Why affirmative action

To award or deny benefits on the basis of race or sex is as unjust as traditional discriminatory practices. Moreover, preferential treatment programs unjustly ignore the claim of need, denying benefits to disadvantaged white males while lavishing benefits on minorities who aren't in need of them.

Those who oppose preferential treatment programs also claim that if the purpose of the programs is to compensate for past discrimination or present disadvantages, then only persons who have been discriminated against should be given preference. Current preferential treatment programs, however, favor members of selected groups regardless of whether an individual member has ever suffered discrimination.

In fact, most of the victims of past discrimination are no longer living, so the issue of just compensation is moot. Critics of preferential policies further argue that society's burdens ought to be distributed fairly among its members. Preferential treatment programs are unfair because they impose the burden of compensation on white males who seek jobs or higher education.

These individuals are no more responsible for past injustices or for rectifying present inequalities than any other individuals. It is unfair that they should bear the full burden of compensation. Programs awarding preference according to race or sex are also opposed on the grounds that they cause much more harm than good.

First, with these programs in force, those who may be more qualified are overlooked while others only minimally qualified are chosen. The inevitable result is reduced productivity and efficiency in the work place and the lowering of academic standards in colleges and universities. Second, preferential treatment programs harm minorities and women by stigmatizing them and devaluing their achievements. They encourage the belief that all minorities and women gain entry to jobs or universities primarily because they are members of under represented groups and not because they are qualified.

Minority individuals may question whether the rules were bent in their case, leading to feelings of inferiority, self-doubt, and incompetence.

Third, preferential treatment programs encourage dependency and reward people for identifying themselves as victims providing them no incentives to become self-reliant or to develop the skills necessary to succeed in the work place or classroom.

Fourth, as white males are denied positions going to less-qualified minorities and women, they will become increasingly resentful, heightening animosity and tension among groups.

Finally, preferential treatment will spur claims from all groups who feel they have been victims of injustice. And members of groups excluded by preferential treatment programs today will demand tomorrow to be compensated for opportunities denied them. Already the nation is witnessing a barrage of allegations and lawsuits filed by non-minorities charging employers and universities with reverse discrimination due to quotas and other formulas used for hiring, promotion, and admission.

While the harms resulting from preferential treatment are considerable, critics charge, the benefits are questionable. Giving preference to women and minorities fails to benefit the individuals within these groups who are most likely to have suffered the effects of discrimination and thus most deserving of compensation; the most disadvantaged individuals often lack, the qualifications and skills even to be considered for employment positions or college placement.

This is borne out in reports that cite a growing gap between poor blacks with little education and job skills and affluent blacks able to take advantage of a wide variety of employment and educational opportunities.

Nor is it clear that even those minorities and women qualifying for preferential treatment benefit from such special consideration. Recent studies reveal a high dropout rate among minority college students admitted under affirmative action programs. Berkeley, for example, only 45 percent of black students admitted in had graduated by compared to 73 percent of Anglos.

The high rate of failure that follows the award of employment and educational opportunities to minority individuals unprepared to meet the challenges of higher education reinforces feelings of inferiority among members of these groups. In Defense of Preferential Treatment Preferential treatment programs are often defended on the grounds of distributive justice, which requires that society's benefits and burdens be distributed equitably among its members.

As a result of past discrimination, women and minorities have been denied their fair share of opportunities. Entrenched and subtle discriminatory policies and practices continue to permeate businesses and educational institutions, ranging from prejudice in job classification and minority systems to biases in college entrance exams.

It was helping manufacturing companies do what they could not have done without it. It was dealing with labor unions, whose seniority systems overwhelmingly favored white male workers. Small businesses also resented the paperwork. The extent of the corporate buy-in was put on dramatic display in , when the Supreme Court heard Grutter v.

Bollinger, another admissions case, this one involving the University of Michigan Law School. They supported affirmative-action admissions because they wanted universities to produce educated people for a diversified workforce. The Court voted to uphold the Michigan program, but it was a 5—4 decision. No sector is more committed to diversity than higher education is, but it has proved to be one of the stickiest areas for affirmative action, both legally and practically.

Urofsky, perhaps because he is an academic, is more patient with the trouble that universities have had in achieving diversity than he is with the problems of labor unions, to which, in general, he is uncharitable. It is true that probably the main reason Nixon promoted affirmative-action programs was to pit African-Americans against labor, both traditionally Democratic voting bases. And, by many accounts, he succeeded, and created Archie Bunker—the Reagan Democrat, a man who resents special government help for minorities.

Still, the leadership of unions like the United Auto Workers, though sometimes fighting their own membership, were active in support of civil rights. Higher education and unions have a similar problem when it comes to changing the demographics: we are dealing with a cake that cannot be unbaked.

The undergraduate population turns over every four years, but the faculty turns over every forty years. When the new students arrive on campus, they often wonder where the professors of color are. The answer is: wait twenty years, and they will show up.

Even so, the lag in diversification between university faculties and their student bodies is striking. As late as , less than five per cent of all professors had African or Asian ancestry, and around eighty per cent were men.

Schools like Harvard and Stanford have had trouble even getting to gender balance. In , women made up 1. Even at Berkeley, which had been admitting women since , women made up just 5. Today, less than thirty per cent of all university faculty at Stanford are women, and seven per cent are classified as underrepresented minorities.

