Affirmative Action Debate Rages on at UT
by Randy Cooke
It began with President Richard M. Nixon's administration-- government programs
designed to provide equal opportunity for all people in this country. When
Nixon implemented the Philadelphia Plan in 1969, construction unions were
racially exclusive and intolerant of minority acceptance and participation.
The Philadelphia Plan however, was designed to remedy this segregation and
established goals that compelled these lily-white construction unions to
integrate themselves. The Nixon administration was clear in establishing
the differences between goals and the much maligned quota system. Even though
numeric and temporal goals were set for these institutions, greater emphasis
was placed on the efforts of the unions to provide equal opportunity than
the resulting composite. "Compliance was judged not by an arbitrary
look at the numbers alone but by a broad review of a contractor's effort
to provide equal employment opportunity," writes Nixon in his final
book, Beyond Peace.
The birth of affirmative action. Sadly, the merit of affirmative action
programs in this country has been compromised by modern liberal dogma. The
concept of affirmative action is not inherently wrong-giving opportunity
where opportunity is non-existent. However, the residual effect of modern
liberalism on society has altogether changed the vision of many social programs
in this country. Specifically, the mission of affirmative action has shifted
from "guaranteeing opportunity" to "garnering diversity."
There is much more to "diversity" than mere ethnic sundries-but
liberals cannot see this. Their perceptions of social ills and their covenanted
big-government solutions have convoluted the problems at hand. In altering
this vision and justification for the existence of affirmative action, liberals
have created an entirely new dependency on this social "remedy."
In essence, modern affirmative action is the lowering of objective standards
to "garner diversity" in the form of minority extra-inclusion.
This is not a euphemism, this is fact. The existence of separate performance-based-criteria,
greatly influenced by race or gender is wrong. It's just plain wrong. The
U.S. Supreme Court in Bakke v. California, ruled that in higher education,
separate admission criteria that discriminates based on race is unconstitutional.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals remained true to that rationale
in Hopwood v. The University of Texas at Austin, requiring the University
to eliminate all race-conscious admission standards and scholarships. The
University of California System, respecting the popular sovereign mandate
of Proposition 209 has also banned affirmative action in admissions.
So who continues to hold true to this fallacious social remedy called affirmative
action? There are two types of people who support these racial preferences.
The first owe their careers and relative successes to affirmative action.
This group has a vested interest in the vitality of these programs because
these folks are only as credible as the institutions that got them where
they are. The same is true for any institution -- if a college or university
is proven to sell their degrees for an appropriate price, everyone who was
educated at that given institution suddenly has the integrity of their education
questioned. affirmative action is an institution, however ill-structured
it may be.
Oscar de la Torre, a self-proclaimed "proud recipient of affirmative
action," appeared on the Bryant Gumble show in December 1997 following
a debate over racial preferences at The University of Texas. De la Torre
vehemently defended racial preferences, arguing that affirmative action
"didn't write the papers or take the tests for students." He is
absolutely, one hundred percent correct. However, when students failed to
write good papers or perform well on tests in high school and even in college,
affirmative action said, "That's okay if you didn't score well. Your
scores don't matter because you add to our campus diversity. So, we'll lower
the bar for you and let you in." That is what affirmative action does.
Making astute note of affirmative action's vicious circle of effects, Professor
Lino Graglia, who teaches constitutional law at The University of Texas,
extemporaneously began the recent campus-wide debate over race-conscious
admission criteria by saying that some minorities could not compete in some
institutions of higher education. While Graglia is not an anthropologist
and really has no grounds to explore the root of the problem, his observation
is profound. Ironically, Graglia has been saying this for thirty years and
these ideas are not anything new.
The effects of lowering objective standards to "increase diversity"
on college campuses is most detrimental to the students who have the requirements
waived for them. Universities that have these manipulative criteria find
themselves investing hoards of money in retention programs for these students.
These students are having great difficulty competing. Quite certainly, Professor
Graglia was speaking to the recipients of affirmative action -- which coincidentally,
happen to be largely African-American and Hispanic.
Not having a true vested interest in these programs, the second person that
defends affirmative action does it out of a sense of loyalty to those who
are not as fortunate as he. He feels that he received a stellar education,
he succeeded and needed no affirmative action programs to do it. However,
he sympathizes with those whose education is inferior to his own and is
compelled to "lend the helping hand." That helping hand should
not be offered to only specific skin colors.
