Why is affirmative action so controversial

In a pluralistic, racially diverse society, it seems essential that diverse perspectives be represented at undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools. If students actively learn from one another, and if the learning environment is significantly affected by the breadth and character of the voices within it, then ensuring that the perspectives of people of color are well represented is imperative.

Finkelman argues that we have strong reasons to believe that racial diversity benefits the learning environment, even in the absence of definitive social science data to support this claim. If education is to benefit American society generally, then we cannot merely have the views of one particular constituency presented. As Robert Fullinwider points out, diversity of viewpoint and opinion is not necessarily correlated with racial background.

There does seem to be some validity to this. For instance, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, an African American, has publicly acknowledged his opposition to affirmative action, much to the dismay of civil rights groups.

To what do we attribute the importance some would say urgency of racial diversity in our undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools? Terry Swenson, Dean of Admissions at The Colorado College a small, selective liberal arts college , believes that the emphasis on racial diversity is desirable because students of color are more likely to have endured educational, social, and economic disadvantage.

According to Swenson, one can realize that racial diversity does not necessarily imply viewpoint diversity, yet still remain committed to affirmative action on the basis of race. There is a changing public climate surrounding affirmative action. A relatively broad consensus that supported public policies, including affirmative action, to foster racial equality has broken down.

Perhaps this is because such policies have made too little progress, frustrating some liberals who came of age in the civil rights revolution of the s.

Or, perhaps the policies have made too much progress, frustrating some conservatives seeking to preserve the privileges of the past. The United States Supreme Court and federal circuit courts have also weighed in recently, issuing decisions that send strong caution to the continued use of race-based preferences of any kind or in any amount. Ancheta, Angelo. Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience.

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Cambridge, Mass. Cose, Ellis. New York: Harper Collins, New York: New Press, Dalton, Harlon. Racial Healing. New York: Doubleday, Eastland, Terry. New York: Basic Books, Edley, Christopher. New York: Noonday, Finkelman, Paul. Armonk, N. Sharpe, Fullinwider, Robert. The Reverse Discrimination Controversy. Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield, Glazer, Nathan.

Hacker, Andrew. New York: Ballantine Books, Hochschild, Jennifer. Princeton, N. Kahlenberg, Richard. Kull, Andrew. The Color Blind Constitution. Lawrence, Charles R. III, and Mari Matsuda. Affirmative action should not apply to recent immigrants, because they have not suffered historical injustices in the United States. Lead an in-class discussion. Your role will be that of moderator. Tell your students that everyone, including yourself, are going to work together to reason though this difficult question.

Instruct the students that they will be called on as they raise their hands. To keep things orderly, keep a list of students as they raise their hands, and call on them in that order. They can either respond directly to what was said before, or start their own line of thinking.

It is natural for people to disagree with one another, particularly on issues that personally affect them. But personal attacks in lieu of reasoned, polite dialogue is never acceptable, nor is it acceptable to prohibit another student from speaking because their viewpoint is disagreeable. If conversation dies down, encourage the class with your own questions. It is okay if the class reaches no consensus. Society-at-large disagrees on major issues. If appropriate for your class, at the end of the class discussion, distribute one sheet of paper to each student.

Ask them to anonymously record their responses to the following questions. What viewpoint did you have toward affirmative action before the class discussion began? What viewpoint did you have at the end of the discussion? If your viewpoint changed, what piece of information or argument persuaded you to change your mind? What was the decisive aspect of this issue which led you to adopt your present viewpoint?

What would need to happen in the future to make you reconsider your viewpoint? And guess what? So did the War on Poverty. In , the poverty rate was an estimated twenty-two per cent; in , it was below twelve per cent, which is about where it is today.

That is still thirty-eight million people, more than the population of Canada. Politicians repeat it, and people nod their heads. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. Did white men suffer as a result of affirmative action? That turns out to be a difficult question to answer. Obviously, just by the nature of the policy, some significant number of whites and males who would have been admitted or hired before affirmative-action programs were in place were not.

Turned down by one place, they went someplace else. Most colleges accept almost everyone who applies, so when we talk about race-conscious admissions we are talking about policies that affect a relatively small number of people.

Board of Education or Roe v. Wade for affirmative action, no well-established precedent. A lot of the cases that people rely on about university admissions are 5—4 decisions. Holder, that part of the Voting Rights Act has outlived our need for it. It also creates uncertainty in the marketplace. The judicial parameters are known: to pass constitutional muster, an affirmative-action program must serve a compelling state interest, it must be narrowly tailored, and it must survive strict scrutiny.

But one can never be sure how the Court will apply these criteria, or whether it will one day decide that all affirmative-action programs are unconstitutional per se and close out the exception. The Court is effectively inviting these lawsuits. The marketplace matters because the biggest defenders of affirmative action are not the N.

The biggest defenders are corporations and the military. The same thing happened with the Civil Rights Act. The most controversial part of that act was Title II, which applies to public accommodations, like restaurants and hotels.

This struck at what was, along with suppression of African-American voting rights, one of the pillars of Jim Crow: social segregation. United States, upheld the constitutionality of Title II under the commerce clause.

This was not a blow to business. On the contrary. From a business viewpoint, refusing to serve people who want to rent a room in your hotel or order a sandwich at your lunch counter is irrational. The only economic incentive for denying them service is a fear of their driving white customers away.

Once the Court made it clear that every hotel and lunch counter must serve every customer regardless of race, that fear was significantly reduced. Under Jimmy Carter, affirmative-action requirements were extended to virtually all firms, educational institutions, and state and local governments that received contracts or grants from the federal government—which covers a lot of the national waterfront.

By and large, the courts went along. And so did businesses. When a company is serving customers of different races, it wants to present a diversified face. If you are selling cars to African-Americans, you do not want all the salesmen in your showroom to be white.

If, to achieve this result, a company diversifies on its own, it is open to lawsuits claiming reverse discrimination. But when a company or a police department or a fire department adopts a race-conscious hiring program under government guidance it is immunized. When Reagan made noises about abolishing affirmative-action requirements, the National Association of Manufacturers lobbied him to leave the program alone. 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.