By Kristin S. Ankley
On February 21, 2012 the Supreme Court announced its intention to revisit its prior determination that race may be considered as one of several factors during the admissions process at public universities. Since the Court’s 5-4 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003, universities across the country have seen an increased number of minority students enroll in college. In Grutter, the Court held that the “narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body is not prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause, Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964], or [42 U.S.C.] § 1981. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003). The Grutter decision was not without controversy, however, and many have questioned the wisdom of using race in admissions criteria, arguing that it functions as reverse discrimination, is inconsistent with a merit-based society, and thrusts students with insufficient educational foundations into rigorous programs for which they are not fully prepared.
The case that brought this issue back into the spotlight arose in Texas, where Ms. Abigail Fisher, a Caucasian student, was denied admission to the University of Texas. She is challenging the university’s admission decision, claiming racial discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and federal civil rights laws. Ms. Fisher claims that several minority students with lower grades and test scores were admitted to the university, and that even with her superior credentials she was denied admission. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with Ms. Fisher, and held that Texas’s “holistic, multi-factor approach, in which race is but one of many considerations” is permissible under the Supreme Court’s decision in Grutter. Fisher v. University of Texas, 631 F.3d 213, 218 (5th Cir. 2011). The Fifth Circuit further noted that “[t]he current policy has produced noticeable results,” observing that from 1998 to 2008 the enrollment of African-American students doubled, from 165 to 335. Fisher, 631 F.3d at 226.
Proponents of affirmative action argue that these policies are necessary to redress discrimination, provide equal opportunity for minorities, and increase diversity in the classroom. Justice O’Connor, writing for the majority in Grutter v. Bollinger, stated that the Constitution “does not prohibit the . . . narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” 539 U.S. at 343. Affirmative action polices have certainly increased diversity in university classrooms, helping to foster understanding and acceptance among individuals of differing ethnic, cultural, and racial backgrounds. However, many believe that this benefit has hidden costs.
Opponents argue that affirmative action policies are simply a form of reverse discrimination. According to Althea K. Nagai, Ph.D., a research fellow for the Center for Equal Opportunity, the average disparity in SAT scores between African-American and Caucasian students admitted to the University of Michigan was 190 points in 2005. This is a significant gap, and it has led some to believe that race is not just one factor among several, but a primary or weighted factor, in making admissions decisions at universities with affirmative action policies. Is this reverse discrimination? Opponents urge that it is, and ask us to imagine what would happen if Caucasian students benefited from an institutionalized admissions preference despite having average test scores 190 points below the average African American test score. Opponents don’t discount the benefit of diversity, but argue that affirmative action is not an appropriate means to reach that end because racial preference of any sort compromises one of our most deeply held convictions: equality before the law. Even Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he stated, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” spoke of an ideal where the color of one’s skin would be irrelevant. http://www.mlkonline.net/dream.html.
Opponents also argue that affirmative action does not necessarily benefit the most disadvantaged students. Thomas Sowell, a respected African-American economist, has observed that minority preferences primarily benefit minority applicants from middle- and upper-class backgrounds, and actually hurt economically disadvantaged Caucasian students. This finding likely stems from the reality that fewer students from lower-class families, regardless of race, apply to college at all, and the lower-class Caucasian students who do apply receive no benefit from affirmative action policies. Mr. Sowell argues that if affirmative action were truly meant to remedy a disadvantage, preference would be based on each student’s specific, individual background and personal struggles, and not on the basis of his or her race.
Opponents also claim that affirmative action is actually damaging to minority students because their meritorious achievements are often overlooked or even doubted due to the assumption that their success stems from unearned opportunities awarded solely to increase “diversity.” Justice Clarence Thomas, speaking from his own experience, has identified this effect as one of the most damaging aspects of affirmative action. Justice Thomas received his law degree from Yale, and struggled to find a job after graduating. He explained that during interviews, attorneys treated him “dismissively” and asked “pointed questions, unsubtly suggesting that they doubted [he] was as smart as [his] grades indicated.” In response to this treatment, he stated, “[n]ow I knew what a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference. I was humiliated—and desperate.” http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3667079&page=1. Opponents argue that if opportunities were awarded solely based on merit, this doubt would disappear, and all students, regardless of race, could take pride in their accomplishments knowing full well that they earned them.
