Affirmative action, self-segregation and reform
Here is some great data and research concerning this debate.
Thanks to Ariel Avila for sending me the link to this comprehensive and interesting data on UIUC's makeup.
Published in the Daily Illini on February 27, 2006.
For hundreds of years, this country tortured its own ideals. This country enslaved, segregated, and punished people of color. The acidic and lingering aftertaste of racism has made necessary efforts to wash it away.
The important question is not whether something should be done, but how it should be done.
Affirmative action has not only failed to bring the socio-economic status of the races to equality, but it has hindered the achievement of a secondary goal: the destruction of racial self-segregation.
Race-based affirmative action carries heavy psychological baggage.
First, when whites in suburban high schools are rejected from our University, their parents call to complain that their kid deserves the spot more than a minority they know nothing about. The effect on minorities could be some sense of self-doubt and curiosity whether they were admitted based on their merits.
Some white students question whether certain minorities deserve to be at the same university as them, simply because of their skin. Affirmative action announces and institutionalizes that there is a distinction between the races.
All of these negative psychological side-effects simply increase animosities between the races and reinforce social self-segregation. Let me be clear, these perceptions are mostly based on the ignorance of whites as to the true and noble motivations for affirmative action. But, in this game perceptions are law.
If we can create a system that preserves current levels of diversity, while at the same time enrolls minorities by race-blind means, we will cut the strings of psychological baggage.
An alternative solution is economic-based affirmative action.
A type of economic affirmative action is already covertly practiced in Florida, California, Washington, and most notably in Texas. It is commonly called “affirmative access.”
This plan draws the top 10 percent, or so, from every high school class and grants them automatic admission to public universities in their home-state. Even in situations where the Ten Percent Plan does not grant admission to a desired level of minorities, the system can be tweaked by considering factors such as the resources available to the student’s school district and the education level of their parents. It guarantees admission to the poorest white rural and black urban students.
Because it is blind and based off of merits, it undercuts the moral and legal arguments of reverse discrimination that come from the far right.
One concern about affirmative access is that minority enrollment will fall. But, at UT-Austin blacks were 4.1% and Latinos were 14.5% of the total student body under affirmative action.
Then, in 1996 the 5th Circuit Court ruled in Hopwood v. Texas that public universities must stop using race as an admissions factor. The year after this ruling black enrollment dropped to 2.7% and Latino enrollment slid to 12.6%. The Texas legislature then crafted the Ten Percent Plan, or affirmative access.
After this Plan black enrollment increased back to its original level of 4.1% and Latino enrollment was nearly at its original level with 13.9%.
A book written by former Ivy-league presidents William Bowen and Derek Bok, called The Shape of the River, exposes that 86% of African-American students are middle or upper-middle class at the 28 universities they studied. Affirmative action tends to favor minorities that have already escaped poverty; economic-based admissions would also remedy this.
Polls were conducted in 2003 around the time of Supreme Court cases challenging Michigan’s affirmative action policies. A Los Angeles Times poll showed that 59% of Americans supported economic affirmative action, while just 26% supported race-based affirmative action. Similarly, a Newsweek poll showed a 65% to 26% split in favor of economic affirmative action.
I think it is hard for us to see that affirmative action has failed. The way we measure diversity is by the statistics of how many minorities are enrolled, rather than the more difficult measurement of social integration. Instead of clutching to social policy with a mediocre track record, we need to begin honest and bold reform. Economic affirmative action in the long-run will dilute racial self-segregation on campus and in America.
Billy Joe Mills is a senior in LAS. His columns appear on Monday. He did his own laundry for the first time this last weekend. He can be reached at opinions@dailyillini.com.
Thanks to Ariel Avila for sending me the link to this comprehensive and interesting data on UIUC's makeup.
Published in the Daily Illini on February 27, 2006.
For hundreds of years, this country tortured its own ideals. This country enslaved, segregated, and punished people of color. The acidic and lingering aftertaste of racism has made necessary efforts to wash it away.