The move to support affirmative action in this country is offered up as
the social balance to "white privilege" -- the fallacy that all
white folks have an instant membership card to any organization in the United
States. "White privilege" is the affirmative action paradigm of
Anglo-America. Because of "white privilege" a white male can get
any job he wants or socialize any place he desires, implying that "whites
only" signs still hang on public facilities in 1997. Try explaining
the concept of "white privilege" to a six year old fatherless
white kid in inner-city Chicago whose mother works three jobs to keep food
on the table. "Kid, because of something called 'white privilege' you
will never live in a place like this." How believable is that? "White
privilege" is a euphemism that is meant to stir emotions and cloud
the issues. And it is successful in doing so.
This so-called "white privilege" is also referred to as "institutional
racism." The abuse of the term "racism" has destroyed the
impact this word once had on society. People in the 70s and 80s were highly
responsive to any implication of racially motivated actions. But the definition
of what constitutes racism has devolved and now exists irrespective of impetus.
Believers of "white privilege" offer racism as anything that works
against the agendas of non-white America whether or not oppressive results
were intended. Dismissing intent and considering only residual effects and
then reconstructing the definition of racism has exhausted the credibility
of Pro-Affirmative action America. This newly constructed theory of racism
is used inter-changeably with the traditional view of racism, complicating
dialogue and frustrating both sides of the debate. As much as the theory
of "white privilege" is emotionally euphemistic, so too is the
concoction of "institutional racism."
The denial of opportunity in this country is no longer decided on the color
of one's skin. The denial of opportunity in this country is based on economics.
The problem is that public schools are failing. Chances are, if a family
can afford to send its children to the best school money can buy, it would
do it in a heartbeat. Quality education should not be denied because public
schools are unable to compete with private institutions. Until public schools
can compete, school vouchers should be offered to parents to make the best
educational facilities accessible from a financial standpoint. It is imperative
that children have the best primary educational opportunities if the vicious
cycle of affirmative action is ever to end.
Long term-what can public schools do to improve the quality of the education
they offer?
There has been a lot of hoopla over national standards for public high schools.
That's a great idea; it's already done and it's called the Scholastic Aptitude
Test (SAT). But, President Clinton is adamant about implementing these new
educational criteria for public schools. This is another example of modern
liberalism genuflecting at the idea of big-government solutions. Why would
anyone conceive of creating a national standard that is inevitably going
to be beneath the achievement level of many schools and so grossly unachievable
for ten times as many? This is nothing more than a gauge for exactly how
bad our schools are and how dumb we were for not implementing a voucher
system ten years ago.
Here is the real solution. First, states need to eliminate the dropout age.
If a student does not want to be in class, he should not be there, plain
and simple. The student, if forced by law to sit in the classroom, will
be disruptive and prevent his classmates from engaging in the learning process.
Teachers have to take time to fill out disciplinary referrals to the principal
regarding the unruly behavior and then the principal returns the kid to
class to be disruptive again. What deters the dismissal of this student?
State funds based on enrollment-this system must be eliminated. School systems
would much rather have disruptive behavior and money than actual learning
and no money. Perhaps the student would be better off returning to school
when he was mature enough to understand the value of an education-his classmates
sure would be. At that point he should pay for his education.
Clearly, the misdirection of President Nixon's concept of affirmative action
and the erosion of educational quality in public schools are two of the
greatest problems plaguing higher education heading into the twenty-first
century. Society must continue to push for equal opportunity, but abandon
attempts to guarantee equal outcomes. "Amending not ending" affirmative
action may be a solution, short-term. However, as the most loquacious proponents
of this flawed social crutch assert that the elimination of these programs
will take America back to the pre-Affirmative action days, it becomes more
evident that these programs are getting America nowhere fast. If after eliminating
a program of thirty years, no signs or results of existence are visible,
then obviously affirmative action has not done the job it was designed to
do.
America must look past symptomatic remedies. The core lies within primary
education. Instead of creating more bureaucracy to study the studies of
these problems, we must implement solutions. Vouchers, in the meantime,
will allow parents to better their child's education while politicians continue
to argue over whose fault it is that Americans are not competing.
Cooke is the Vice-President of the UT Student Government.