Affirmative action: policies, effects, and debates

Affirmative action policies grew out of a need to address the historic discrimination against minorities and women. Since its inception, affirmative action has helped open the door for many minorities seeking gainful employment and higher education. However, the same policies have also spawned charges of reverse discrimination against others and, paradoxically, of harming the very people they were intended to help.

This paper looks at whether affirmative action policies remain relevant today, with a particular focus on racial minorities such as African-Americans and Latinos. In the first part, the paper defines affirmative action, traces the policies' history and examines their goals. The second part is a critical examination of the arguments of affirmative action supporters. The third part studies the arguments against affirmative action by evaluating both the policies' effectiveness and their deleterious consequences for African-Americans and other racial minorities.

In the conclusion, this paper maintains that though they were instituted with the best of intentions, current affirmative action policies are ineffective against addressing racial discrimination and have even had harmful effects on the people they were intended to help. Therefore, affirmative action policies should no longer be used as a major determinant in both employment and acceptance into higher education institutions.

Affirmative Action: An Overview

Definition

The term "affirmative action" has multiple but complementary meanings. For Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy defines affirmative action as "policies that provide preferences-based explicitly on membership in a designated group" (cited in Guernsey, 8-9). Affirmative action supporters like Richard Wasserstrom see affirmative action as:

program of preferential treatment...which set aside a certain number of places as to which members of minority groups who possess certain minimum qualifications may be preferred for admission to those places over some members of the majority group who possess higher qualifications" (198).

This classical definition of affirmative action as preferential treatment has since spawned more contentious definitions. Opponents of affirmative action, such as law professor Lino Graglia thus characterizes affirmative action as "a euphemism for discrimination: the granting of preference to some individuals and therefore disfavoring of others on the basis of their race" (47).

In this paper, affirmative action is defined neutrally as any policy or effort to facilitate racial integration in society by developing more opportunities in education and employment to people who have traditionally been at the margins of social, economic and political life due to social perception stemming from their gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, or disabilities.

History of affirmative action

Affirmative action grew out of efforts to rectify past injustices meted against people of minority races and, later, women. The term "minority" is relevant, since recent reports from the Census Bureau indicate that African-Americans and people of Hispanic origin now outnumber white residents. However, for the purposes of this paper, "minorities" will be defined as people of Hispanic or non-Caucasian origin.

Though the policies were rooted in the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871, and the Civil Rights Acts passed in 1866 and 1875. These laws were the basis for many of the civil rights laws in the 1950s and the 1960s, including the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these policies paved the way for the eventual institution of affirmative action (Jenkins 1999).

The policies that were labeled "affirmative action" were first instituted by President Lyndon B. Johnson. In a historic 1965 commencement speech at Howard University, President Johnson that the unemployment rates, income, poverty rate and infant mortality of Black people were all much greater than those of white people.

Though he recognized the many gains in civil rights represented by earlier laws such as the Voting Rights Bill, Johnson eloquently pointed at how much remained to be done, saying:

Freedom is not enough...You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'You are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe you are competing fair" (17).

In the interests of ensuring such a fair competition, President Johnson enacted Executive Order 11246 in 1965. EO 11246 mandated the policies of "affirmative action," which requires federal contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." Two years later, President Johnson expanded the scope to include affirmative action policies to benefit women.

Goals and types of affirmative action

For law professor Paul Butler, the goals of affirmative action are threefold. The first, as initially recognized by President Johnson, was to remedy past discrimination and to put ethnic minorities on a level playing field.

Butler, however, cites two additional goals of affirmative action - to address ongoing racial discrimination and to promote racial diversity in the workforce and in higher education. To achieve these goals, Butler distinguishes between two types of affirmative action - process-oriented policies and goal-oriented policies (Butler, cited in Williams, 2000).