The important question is not whether something should be done, but how it should be done.
Affirmative action has not only failed to bring the socio-economic status of the races to equality, but it has hindered the achievement of a secondary goal: the destruction of racial self-segregation.
Race-based affirmative action carries heavy psychological baggage.
First, when whites in suburban high schools are rejected from our University, their parents call to complain that their kid deserves the spot more than a minority they know nothing about. The effect on minorities could be some sense of self-doubt and curiosity whether they were admitted based on their merits.
Some white students question whether certain minorities deserve to be at the same university as them, simply because of their skin. Affirmative action announces and institutionalizes that there is a distinction between the races.
All of these negative psychological side-effects simply increase animosities between the races and reinforce social self-segregation. Let me be clear, these perceptions are mostly based on the ignorance of whites as to the true and noble motivations for affirmative action. But, in this game perceptions are law.
If we can create a system that preserves current levels of diversity, while at the same time enrolls minorities by race-blind means, we will cut the strings of psychological baggage.
An alternative solution is economic-based affirmative action.
A type of economic affirmative action is already covertly practiced in Florida, California, Washington, and most notably in Texas. It is commonly called “affirmative access.”
This plan draws the top 10 percent, or so, from every high school class and grants them automatic admission to public universities in their home-state. Even in situations where the Ten Percent Plan does not grant admission to a desired level of minorities, the system can be tweaked by considering factors such as the resources available to the student’s school district and the education level of their parents. It guarantees admission to the poorest white rural and black urban students.
Because it is blind and based off of merits, it undercuts the moral and legal arguments of reverse discrimination that come from the far right.
One concern about affirmative access is that minority enrollment will fall. But, at UT-Austin blacks were 4.1% and Latinos were 14.5% of the total student body under affirmative action.
Then, in 1996 the 5th Circuit Court ruled in Hopwood v. Texas that public universities must stop using race as an admissions factor. The year after this ruling black enrollment dropped to 2.7% and Latino enrollment slid to 12.6%. The Texas legislature then crafted the Ten Percent Plan, or affirmative access.
After this Plan black enrollment increased back to its original level of 4.1% and Latino enrollment was nearly at its original level with 13.9%.
A book written by former Ivy-league presidents William Bowen and Derek Bok, called The Shape of the River, exposes that 86% of African-American students are middle or upper-middle class at the 28 universities they studied. Affirmative action tends to favor minorities that have already escaped poverty; economic-based admissions would also remedy this.
Polls were conducted in 2003 around the time of Supreme Court cases challenging Michigan’s affirmative action policies. A Los Angeles Times poll showed that 59% of Americans supported economic affirmative action, while just 26% supported race-based affirmative action. Similarly, a Newsweek poll showed a 65% to 26% split in favor of economic affirmative action.
I think it is hard for us to see that affirmative action has failed. The way we measure diversity is by the statistics of how many minorities are enrolled, rather than the more difficult measurement of social integration. Instead of clutching to social policy with a mediocre track record, we need to begin honest and bold reform. Economic affirmative action in the long-run will dilute racial self-segregation on campus and in America.
Billy Joe Mills is a senior in LAS. His columns appear on Monday. He did his own laundry for the first time this last weekend. He can be reached at opinions@dailyillini.com.
posted by Billy Joe Mills at 10:27 PM
8 Comments:
I've read the Texas paper previously.
What you didn't mention in your article is that while the enrollment for minorities rose at UT-Austin, it dropped at Texas A&M. The increase seemed to be concentrated in the non-Technical fields.
Now, it would be premature to make any firm conclusions from this, since all of the data is just numbers, and no one seems to have bothered to interview anyone to see WHY they preferred to move to a less selective college.
The economic figures are somewhat more troubling. If education is seen as being a way to bring people out of poverty without intrusive government interference (which usually does a great deal more harm than good), then it is important that the program actually *reach* lower-class students.
I've said before that as far as economics go, the UofI campus is much less diverse economically than it was 35 year ago when I was a Freshman.
