Pro: Affirmative action is an important part of balancing equality in the work environment and universities, and understanding its history is pivotal.
Kristen Schultz
Contributing Writer
To determine the value of affirmative action, its legislative and judicial history, as well as the present hiring and admitting practices of corporations and universities must be examined.
It is clear that the government needed to create laws to protect
peopleagainst the discrimination highlighted in the civil-rights movement. On March 6, 1961, President John F. Kennedy made an executive order to create the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and used federal funds to protect individuals from racial discrimination at work.
The order has since been modified by a number of presidents.
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, establishing more specific legislation, prohibiting discrimination based on “race, color, religion or national origin.” The following year, Johnson made another executive order requiring government contracts to take action to hire minorities, and that contractors must ensure equality in hiring.
Forty years later, opponents advocate the complete elimination of all rules concerning race arguing that unlike during the time of the civil-rights movement, these are no longer an issue. Rather, they argue that people should be blind to these factors.
This approach fails to take into consideration the fact that discrimination still exists for all types of minorities. Minorities are not getting the same opportunities as non-minorities in the workplace and in universities. While many argue that racial awareness in hiring employees and admitting students is reverse discrimination, this argument fails to consider that there are other, non merit-based factors that play a role in the hiring and admissions processes.
SAT scores and GPA are not the only factors college admissions committees consider. Often, lower scores can be offset by athletic ability, debate skills, musical or artistic talent, spirituality (in private schools) and so forth. These students are not taking away from the university’s environment or discriminating against students who may have received higher SAT scores.
Rather, these students bring specific skills that are desirable for a university. Athletes, for example, entertain and represent the university. They are acknowledged for their specific excellence, as people who have something to bring to the university that other students, who may have had higher scores, cannot provide.
Students’ unique backgrounds should not be overlooked in fear of reverse discrimination, but should serve as one of the many factors that admissions should be conscious of in selecting applicants.
The U.S. Constitution was created as a living document — laws are not set in stone. Over the years, the courts have adjusted laws according to specific circumstances of racial discrimination in order to attempt to prevent discrimination. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that race was a legitimate factor in school admissions.
With setting the stage, many more Supreme Court cases emerged — challenging and redefining the terms and conditions of discrimination. Bakke has since been overturned, but laws continue to respond to the changes in society.
On Nov. 3, 1997, California enacted a vague and less-descriptive law, Proposition 209, which states, “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.”
Washington State soon followed California’s lead, abolishing affirmative action by passing the I-200 initiative. On Feb. 22, 2000, Florida banned race as a factor in college admissions. However, in Michigan, in Gratz v. Bollinger, race was ruled as an allowed factor in University of Michigan’s admission policy.
Lastly, on June 23, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that “race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers ‘a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.’” However, the Supreme Court also ruled that University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions program quota-like admission tactics had to be modified.
This history and the rulings of the court point to the important commitment of presidents to this important movement and the rigorous judicial review that it has received.
It is clear that a person’s background, character and experiences are important factors to consider — and race can be an influential part of that background. California’s 209, or Washington’s I-200 may be sufficient in providing equality for all people, regardless of race, and thus, affirmative action may not be necessary provided students and employees are justly treated.
Discrimination is not obsolete and should not be ignored, but rather the government-regulated discrimination is merely in an equality “balancing” period, which has become more sensitive to reverse discrimination. It is not too far fetched to believe that a more-defined or a better-designed system for monitoring equality may be developed in future times where the current law does not protect citizens’ equality.
As Pepperdine students, our views should not be set in stone. Instead, we should evaluate the current situation in an educated manner — accepting the history of affirmative action, becoming aware of the current state of discrimination and trusting that the law will continue to adapt to support the principles of affirmative action that are right and just, to balance inequalities.
Con: The use of racial preferences undermines the achievements of minority scholars, athletes and professionals through the lowering of standards.
