thing the bank told me. Well we just got busted by the press who had just noticed that we have no diversity in senior management. And until further notice, which could be God knows how many years, we can't promote you because you're a white male. And again, I promise you this was said to me directly. White male. You can't get promoted and we don't know when this will change.

All right. So what did I do? I started a comic strip on the side and that became Dilbert. So that worked out for me.

Now for most people things aren't gonna work out as well as they did for me. But here's my larger point. When I tell this story, and you know for years I couldn't even tell the story. Can you imagine this? Those of you who are younger, you can't really put your head in those times if you're younger. You had to be there.

But imagine that I couldn't even tell you that story for I don't know 15 or 20 years because even telling the story would have made me look like a racist. You're hearing this right? If I had told the story of how I had been racially discriminated against and lost two promising careers, I would have been called a racist for being racially discriminated against. That's what it was like in those times. It's not like that today.

So today I can tell you the story as I just did. But let me put my spin on it. During these times when I lost two careers to racism, you know sort of an industrial racism that was intentional, I didn't feel as bad as you might imagine because it was true that we didn't have any diversity and it is a better world if we have some. So I do buy into, I mean I completely buy into the goal which is to have a diverse successful society in which we just stop talking about all that stuff. You know we just stop mattering. Like I want to live in a world where we just don't even have the freakin' conversation.

And the only way to get there in the beginning was with something closer to brutal, right? So what happened to me was I was on the other end of the brute force. They had to really force some rule changes to allow some people in the door that were having trouble getting in, promoting people up, supporting them, etc.

And now there's a ton more diversity in all of those companies today. If it happened, you know, if I were working in a corporation and somebody called me into their office today and said we can't promote you because you're a white male, today that's a lawsuit, right? I would walk out of the office with my phone in my hand calling my lawyer if it happened in 2018 because it's a lot easier for people to get a good grip in a corporate world and work their way up. And I think there are a lot more people who are really trying to coach and mentor and do the right thing for minorities and for women and everything else. So it's a different world today.

My point being that when things were terrible, there were literally no minorities represented in senior management in these two companies. When things were that bad you did sort of need a big blunt instrument. You know the way to fight a fire sometimes is with a fire. The way that they dealt with racism was with more racism. It was just sort of a, you could call it a productive racism if you will. In other words they discriminated hard against white people temporarily. In the long arc of history it was temporary. Seemed like forever if you were living it. But they were trying to right something.

And when it got a little closer to right where it is now, it's nowhere near any kind of equal representation but I would say at this point if you were black or female and you wanted a job in corporate America it would be a fairly easy thing if you had the qualifications. So I think it's a different world.

So my point being that the tools you use have to adjust for how big the problem is. If you've got slavery you need a big tool like a civil war. Oh my god that's extreme. And then when you've got still a big problem but it's civil rights maybe you need to march. Some people are gonna get hurt. Civil disobedience. It's a big tool but it's not as big as a civil war.

And now when civil rights have been successful at least directionally successful you've got a smaller difference and Obama said well I'm gonna deal with the smaller difference by telling colleges hey colleges you can take race into account in some special ways and maybe that'll help get you a little closer to equality.

And then President Trump says all right in his opinion we're close enough, not equal, everybody doesn't have equal stuff but we're close enough that it's time to take the asterisks off the degrees of the people who earned real degrees by doing all the right stuff. They don't get an asterisk anymore. That's not helping.

All right. So that's sort of your final step, is to take the asterisks off. And that's where we are or at least that's where the argument should be. The argument should be are we at the take the asterisks off step or not. That's a fair discussion.

But if we're treating this as a yes or no about these college rules it's the wrong discussion.

All right. I don't like that you discount my degree because of my color. Well I'm telling you that we want to be in a world where that's not even a question. And right now we're in a world where there is a question and that doesn't seem fair to me. So if you're saying that I'm discounting it you're missing the point. It's not about me. I'm saying that the world wants to look at your degree and say oh yeah, a degree is a degree. Nobody wants to feel the invisible asterisk.

Degrees are overrated. Somebody says I agree. I agree about that.