Validity of Data America Considers

Validity of Data

America considers herself the land of the free, home of the brave, and while the second component to this maxim is rarely challenged, the first has come under fire throughout all of the nation's history, particularly in the last 40 years.

After all, America is a nation of stark contrasts: On one hand, it is truly the only nation in the world in which a minority can literally immigrate one day, and be well on the way to a successful career and job the next, without the shackles of prejudice and discrimination.

However, this experience is not shared by all immigrants, and it is certainly not shared by the largest indigenous minority in the United States: African-Americans. Together with Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans represent a disproportionately large percentage of the poor, the unemployed, the underemployed, those stuck in menial / dead-end jobs, those without health insurance and those least capable of adjusting to our modern-day high-technology, service-oriented economy.

Given America's history of slavery, and then the Jim Crow laws, followed by legal and overt discrimination and then illegal and subtle discrimination, it is no surprise that minority groups - especially African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans - have clamored for measures to right these wrongs over time in both the workplace and in the ivory towers of higher education.

The most controversial of these measures are affirmative action initiatives. Affirmative action is a broad procedure by which universities, graduate programs and employers use relaxed standards to admit certain minority groups, with the understanding that increased diversity improves the productivity, environment and experience for all the employees or students.

Of late, these practices have come under fire. After all, the comparisons are made constantly to arenas in which affirmative action does not exist. For instance, in professional sports: "Perhaps the most convincing example of how the most-qualified participants emerge successfully is illustrated in professional sports in the United States. How often have you heard of racial under-representation in professional athletics? (for instance, have you ever heard complaints of the lack of Asians in the National Basketball Association?) Athletes are based on their performances, not on personal characteristics that they have no control over such as their race and sex (well, almost no control over that). True, sports are much more objective to evaluate than a person's abilities to function maximally in a particular work environment, but it is relatively easy to know which competitors are among the top of their field, whether by watching them, or looking at their lucrative contract offers and accumulated earnings." (Chung, 1)

Chung's point - and many other critics of affirmative action concur - is that complete equality is an unachievable - and indeed undesirable - ideal, and although minority groups pursuing such goals are motivated by good intentions, "discrimination will persist if such groups continue to seek after and demand equality on the level of job acceptances and college (and post-baccalaureate) acceptances." (ibid) Rather, these critics suggests, equality should be sought at a more impressionable age, namely, childhood: for instance, in health care measures to give better prenatal and postnatal care to minority and traditionally underprivileged families). (ibid)

Regardless of the critics' points, however, affirmative action has had, and will continue to have, a huge impact on our society in America. However, moving forward, a clear path must be set for the affirmative action initiatives, both in the workplace and in university settings: The question for us is whether to (1) dismantle affirmative action entirely, (2) maintain the initiatives in their current form, (3) maintain the initiatives in their current form but for a finite period of time, or (4) modify the initiatives significantly.

The solution must take into account legal, moral, ethical, socio-economic, political, practical and accounting implications, and must be, overall, compassionate as opposed to callous.

Purpose of the Study

This study will examine the limitations that face affirmative action today: What are the legal, socio-economic, political, practical, moral, ethical and accounting implications, and what is a feasible solution for one of the dilemmas that most tests us as "Americans." Which implications and factors outweigh the others, and which act as yardsticks to guide us to finding this solution?

The study will focus not so much on the theory behind affirmative action, but the legality of the measures and the practical implementations.

Importance of the Study

The importance of this study simply cannot be underestimated. Affirmative action defines more than just a policy, or a set of soundbites for policy makers. Rather, it represents the future of our country, and also defines the fabric from which our country is fashioned. How does America right the wrongs of its past? What exactly is meant by "every man is created equal?" Where on the spectrum of eastern and western political philosophers does America stand? And of course, more critically, how do we implement the chosen - and presumably best, or correct - measures from a human resources perspective, both in the academic environment and in the workplace?

These are truly questions that will define America and what it stands for years to come.

Scope of the Study

The sources for this study will be primarily current opinion and research pieces from reputable publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and respected university and Web sources. Also, the study will incorporate case law opinions, and lean heavily on the scholarly research in law review articles published recently. Data will be derived from these sources as well; as mentioned above, the study will generally steer away from older, more stagnant texts in favor of newer, more volatile texts, with the understanding that affirmative action is a much-changing spectrum of human resources work in today's environment.

Rationale of the Study

The question - where to go with affirmative action today and in the future - was developed through a close examination of current newspapers, periodicals and by speaking to industry leaders and professors of human resources, law and business administration. It was also reached after a review of the controversy surrounding the University of Michigan decisions regarding undergraduate and law school admissions.