A final justification often cited by affirmative action proponents is the need to end educational and economic disparities between races. Few would dispute the importance of this goal, but many dispute affirmative action as the appropriate method used to achieve it. Opponents argue that this problem cannot be addressed through affirmative action because these disparities take root very early in a child’s life, based on factors such as family dynamics, whether the child grew up in a single-parent home, the values instilled by the child’s parents, and inequality in the primary education system. According to the Heritage Foundation, which examined data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, one of the primary drivers of childhood poverty is presence in a single-parent household and dependency on welfare benefits. Based on this theory, the economic disparity among African-American and Caucasian children is partly explained by the fact that 72 percent of African-American children were born out of wedlock in 2008, compared to only 29 percent of Caucasian children.
Opponents argue that a more effective approach to solving racial inequality is to focus on strengthening minority families, which will lead to a more stable and supportive environment where children can flourish. Congress must also make education reform a top priority, as this is where children will learn the skills they need to compete in the college admissions process, and more importantly, in the workforce upon graduation. Opponents argue that if the primary education system was functioning properly, affirmative action wouldn’t be necessary to “level the playing field.” Admittedly, accomplishing change through these methods may be more difficult than simply implementing affirmative action policies, but many believe they would better address the root of the problem and also avoid many of the “cons” of affirmative action.
Both sides of this debate make valid points, and questions surrounding affirmative action may be some of the most difficult ones facing society today. The legal justification for affirmative action, however, appears to rest on shifting ground. The crux of the Court’s ruling in Grutter was its finding that affirmative action promotes a compelling interest: diversity. In the nine years since the Court’s decision, university policies have made strides toward achieving this goal. Twenty-five years ago minorities made up less than 1 percent of the student population at Harvard University, and today that number has climbed to 30 percent. Additionally, many opponents have pointed out that diversity encompasses far more than differences in race. There are many places in the United States where the population is still mostly, if not almost entirely, Caucasian, but even these racially homogenous locations have wealth, poverty, varying religious beliefs, drug abuse, domestic abuse, tremendous successes, and life-altering failures. Diversity cannot be defined solely along racial lines.
Based on these considerations, one of the key questions that the Supreme Court will be forced to examine next term is whether race as a consideration in the university admissions process is still justified as promoting the “compelling interest” of diversity. Justice O’Connor, who penned the majority opinion in Grutter, recognized that such a justification may expire in the future, and warned that “race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time,” as “[e]nshrining a permanent justification for racial preferences would offend [the] fundamental [principle of] equal protection.” 539 U.S. at 342. The question facing the Court next term is whether that time has arrived.
