Affirmative Action Under Attack

Affirmative action policies that have provided for people of color and women greater access, though imperfectly, to higher education and many government programs have long been considered one of the most meaningful accomplishments of the civil rights movement.

Affirmative action policies that have provided for people of color and women greater access, though imperfectly, to higher education and many government programs have long been considered one of the most meaningful accomplishments of the civil rights movement.

In attacking affirmative action programs that have been successful, the Right has continued to strip the social safety net on which many people of color have come to rely. People of color are more likely to experience economic difficulties; combined with restricted access to jobs and programs that might alleviate those hardships, the playing field is still far from level. Affirmative action programs serve to address the social reality that is readily evident to anyone who cares to look — that minorities and women are still disproportionately poor and discriminated against in the workplace, and that their primary education is of a generally lower quality because school budgets will be lower in areas where there is less tax revenue. The basis on which the Right attacks affirmative action ignores the real root of racial and economic inequality in this country.

In the early 1980s, defense spending skyrocketed and federal spending on virtually all programs affecting the poor was cut significantly, including Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps, Medicaid and other health and nutrition programs. There was a shocking increase in deaths among infants: a 3 percent rise in1983 was just the tip of the iceberg. This was primarily a reflection of such preventable social and economic conditions as poor nutrition, inadequate housing, faulty sanitary facilities, and lack of basic health care for both pregnant women and newborns.

With a 9.8 infant mortality rate for every 1,000 live births in 1989 (the most recent year for which final figures were available), America was one of the worst places in the industrialized world for a child to be born. For African-American and Hispanic children, among whom the death rate was nearly twice as high as among Anglo infants, the chances of surviving the first year of life were less than for babies in many Third World countries.

Furthermore, because of a dramatic increase in teenage pregnancy and single parent families, declining wages, growing unemployment and lower welfare payments, approximately 26 million American children – about two out of five of those who survived the first year of life – were living in poverty by the mid-1990s. This was an increase of well over 50 percent from the previous decade, and meant that children were the single largest group of destitute citizens in the entire nation. The United States came to have the highest child poverty rate in the industrial world.

Because children of color are disproportionately represented in this population of poor children, programs to reverse the trend are crucial. Advocates of affirmative action believe that the controversial program has a significant role to play in reversing poverty trends among families and children of color. With statistics like those mentioned above, it is evident that if such programs can affect that kind of change, they are absolutely necessary to redress the imbalance of resources available to economically disadvantaged groups, notably minorities and women.

In his book, From Poor Law to Welfare State, welfare advocate William Trattner has articulated the sentiment that historically America has responded inadequately toward its shortcomings, whether they are health issues, race-related or civil rights-related. We have very few programs that address the root of the problems or make up for any past and current racial discrimination or inequalities. Affirmative action is the only program that even remotely resembles any form of reparations, yet is still only limited to a select group of future generations while ignoring disadvantaged groups as a whole.

Opponents of affirmative action, however, refuse to view the issue in its larger context. They have tried to give the public only a narrow view of what affirmative action is and does, focusing their efforts on abolishing affirmative action in single-issue arenas. The most recent example is the lawsuits against the University of Michigan, which gives points to qualified students of color and female students in the admissions process. This point system allows students of color to have a greater chance of serious consideration and acceptance for admission. Points are also awarded to all students based on economic disadvantages. Some students get points simply because their parents attended the school – a rule that benefits wealthier students who are almost always white.

Affirmative action’s detractors rarely consider the interplay between class and racial differences that operate in private and public universities. They argue often that students who have benefited from affirmative action policies are not as qualified as students who might have been excluded from admission. The subtext is that students of color are always not as capable as white students. To believe this argument is to ignore some important facts about university admission.

Wealthy students have a kind of affirmative action that is automatically accepted and assumed to be normal. For example, students who are the children of donors or well-known public personalities or officials have advantages when applying for admissions. George W. Bush is the most famous example. Not even Bush himself has tried to argue that he was a capable student. A study conducted in the early 1990s showed that in the Harvard graduating class of 1992, 200 students, who could only be characterized as objectively “unqualified� upon entry, gained admission for no other reason than that their parents had attended the school. This number was higher than all of the black, Chicano, Native American and Puerto Rican students graduating that year combined. People who have legally challenged affirmative action in higher education because they felt they were excluded to make room for “unqualified� students of color rarely consider that perhaps they were excluded to make room for unqualified white students whose families happened to be well-known, “connected� or rich. This class advantage remains unchallenged by opponents of affirmative action for students of color.

There are currently two lawsuits challenging the University of Michigan’s use of affirmative action: Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger (Bollinger is the former president of the University of Michigan). Grutter and Gratz claim their rejections for admission were the result of racial discrimination against them because they are white.

The last time the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on affirmative action was in the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978. In this case Allan Bakke sued the state of California because he felt that a number of minority students had been accepted over him even though his grades were higher. He did not take note that a number of white students had also been accepted who had lower grades than he did. The Bakke decision was key in encouraging other attacks on the affirmative action programs in education. Advocates of affirmative action point to the West Coast as an example of what happens to universities when admissions policies that incorporate affirmative action are removed. In 1996 California ended affirmative action through Proposition 209, and since then the admission rates for people of color fell drastically (44 percent at UC Berkeley and 36 percent at UCLA). In the state of Washington, after the passage of the anti-affirmative action Initiative 200 in 1998, a similar effect was seen in the state’s public universities.

One interesting aspect of the Regents v. Bakke decision was that the US Supreme Court did affirm the idea that race could be considered as a plus factor for college applicants, because it believed that a diverse student body would improve the educational experience of all students. As a result of the Court’s decision, some universities decided to award points to the applications of Black, Latino and Asian prospective students in order to ensure a higher representation in the student body. The University of Michigan followed suit.

Since the cases were filed in 1997, the University of Michigan has firmly stood by its decision to offer equal opportunity education. Its administration maintains that not only do minority students that are admitted benefit from affirmative action but the student body as a whole benefits from the diversity of their peers.

A consortium of six of America’s leading civil rights organizations — Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Pacific American Legal Consortium, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., National Partnership for Women and Families, and the National Women’s Law Center — have collaborated in an organization called Americans for a Fair Chance (AFC) to aid the University of Michigan in its defense. Shirley J. Wilcher, executive director for AFC, said, “The future of America is contingent upon creating opportunities for tomorrow’s leaders. As America is becoming increasingly diverse, affirmative action to promote a diverse student body and to remedy past discrimination continues to be a national imperative.�

On December 2, 2002, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the Grutter and Gratz cases this term. The decision in these cases could very well be among the most important civil rights rulings of the 21st century as the outcome of these cases may determine whether or not colleges have an affirmative duty to provide equal access to higher education. A decision in the University of Michigan cases is expected in the summer of 2003.

Since the Supreme Court decision to hear the case, supporters of affirmative action marched in Washington, DC in March and April to call for a new civil rights movement. Litigation and legislation alone will not prevail; the defeat of Jim Crow or the victory of affirmative action in the 1960s would not have been possible without a mass movement.

Melissa Chadburn is a regular contributor to Dynamic.