One mindset, which Dweck calls a “fixed mindset,” asserts that whether or not you learn something new is pre-determined; unless you have a natural talent, unless you’re “smart,” you are incapable of learning something new. The contrary mindset, called “growth mindset,” is basically that you can learn new things with some effort and that your effort is the primary factor in success.
Something struck me about the recent controversy over the recent Supreme Court decision on Harvard and UNC’s “affirmative action” policies. The 25-words-or-less summary of the decision is that you can’t end racial discrimination by racial discrimination.
The response from the liberal hive mind was … let’s say interesting. A fair number of them came out with statements that would have made my great-grandfather, born in 1861 and named for the president of the Confederacy, proud. A whole bunch of white liberals came out with statements like, “without affirmative action, higher education will become a whites-only plantation”; reduced to their core belief, they’re saying that “dem darkies ain’t smart enough to get into Harvard on their own.”
But here’s the thing: the fixed mindset is basically characterized by a belief that your ability to learn or to succeed is predetermined by factors outside your control. If you’re not “smart enough” and you’re being “held down by the man,” you won’t be able to get into Harvard, UNC, or law school, and people like Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice couldn’t have succeeded except for affirmative action.
Now, hardly anyone on that side of the divide noticed or recognized that the Asians who brought the suit were responding to explicit racial discrimination. For purposes of radicalized admissions, they were demoted to “honorary white people” who were trying to stand in the way of really entitled People of Appropriate Color, probably because they weren’t really smart enough to know they were being manipulated by white supremacists.