nsofar as I have a motto, it is this: I should much rather that others be committed to respecting me for the excellences that I exhibit than that their self-identity should turn upon doing things for me.  It is this simple precept that has made me—a black—a conservative among white liberals in the academy.  It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Whoever coined that adage must surely have grasped at a most profound level that good intentions can suck the very life out of a person. 

Of course, good intentions are very important.  We all want to be the object of them.  Good intentions become a problem, however, when their importance has more to do with underwriting the agent’s conception of himself or herself as a wonderful human being than with actually helping the person in need.  In the latter case, we have what I shall refer to as conceited good intentions. 

With conceited good intentions, it is about “Look how wonderful I am for having helped you”.  With genuine good intentions, by contrast, the accent is on you—and not that I have helped you.  With genuine good intentions, gratitude invariably suffices.  For the very point was to help the one in need—and not to do something that would incline third-party individuals to say just how wonderful one is. 

To be sure, there are times, such as being saved from drowning, that we may be indifferent to the intentions with which a person acted on our behalf.  Alas, situations of that sort are few and far between.  And even if I were unquestionably happy about your saving my life, it would still be most annoying if it were manifestly clear that you would not have come near me but for the fact that you saw saving my life as an opportunity to propel yourself into office. 

When I think of white liberals, I am stunned by how interested they (initially) are in helping me and how much they admire me just so long as I underwrite their image of a white who just adores people of color. 

Most significantly, I am stunned by how annoyed most white liberals are when it becomes manifestly clear that I can do rather well on my own. 

My raison d’être is not, and should not be, to validate that whites are not racists, just as a woman’s raison d’être is not, and should not be, to validate that I am not sexist.  To be sure, a woman can validate this in the way that a man cannot.  This claim, however, is different from the claim that her reason for being is to validate me in this way.  And I would be extremely put off by a woman who saw herself as having that sort of role in my life.  She and I could not be lovers.  We couldn’t even be friends.

So far as I can see, white liberals typically do not know how to be comfortable around a black unless the text of their interaction has this content to it: the black validates that they are not racist and they are more interested in looking good for helping the black in question than respecting that black. 

Again, the issue is not whether I need help.  We do not have enough time to count the ways in which I do.  But this is why the distinction between genuine good intentions and conceited good intentions is so important.  When someone with genuine good intentions offers me help, I am invariably ever so grateful. 

However, I do not like being played. 

Words cannot do justice to the gratitude that I have towards those graduate students (for example) who have worked with me and have helped to be better at what I do.  What has unequivocally anchored that gratitude is the manifest genuine good intentions with which these individuals have offered their help. 

Michael Montgomery is a Syracuse University undergraduate who, in the last year or two, has been a fount of intellectual inspiration on a number of fronts.  But just imagine how I would feel if I learnt that his motivation was to get on good terms with a black professor. 

When affirmative action initially started, I think it was anchored in genuine good intentions.  People actually wanted to right a wrong; accordingly, there was an eagerness to put blacks in a situation where they would command respect.

I am not here claiming that the initial conception of affirmative action was justified.  But notice the language: putting blacks in a situation where they would command respect.  My own view has been that this motivation has essentially been replaced by a quite unsavory one, namely that promoting affirmative action is seen by white liberals as the ticket to showcasing themselves as not being racist.  It does not matter that blacks in general are better off.  All that matters is that everyone sees just how committed the whites are to helping blacks.  Indeed, a black who is excels is pretty much an annoyance.

You will notice the deafening silence on the part of white liberals when it comes to extolling the intellectual virtues of Condoleezza Rice.  White conservatives seem to have no trouble recognizing her as a quite talented human being.  Not a whisper from white liberals, however.  And one does not have to agree with someone in order to recognize the individual’s abilities.  Although both John Rawls and Robert Nozick had quite different political views, they both recognized one another as very talented individuals. 

It is manifestly striking to me that the two most conservative graduate students with whom I have worked have been marvelous in their respect for me; whereas most of the dyed-in-the-wool liberal graduate students who have worked with me have been the most lacking in respect for me. 

Recall my so-called motto: I should much rather that others be committed to respecting me for the excellences that I exhibit than that their self-identity should turn upon their doing things for me.

I am not at all persuaded that white liberals are committed to respecting blacks for the excellences that blacks exhibit.  That is why the case of Ms. Rice is so astounding to me.  Whatever one thinks of her politics, the simple truth is that she has shown more grace under fire than most people will ever manage to do in a like situation.  But you would not know that from liberals.

To most of my white colleagues, I am an enigma.  The truth of the matter, though, is that I am rather simple and in many respects quite Pavlovian-like: You consistently show me genuine respect for the excellences, such as they are, that I manage to exhibit, and you have my eternal gratitude.  

I have become a conservative for the simple reason that I hold as a self-evident truth that all human beings are equal.  They only genuine good intentions that people can have towards another have to be anchored in that truth.  Conceited good intentions are just those intentions that get in the way of seeing and affirming that truth. 

One poignant consequence of this truth is that, in ways that would have given enormous delight to many racists, we have made the color of a person’s skin the most significant thing about her or him.  I am a conservative precisely because I fully embrace the ideal of moral progress; and moral progress does not, in any shape or form, embrace a nefarious conception of human beings.  Privileging skin color is a step backwards if ever there was one. 

I missed the full force of that moment in history; and I have no intentions whatsoever of reliving it, no matter what name it goes by.  Alas, it is that fully embraced commitment to not embracing a nefarious past that has turned me into a black conservative. 

For a more extensive discussion of the topic of affirmative action, see my Cincinnatti Law Review article "Equality and the Mantra of Diversity".