Under Butler's definition of process-oriented affirmative action policies, employers must ensure that their job openings are advertised widely to reach ensure that interested minority applicants can submit applications. Likewise, college recruiters must take special care to visit high schools with high minority populations, to ensure a racial balance in their applicant pool. Process-oriented affirmative action policies focus on making sure that all applicants are subject to the same tests, skills and interviews, to ensure every candidate receives fair and nondiscriminatory treatment.

Goal-oriented affirmative action goes one step further by giving minority status special consideration once a pool of qualified applicants is established (Williams 2000). For example, when choosing between two equally qualified candidates, a university admissions officer can give a minority applicant extra consideration on the basis of his or her race.

This consideration has given rise to allegations of "reverse discrimination" and preferential treatment. For this reason, goal-oriented affirmative action has become the subject of contentious debate.

Arguments in Support of Affirmative Action

Opinion polls reveal conflicting public perceptions on affirmative action. Most of the polls are worded in the abstract and are designed to elicit strong responses, such as whether racial quotas should give way to merit-based admission procedures.

However, in 1995, a poll conducted by the Harris Institution worded the question in concrete terms. Instead of asking abstract questions on the ethics of preferential treatment, the Harris Poll asked Americans if they supported concrete, affirmative action programs that they knew about in their own workplace. The poll found that 80% of Euro-American workers "strongly support" the affirmative action programs that they know about (Brookings Review 1998). Though the findings do not address whether affirmative action is indeed unfair, this widespread support indicates, at the very least, that affirmative action is not intrinsically undemocratic.

The little-reported Harris Poll bolstered efforts of supporters who argue for the continued need for affirmative action programs.

Their arguments generally fall under four main types.

Arguments based on racial kinship

Arguments regarding racial pride often reveal themselves in calls to "establish role models" and to "break racial stereotypes."

Paul King, the chair of the largest black-owned construction firm in Chicago, for example, cites the need to recognize Black pioneers like opera singer Leontyne Price, former Chicago mayor Harold Washington and Nelson Mandela. King further argues that racial kinship is a necessity in a society where being Black places one at a disadvantage. Therefore, King rejects arguments that African-American people forsake racial kinship or pride in favor of individual achievements. For King, the fact that Black people like Price and Washington "succeed in a hostile environment gives me the moral basis to identify with and take pride in their achievements" (57).

This mentality of racial kinship gives rise to a view that attempts to repeal affirmative action is a personal attack on a person because of his or her race. Identifying attacks on affirmative action as an attack on a group's racial pride clouds the real issues underlying the problems with affirmative action policies.

Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy contests King's view, saying that "neither racial pride nor racial kinship offers guidance that is intellectually, morally, or politically satisfactory" (47).

Instead, Kennedy proposes pride in one's own individual achievements. Using Kennedy's framework, King's racial pride in the achievements of Leontyne Price or Harold Washington solely on the basis of shared skin color as anomalous and misplaced. Such misplaced pride would also detract from a person's quest for his or her own individual achievement.

The different positions of Kennedy and King highlight an important schism in the view on affirmative action policies. For supporters like King, affirmative action fosters a recognition of the obstacles African-Americans continue to face as a whole. To repeal affirmative action policies is therefore an attack on Black individuals like Price, Washington and himself. Kennedy, meanwhile, would view such racial kinship claims as unfounded. Price and Washington's achievements are individual achievements which are not denied by the opponents of affirmative action.

Arguments based on results

In their book The Shape of the River, former Princeton University president William Bowen and former Harvard University president Derek Bok argue for the necessity of goal-based affirmative action policies in colleges and universities. According to them, "if universities were flatly prohibited from considering race in admissions...over half the black students in selective colleges today would have been rejected" (124).

While opponents of affirmative action quickly seize the findings of Bowen and Bok as proof of affirmative action's disregard of merit, supporters like Jesse Jackson argue that measures of merit are intrinsically skewed. First, Jackson eschews any correlation between standardized test scores and academic and post-academic achievement, citing instead motivation as the determinant of success (Jackson 1995).