Sources:
http://www.divorcereform.org/pov.html
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1996/sepoct/articles/against.html
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/02/21/139483/supreme-court-to-hear-texas-affirmative.html
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3667079&page=1
http://www.collegeprofiles.com/harvard.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39993685/ns/health-womens_health/t/blacks-struggle-percent-unwed-mothers-rate/#.T2ixinnkaSo
http://www.ceousa.org/attachments/article/548/UM_UGRAD_final.pdf
Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003)
Fisher v. University of Texas, 631 F.3d 213, 218 (5th Cir. 2011)
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, It s all about who you know. For instance, the other day I sent in a job appiicatlon. I told my parents, Mom I sent in my appiicatlon today. She responded, That s great honey, try and find someone who may know someone at the company. Even though I know you re qualified, you get jobs based on who you know. When she said that it really bothered me. I felt I was qualified for the job and if I wasn t then I did not want to get the job. Why do I need to try and find someone who will convince the hiring manager to hire me? I want to EARN my first job. Soon after this encounter I watched our lecture on affirmative action and nepotism and almost laughed. While everyone is arguing and throwing up their fists that affirmative action is unfair, they aren t even looking in the mirror at the advantages they are given as a result of nepotism. I bet every person who has argued against affirmative action has benefited from nepotism. Yet, when push comes to shove, they aren t yelling that nepotism provides an unfair advantage to people who are sometimes unqualified for a job. People don t argue about things that benefit them that s why no one talks about nepotism. People should earn jobs because they qualified, not because their mother knows the man whose son is the CEO of a company. What does that have to do with being qualified for a job? It s not fair to all of the people who work hard, get internships, and build their resumes to apply for jobs they are qualified for. I thought Sam brought up a great point about affirmative action it doesn t mean people who are unqualified are getting jobs they are unqualified for, it simply means, employers are making sure that they are looking at all candidates equally. Another part of the lecture I thought was interesting was that most of the people who benefit from affirmative action are WHITE WOMEN. Most of my friends who argue against affirmative action are WHITE WOMEN who have most likely benefited either directly or indirectly from affirmative action. Yet, they don t complain about the job they just got through a friend of a friend (nepotism). People get so stuck in their own minds they forget to look at issues from other perspectives. Instead of complaining about affirmative action, they should think about any advantage they have received that was not EARNED. But for some reason people don t like to get outside of their comfort zone and learn about issues. Overall, this class has been a great learning experience and I have enjoyed it thoroughly. It has forced me to get outside of myself and examine issues first hand. It has also taught to me QUESTION question everything I hear, everything I am taught, and everything I am told is true. Most of the things I have been told are not true, which I learned very quickly in this class.
I m an African-American so I m not going to pretend that Affirmative Action hasn t acfefted me in my schooling as far as college acceptances, scholarships, etc. But even so, my thoughts and overall opinion of AA are pretty complicated and not fully formed. I will address them later. For now I d just like to say that one of the most annoying things that comes with discussing AA with other people is the fact that the topic of AA is almost always relegated exclusively to race. The most common connotation for AA is the idea that people within underrepresented races get opportunities that whites of equal (or higher) qualification are denied. And although that idea can potentially describe many of the situations in which affirmative action plays a part, it doesn t accurately describe all of them. I d like to use myself as an example to illustrate this point, my college search during my senior year in high school in particular. As I already stated, I m an African American student. My high school grades and test scores exceeded the requirements for Penn State and during the college application process I viewed it as a safety school. And obviously, since I m typing this blog post now, I made it in and chose to come here. But let s just pretend things were different and I was kind of teetering on the edge of the minimum requirements. And let s pretend that even though Penn State wasn t such a safe bet, I still made it in. Let s also go as far as to say that another person, of white descent, who had the same grades and test scores as me, didn t make it in. I think the first thing that person would think is that affirmative action played a role in my being selected to attend Penn State and they would assume that the biggest factor in my being selected over him or herself would be my race. However, they wouldn t be taking into consideration all of the different factors that go into the student selection process that Penn State employs. Penn State looks at factors such as whether or not the student is from Pennsylvania, whether or not the student s parents went to Penn State, etc. The entire selection process doesn t just come down to race, even in cases where affirmative action is used. Having taken this course, my views on affirmative action are that it is needed in schools, the workforce, and wherever else, but not necessarily by looking at just one factor such as race. I think the prevailing factor behind affirmative action should be socioeconomic status. What resources does this person have to get ahead? In the case of a high school student looking at colleges, does a poor person have the same access to tutors and good schools as a rich person? And in the case of finding jobs, does everyone have the same network of well-connected peers? And after learning about race and socioeconomic status in America through this course, I think that affirmative action would still pan out the way it is currently in regards to race due to the fact that underrepresented minorities are typically the least affluent in the country.