At Harvard, twenty-seven per cent of tenured faculty are women, and eight per cent are underrepresented minorities. On the other hand, student bodies, where race- and gender-conscious admissions policies can have an effect more quickly, have diversified.

In , eighty-three per cent of university students were white; in , fifty-seven per cent were white. The percentage of black students in that period increased from ten to fourteen; the percentage of students that the government categorizes as Hispanic increased from less than four to more than eighteen. The percentage of black and Latinx graduates as opposed to enrollees also increased although graduation rates for both groups are lower than for whites.

Did affirmative-action admissions help? Starting in the mid-nineties, opponents of affirmative action were able to get laws passed prohibiting the use of race in admissions at public universities in several states, including Michigan, Washington, and California. The top public universities in those states tried to attract minority students by other means, but Urofsky says that the percentage of black and Hispanic students has dropped significantly.

Do students admitted under affirmative-action criteria benefit from their educations? Historically, black students as a group have tended to underperform academically—to get lower grades than their SAT scores predict. So do varsity athletes. As many writers have pointed out, when we are considering colleges and jobs, there is a pipeline problem.

They went to the same high schools that their brothers did and most of them probably got better grades. The success of affirmative action in employment and university admissions has not eliminated the education and income gaps between whites and blacks. Although the poverty rate for blacks and Hispanics has dropped some since , it is still more than double the rate for whites.

Americans of color are starting from much farther behind. Millions never get on board a train that most whites were born on. The Supreme Court case that admissions offices rely on today is Regents of the University of California v.

It was decided in , and, despite several attempts to relitigate it, it is still the law of the land. Bakke is a good example of the jurisprudential confusion around affirmative action: the Court managed to produce six opinions in that case.

The plurality opinion, by Lewis Powell, struck down an admissions program at the University of California at Davis School of Medicine, from which Allan Bakke, a white man, had been twice rejected, but it upheld the right of schools to use race-conscious admissions programs. The problem at Davis was that the medical school basically ran two admissions processes, one for everybody and one that effectively considered only minority applicants, for whom sixteen places were set aside.

Bakke was able to show that his record was superior to the records of some of the students who had been admitted through the special program. The Davis program was obviously not narrowly tailored. One consideration that the university offered in the way of compelling state interest was its belief that minority M.

Powell found no evidentiary basis for this, and it was arguably a racist assumption. The school could have investigated whether applicants had worked with underserved communities in the past. They did not, and Powell suggested that such a standard might be a better proxy than race. Admissions programs determined by race are in violation of both the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which outlaws racial discrimination in institutions that receive federal funding.

Powell argued, however, that another right was in play: the First Amendment; specifically, the right of academic freedom. There is no constitutional right of academic freedom, but Powell cited a case, Sweezy v. New Hampshire, in which Felix Frankfurter, in a concurring opinion, quoted South African jurists to the effect that the principle of academic freedom allows a university to determine who will teach its classes and who will sit in its classrooms.

This harmful myth perpetuates inaccurate narratives of homogeneity in Asian American communities; disregards significant socio-economic differences between ethnicities; and ignores the stark intraracial disparities affirmative action helps to alleviate. This tactic is not new ; groups and individuals that seek to preserve unfair systems have long attempted to sow division in communities of color.

Race-conscious admissions practices remain necessary in the fight for racial equity in higher education. In this column, we explore five reasons to support affirmative action in college admissions. College enrollment and completion rates have risen significantly over the past four decades. However, students of color, especially black and Latinx students, are more underrepresented at selective universities today than they were 35 years ago. In fact, a black student enrollment disparity exists at 45 of the 50 flagship state universities, meaning that the percentage of undergraduates who are black is lower than the percentage of high school graduates in that state who are black.

For example, black students constituted 50 percent of — high school graduates in Mississippi , but were just Banning affirmative action only worsens this persistent problem. For example, one study found that students of color experience a 23 percentage point decline in likelihood of admission to highly selective public colleges after an affirmative action ban goes into effect. While much progress has been made in recent decades, students of color still remain underrepresented on college campuses nationwide.

Prioritizing diversity and employing race-conscious admissions policies are critical for promoting equity in higher education. Diversity on college campuses enhances the educational experiences of students of all backgrounds. These benefits may translate to better economic outcomes and, among other payoffs, prepare students to work in a diverse global economy , increasing the productivity, effectiveness, and creativity of teams.

Institutions of higher education have placed a greater priority on integration and campus diversity in recent decades. White women may have been among the greatest beneficiaries of this effort. Between and , female college enrollment more than doubled —from 19 percent of all students to 44 percent. During this period, the percentage of white women age 25 to 35 with college degrees surged from less than 15 percent to more than 40 percent.

People of color have also benefited significantly from college integration and efforts to prioritize campus diversity. Overall, an abundance of evidence demonstrates that systematic efforts to prioritize diversity in college admissions can improve the representation of historically excluded groups while bolstering the educational experiences and economic outcomes of all students.

While income can and should be considered as part of a holistic evaluation of applicants, it should complement rather than supplant the consideration of race and ethnicity.

Wealth makes it easier for families to relocate to better school districts, purchase test preparation books and classes, and pay or help pay college tuition. But centuries of systemic racism and intergenerational transfers have provided white households with far more wealth than households of color, even after controlling for income. In fact, middle-income white households typically have twice as much wealth as their Latinx counterparts and three times more wealth than their black counterparts.