AlchemyToday

Last month, John McCain reversed himself on affirmative action. Until at least April of this year he supported affirmative action as implemented by the United States armed forces. That is to say, extremely race-based, but without strict quotas.

The first lesson is that affirmative action in the Army eschews quotas but does have goals. Guidelines for Army promotion boards are to select minority members equivalent to the percentage in the promotion pool. This means that the Army promotion process is based not on the number of minority members in the Army, but on the number of minority members in the pool of potential promotees to the next higher rank. Very important, there are no “timetables” to meet goals.

The motivation for the Army’s promotion policies are obvious: the ranks of officers should culturally mirror those under their command. McCain was consistent in his support of affirmative action in the military (and obviously implemented these policies in the Navy), repeatedly calling the United States armed forces “the greatest equal opportunity employer in the world.”

Now he’s decided this isn’t the case – or has he? In an interview with George Stephanopolous last month, he declared his support for an Arizona ballot initiative to ammend the Arizona constitution to forbid consideration of race or gender in virtually any capacity by the state:

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

This would unquestionably forbid the state from, for example, exactly mimicing the military’s policies when it comes to promotions in the ranks of prison guards, school teachers/administrators, etc. In other words, it seems that McCain’s completely reversed a long-held position, and that in the whir and rumble of the last month, no one’s really bothered to pin him down on whether or not this is the case, what drove his decision, and what ramifications this might have on his supported of continued affirmative action at the federal level both within the military and without.