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In our final lecture Sam dsicussed Affirmative Action and the interpretations that each of us has on it. Affirmative Action itself can be more complex than what we see at the surface. Many people have a generalization that Affirmative Action is just as simple as that black associate is paid more than me or that black person got the job I should have gotten. From the legal classes I have had at Penn State, it seems that the greatest misconception people develop with AA is that they begin to blur the lines with issues of Discrimination and Prejudice. While they all develop from the same overall idea, AA seems to delve into more of a complex source of issues. For instance, AA directly addresses people who believe they were a sole minority being discriminated against. As Sam stated in lecture though, only a small percentage actually apply to this regulation. To me, I found it most interesting that white women and people of the middle class gain the most from AA over any other class. Consider this a misconception, but I always believed that people of the lower class would apply more for AA because typical jobs held by lower class people are often riddled with legal nightmares (discrimination, unsafe work habits, etc.) It made me begin to wonder if AA is something that people of a lower class either do not face as greatly as middle class workers, or if they simply are unaware (or uneducated) on AA and the benefits and protection it offers workers facing such situations. Personally if I had not attended Penn State I would most likely never have heard of AA again and would not have even considered it a regulation available for protecting workers from discriminatory practices. I think it is interesting to add a section around the legal protections of cultures into this course as most of what we have covered over the past few weeks revolve around the ideas and structures of cultures and their identities, yet we have not divulged greatly into what has developed because of discrimination and injustices to protect them. The final point of this lecture that struck me was how Sam asked the class how they planned to search for a more equal society when getting out into the workforce. I think it is important to note that, as we as a culture become more diverse and open to other ethnic cultures, we will slowly and perhaps subconsciously begin to move into a workplace and social setting that finds programs like AA less and less needed in our organizations. For now that seems like a long stretch, but with the rapid transformations our society has been taking in regards to social ethnic development, it could be an idea that is not too far from attainable.
Honestly I never really cdroisened the implications and advantages of affirmative action. In fact I had never really had much background with affirmative action at all. I just used to believe that affirmative action was a program put into place to help minorities further advance themselves in society. But then I also heard the other side from some white people how they feel affirmative action is just a program that unfairly admits minorities into schools or other jobs simply because of race. These people may blame affirmative action for their faults in comparison to a minority. I never really researched affirmative action just circulated around the types of arguments I have heard throughout my life. I found the lecture so eye opening that after the lecture I did my own research just so I could form an opinion for myself. The lecture really caught my attention from the very beginning when same presented the statistic that most of the beneficiaries of affirmative action are for women and that most of the beneficiaries of color are from the middle class. I had always thought that affirmative action never really benefited women but was rather based on race. Another part that caught my attention was the presentation of nepotism. Now that I have been opened to idea of nepotism it is so hard not to face the reality that everyone practices some form of nepotism. It is so true that people believe in any situation of reward that they deserve what they get. It is like we are so consumed in our own love for ourselves that we cannot see that we are just like everyone else. Just like the research that examined the social ability of high school students and the how well people follow the bible, we will never put ourselves in the same category of everyone else and speak negatively of ourselves. For most people it is the not me attitude that fails to realize that whether you would like to believe it r not you are just like everyone else and everyone else has faults, nepotism just prevents you from seeing them. Now that I know some facts about affirmative action I would defiantly support a program like the one Obama had in mind. An affirmative action program should be based on the social class not solely on the merit of race or gender. This would make a lot more sense to help people that really have a financial deficiency than a person in the middle class who happens to be a minority. The video about the too different schools clearly shows that people of lower classes need assistance advancing themselves in society as compared to a hypothetically a minority who went to that wealthy private school. Regardless of race, people of lower class need an extra boost to help advance themselves.