Jackson further argues that many affluent white students have access to SAT preparation scores and have the time and resources to participate in extracurricular activities and honor courses. This places many minority students from lower-income families who need to work after school and do not have resources for SAT preparation tests at a distinct disadvantage (Jackson 1995). For proponents like Jackson, affirmative action is a way to address these discrepancies and ensure that disadvantaged youth receive an equal opportunity towards higher education.

Martin Michaelson takes Jackson's argument a step further, arguing that affirmative action policies benefit all college students, not just minority ones. First of all, Michaelson asserts that race- and ethnicity-sensitive admissions policies have had negligible effects on the student admissions of white students. Instead, the admission of minority students brings a healthy racial diversity into campus, a diversity that enhances the personal and academic development of all students (Michaelson 1999).

Furthermore, giving more racial minorities access to higher education has a long-term effect of facilitating the growth of a middle-class comprised of minority professionals (Michaelson 1999). If Michaelson is right, this access to education can have important implications later on addressing the many socio-economic problems faced by racial minorities today.

Continued racism

Against those who argue that affirmative action policies should be repealed because they have served their purpose, proponents argue that racism continues unabated in American society, albeit in more subtle forms.

For example, out of nearly 15,000 pilots in the U.S. Air Force, only 300 are African-American (Schipler 1998). White men remain disproportionally represented in Congress, tenured professorships, law firm partnerships, and managerial jobs, among others. In addition, Jesse Jackson points out that white men comprise "100% of U.S. presidents" (103).

Arguments Against Affirmative Action

The proponents of affirmative action have successfully argued the necessity of addressing inequities brought about by, among other factors, race and gender. They have also shown the need for minority access to gainful employment, to decision-making positions in economic and political institutions and to higher education.

However, these arguments fail to address the effectiveness of affirmative action in addressing these problems. In this section, the paper argues that current affirmative action policies are ineffective in addressing the problems caused by racism. The continued application of affirmative action policies to higher education will effectively negate any of its gains and may even be harmful towards minorities and the other people these policies were designed to help.

Problems of racial categories

Linda Chavez points to the problem of "racial boxing," Many of the defined racial categories are fluid. Native Hawaiians, for example, are currently classified as Native Americans and are agitating for their own category. Five different Asian sub-groups have petitioned for their own racial sub-box. Even white Americans of Eastern European ancestry complain about being lumped in the same general category as "white." Chavez writes that "any attempt to systematically classify human beings according to race will fail, because race is an arbitrary concept" (316).

This problem is perhaps illustrated best in the categorization of Latinos or Hispanics. A white man of Spanish ancestry from Argentina, for example, will generally be considered "white." However, if the same man cannot speak English without a Spanish accent, his inability to do so would most likely suddenly make him "Hispanic." Such fluid characterizations further serve to emphasize the arbitrariness of concepts about race.

Chavez further argues that just as it is impossible to truly characterize which individuals belong to a certain minority group, it is also difficult to determine which minority lags behind both economically and socially. She cites statistical evidence showing that many native-born Hispanics earn salaries commensurate to their education, while many Mexican-Americans earn up to 93% of their white counterparts. Chavez is therefore critical of representatives who characterize Latinos as a downtrodden minority instead of an upwardly-mobile immigrant group (Chavez 1996).

Moral arguments against affirmative action

Bill Conti and Brad Stetson further criticize the "color-coded" affirmative action programs as a step back from the gains of the "color-blind Civil Rights Act" passed in 1964.

In many ways, Conti and Stetson see affirmative action as a "poisonous race consciousness" that are, in many ways, "a flip-side of the biases of the past" (106).

In contrast to alarmist rhetoric that states "either we keep it this way or go back to Jim Crow," Conti and Stetson push for a racial humanism of leaders like Martin Luther King, who argue for people to be judged on the basis of their individual merits and character. For them, any automatic kinship based on race is akin to the "ethnic chauvinism" of the Italian-Americans who rioted upon hearing that mobster John Gotti were sentenced to life.