The 10-percenter idea is a good one with one major caveat--the quality of secondary education must not deteriorate any more and must be improved quickly. As it is, I find many of the high-SAT scoring students in my class barely able to stack one word atop another. The top ten percent of crap is still crap.
In addition, I support the idea that the top ten-percent of ACT scorers in the state should get free tuition and fees if their family income is in the lowest 25% of median income.
This would serve to re-integrate the campus in an economic sense. It still might not get the poor boys into a major social Frat, but it'll at least get 'em here.
Tom
Tom,
You are correct that Texas A&M did not have as nice a path as UT-Austin. I did not have enough room to get into reconciling their differences and whatnot. The point I wanted to illustrate was that if the system is tweaked and optimized we can maintain current levels of diversity. Obviously the 10% plan is not perfectly crafted, but I think that it is important for individual states to experiment in their laboratories (citing Justice Brandeis), and so I am glad that a few states are doing so.
There's also the sense that the 10% plan would increase competition at high schools. For me, structuring incentives to create more competition is almost always the right thing to do.
Ultimately, you are correct that the main solution lies in elementary and secondary education. This is the one issue where I lose touch with my moderate side and begin to think we simply need a total overhaul or revolution. Neither political party seems to have the stones to take on the system and to legitimately reform it. While the real answers lie with early education, affirmative action is still a small factor in the success of my peers.
Thanks for reading and posting.
Billy
I trust the current educational system so little on the primary and secondary levels right now that if my children were little, I'd be home-schooling. Every time that I mention something that I learned as a Sophomore in HS and have a third-year law student give me a blank look, I feel it to my toes.
Part of the problem on that level has to do with the Baby Boomers and their education years ago. The majority of the BBs that went into Education were the ones that were too half-assed to do anything else. They got our worst from ambition to SAT scores.
Now, there's hope. One of the things that I am able to do is steer some really fine people into teaching on those levels now. I am also in an International Center in which I get to study the sort of things that they do in other countries.
What we're doing now on those levels is not working. The NCLBA is just closing neighborhood schools where people have at least a sense of community. The NEA is fighting any recognition of quality or penalization of lack. Governments are throwing more or less money at the schools, not realizing that money is generally irrelevant. School boards are fighting to toss in "Intelligent Design" or whatever the alternative concept of the year is.
I don't have a good solution to it. I do know that my grandchildren are learning a lot more in their grade school in Homer than they were at Garden Hills in Champaign, and I know for a fact that they spend less money per student than the Champaign school does.
What I do believe is that the situation has gone beyond tolerable.
Tom
Great article! Who was the catalyst in this laundry escapade this weekend?
Great article, I am using it, cited correctly of course, in the research paper I am forced to write for my freshman comp class at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Kudos to Google for pulling it up when I searched "affirmative action."
Carla,
That is fantastic to hear, I really appreciate your use of the article. Feel free to lie and say "PhD William Mills said..." hahahhaha...
Billy,
I was wondering if you could post where you got the Newsweek and LA Times poll info from... ie web address or issue number or whatnot so I can use them in my paper and cite them correctly.
Thanks
Billy, you really should be careful when using polls. Honestly, a Los Angeles Times poll saying "26% supported race-based affirmative action" really doesnt tell me much; im more curious as to the sample they chosed to poll rather than the results. If you can find this data, that would be helpful, im really curious as to who Los Angeles Times considers American. Then maybe 26% could actually mean something.
I am split on Affirmitive Action. However i think its necessary until the public primary and secondary schools that i attended, are up to par with the same schools in the more wealthier neighborhood. In either case, i feel that affirmitive action is the reason im in UIUC; and if somone else feels that im not good enough to be here, then my grades will show it. You had class with me, im not that dumb hahaha.
I'm graduating in less than 2 weeks. in my high school only 3 out of 100 graduate from a university.
Good article though. I like the idead of an economic based affirmitive action, but i would like it more if all primary and secondary schools were at the same level. THEN we have something to work with. adios,
emilio
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