I don t think affirmative aitocn necessarily lowers the quality of workers. I think companies typically make sure a potential worker is qualified for the position. For example, if it comes down to a man and a woman of equal credentials, they might pick the woman to meet the quota. Even then though, the woman will probably work harder than the man would have because in the work force, especially in a field dominated by men such as engineering, women need to prove themselves so they are taken seriously, whereas a man who is hired will be more likely to slack off because he wouldn t worry as much about what others thought. Unfortunately though, there are other cases where employers just pick a minority to meet the quota. In this instance problems can definitely occur if the new worker s qualifications are not up to par. I know this from experience because my dad works for the government and in his job if he interviews people of all types of races and backgrounds and does not end up picking a person of the minority then he has to fill out a large stack of papers saying why the white person was more qualified than the black person. And his argument had better be convincing or else he could be fired. My dad was actually put on trial at his job because a black woman accused him of being racist .for choosing a black man over her. This is absolutely ridiculous. I don t think there is any way to justify this. Sometimes affirmative aitocn can be a good thing because it keeps diversity in the workplace, but anytime the quality of the company or product is neglected, affirmative aitocn can have very negative effects.In regards to Nepotism, I think quality is often compromised. Usually when people help their family or friends, they are doing so because the person in need of assistance cannot find work or does not have the skills to get a job on their own. This means that the person will be given a position for which they probably do not qualify. This is not fair to other people trying to get the same position who are qualified, and it is also not fair to the employer or company. The new worker will probably do a below average quality level of work, and this will hurt the business. I definitely agree with the guy on this video that industries like healthcare can suffer. Nepotism should be used lightly, because if you help someone who is struggling to get into medical school and he/she becomes a doctor then eventually makes a big mistake such as killing someone during a surgery, you are somewhat to blame for helping them get to that position. I know this sounds extreme but there are instances where dramatic things like this can occur, and it s not worth taking the risk. If someone isn t qualified for a position, they shouldn t be accepted into it. A big problem with nepotism is that it is like lying because it often involves writing fabricated recommendations for people who do not deserve them. Doing this can have a chain negative effect and hurt many people including consumers or patients.
I thought this was a very iseertnting question. After thinking about it, I don t think that affirmative action would necessarily make less qualified people hired in fields that require certain certifications. It would at most give them a boast into getting accepted into programs, but it would be their own responsibility to be successful in that program. A minority may get accepted into medical school because of their ethnicity. However, acceptance does not equal completion. Like we learned in class nepotism is more of a threat than affirmative action. Nepotism would bring less qualified people into a position before affirmative action. When people hire their friends and family, the most qualified people are not even considered. Although, how can we blame each other for hiring their friends and family when we all do the same thing? We trust the people we know before we trust strangers. Different people could bring more to a job than our friends but they do not get the chance to. I have gotten jobs through friends/relatives and there are definitely more qualified people for those jobs than me. Also I found that by working for people I have a personal relationship I could get away with a lot more than another person would have. I would show up late or take longer breaks or was just lazy. My quality of work was significantly less than another s would have been. It sucks to be the person who does not get hired because they don t have the connections to get the job. Life really is who you know rather than what you know. There is nothing we can really do to solve this issue so we need to just accept it. In real professional jobs such as doctors, this should not be the case. You need to know how to be a doctor rather than just knowing other doctors. But you may get accepted into a college over someone else because you are a certain race. This could be seen as an unfair advantage to some but you need to work hard afterwards to make that schooling worthwhile. Personally I benefitted from a form of affirmative action/nepotism getting into Penn State. I applied from out of state and for some reason there are higher standards for non-Pennsylvanians to get accepted. My high school college counselor is an alumnus from PSU and our school has a decently high acceptance rate to the main campus and the branch campuses. Upon arriving at PSU, I found that I had a higher GPA and SAT score than most of the Pennsylvanians that got attend here. If my counselor did not have the relationship he has with this college would I have gotten in even though I think I am more qualified than others? I don t really need to worry about it because I was fortunate enough to have gotten in. We all benefit from certain things in certain ways. Overall, I think we all need to just except things for the way they are because there isn’t anything we can do about it.