Bryceson Tenold
Contributing Writer
Affirmative action, enacted in 1965 by President Johnson, seeks to level the playing field and to make equality a reality, not just an idea. It has been a hotly debated issue in the past decade, and after nearly 40 years of use, it is reasonable to evaluate its effectiveness as well as its justice.
Ironically, it is racism that initially disqualifies affirmative action as a useful tool to combat unfairness; the program, by its very nature, assumes that all people are racist. That is, those who support affirmative action assume that if there was no affirmative action, minorities would not be let into college, would not be hired for a job and would be essentially in chains.
Better yet, imagine if someone were to propose that individuals only be admitted to college based on merit. Would they not be called a racist? This is because there is an underlying assumption that some minorities — blacks are usually mentioned first — cannot compete with the rest of America. Now, which of the two ideas is racist? The first statement is based on the principle that everyone should be judged by the content of their character, that is, by things that they can control; the second argues that minorities should be given special access because of their skin color.
So then, are you a racist? Are any of our admissions counselors, professors or administrators racist? I certainly have not met any racist administrators, and in this age of racism fever in the media, any suspects would have been exposed and removed.
Second, supporters of affirmative action claim specific minorities — originally blacks, but now it has been extended to groups including women, Latinos and Native Americans, are not capable of success without the government’s help.
As a public, we state that some minorities will remain in poverty unless the benevolent, privileged class reaches down and scoops them out of the mire. This is an insult to these minorities and to humanity in general. Did former slave George Washington Carver become a great scientist because of racial preferences? Was Jackie Robinson accepted to UCLA because of quotas, and did he become a great baseball player because of political pressure on Major League Baseball? Certainly not. These great Americans lived in racially tense times, and yet it would insult their work-ethic, achievements and character to say that they owed their successes to some legislator who righteously opened the road to fame for them.
These two factors, assumed racism and incapability, lead to resentment among those excluded from affirmative action, and give people justification to doubt the abilities of minorities. It reinforces stereotypes and thus, has led to reverse racism.
So then, has affirmative action worked? After 40 years there should be at least some upward mobility in the socio-economic arena and some advancement in the realm of academia and education. And yet, it appears that affirmative action has led to an entitlement attitude and has put minorities, especially blacks, in a worse positions.
According to Walter Williams, a black economist at George Mason University, “nationally there’s over a 200 SAT score gap between blacks and Hispanics on the one hand, and whites and Asians on the other.”
Asians are a minority group disadvantaged by affirmative action because they are expected to perform well in school and on standardized tests, and yet Asians as a group have also suffered severe racism, outperforms the minorities supposedly being helped by affirmative action.
High-school education for blacks looks even worse with case studies like in Washington D.C., where more than 50 percent of the students from 12 of its 19 schools test below average in math and have similarly poor levels in reading. The plight of these minorities toughens when they receive preference to enter an academic institution they are not academically prepared to attend. Is it any wonder then that only 46 percent of blacks complete college in six years, compared to 67 percent of white students according to an Education Trust report?
With regard to economic development caused by affirmative action, Thomas Sowell, a black economist from the Hoover Institute, has noted that blacks have risen at a slower rate than they were during the 1940s and 1950s. He has also brought to light that “the rise of blacks into professional and similar occupations was faster in the five years preceding the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than in the five years following its passage.”
Social advancement also declined after the 1950s. Dinesh D’Souza, a political writer of East Indian decent, rejects slavery as the destructive force against the current black family, and instead mentions the 70 percent illegitimacy rate of black children. From 1900 to 1960 the rate hovered at 20 percent, but since then it has more than tripled.
Even Bill Cosby is on the road now, speaking to black communities about pulling themselves up by the bootstraps. Among other things, Cosby addresses “a pathological culture that has emerged among many blacks referring to one another as “niggers” and music that refers to black women as “bitches” and “whores.”
Clearly, affirmative action has not worked. It seems that, as the reason for affirmative action, blacks would have at least stayed at the educational, economical and social levels of the 1960s, instead of the degenerating. Affirmative action has failed, and perhaps now people will want a truly colorblind America. Not one where we are judged by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.
1-20-2005