Definition of Terms

Cases detailed in bibliography

Overview of the Study

The study concludes that affirmative action is an integral facet and indeed feature of society in America, and the American population leans on affirmative action not to create a false "equality" despite ability, but to take a giant step forward in righting wrongs committed in the nation's past. The study acknowledges that affirmative action is not perfect, nor will it eventually result in an ideal equality, nor does it even anticipate an ideal equality; rather, affirmative action is yet another necessary "evil" to compensate for a greater evil.

The study maintains that affirmative action is necessary moving forward, but should be put on the clock: Affirmative action is not a feature of society that should and will endure for eternity. At some discernable point in the future, this artificial system of admission and acceptance will no longer be necessary to bridge the immense gap between African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans and the remainder of the American population.

Primarily, this study supports findings that affirmative action must be given time to act and to take effect. America is a notoriously impatient society: Americans want their fast food and short stories and half-hour sitcoms now without any patience for novels, longer movies or gourmet meals. In the same vein, America has no patience for policy decisions that do not immediately produce results, results that are undeniably positive, and only positive.

This "do-it-now" philosophy finds its roots also in the fact that congressmen and congresswomen in America are elected so frequently; they are under pressure to show results immediately, or they are shown the unceremonious door. This impatience also manifests itself in companies' quarterly reports, as opposed to yearly reports. A company with an affirmative action policy is forced to show results every quarter to its shareholders, and not yearly, so poor results may mean a quick axe for the affirmative action policy.

Professor Derity at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill agrees, and posits the case in India: "The case of India is instructive here. Soon after the nation became independent, the government adopted a national system of preferences for members of the untouchable Hindu castes and certain tribal groups, to erode disparities that the caste system had produced. In the state of Kerala, the Ezhava caste, once a despised group, has displayed substantial upward mobility in recent years, to the point at which some younger members of the caste question whether they still need the preferences. But there is more to the story. The system of preferences has been in place at the national level since 1950, but Kerala, a politically progressive state, had initiated the preferences on behalf of the lower castes half a century earlier. Thus, the Ezhava have benefited from preferences for close to 100 years, or about four generations. Affirmative action in the United States, conducted on a much narrower scale than the Indian system, has been in effect for only a quarter of a century, and today it is being rolled back rapidly. Instead of pretending that racism and its effects no longer exist, we need to strengthen affirmative action and devise a new set of policies that directly tackle the racial gap in wealth." (Derrity, 1).

That, in a nutshell, is the position of this paper. America has not given affirmative action enough time to act. Moving forward, we should continue our affirmative action policies, but with an end in mind. Economists and sociologists, along with help from America's captains of industry and human resources experts, should devise an ideal time frame whereby affirmative action will end, and set outside and inside goals for this time frame as well.

But for now, affirmative action must continue, and continue with gusto, to reverse the horrors that America's history has caused.

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW of RELATED LITERATURE

History of Affirmative Action review of the history associated with affirmative action is the first step to understanding where the program is now, and where it should move to in the next several decades.

Affirmative action, the set of public policies and initiatives designed to help eliminate past and present discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, finds its roots in the slew of civil rights efforts enacted to reverse the horrible impact that slavery had in America. (Sykes, 1)

Originally, civil rights programs during the 19th and 20th centuries were enacted to help African-Americans become full citizens of the United States. (Sykes, 1) for instance, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution made slavery illegal; the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees to all equal protection under the law; and the Fifteenth Amendment forbids racial discrimination in access to voting, which is arguable the most critical of the trio. And of course, the 1866 Civil Rights Act guarantees every citizen "the same right to make and enforce contracts... As is enjoyed by white citizens... " (Sykes, 1)

In 1896, the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld a "separate, but equal" doctrine that proved to be anything but equal for African-Americans in their bid for a place in the new America. The court decision marked the end of the post-Civil War reconstruction era and Jim Crow laws reared their ugly heads and spread across the South, bringing inequality and inopportunity in their wake.

In 1941, in the throes of a world war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 which outlawed segregationist hiring policies by defense-related industries which held federal contracts. (Sykes, 1) on its face, Roosevelt's signing of this order was a direct result of efforts by Black trade union leader, a. Philip Randolph. However, closer examination yields the revelation that the move was one of necessity: President Roosevelt needed African-American labor for his war machine, and realized that the best way to achieve it was through making the first effective step towards the modern day formulation of the affirmative action policy.

During 1953, President Harry S. Truman's Committee on Government Contract Compliance urged the Bureau of Employment Security "to act positively and affirmatively to implement the policy of nondiscrimination...." (Sykes, 1) This was the second effective step towards creating affirmative action in the United States.

Then, in 1954, the Supreme Court's monumental decision in Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson.

The first actual appearance of the phrase "affirmative action" was in President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Executive Order 11246 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."

And then in 1967, Johnson expanded that same Executive Order to include affirmative action requirements to benefit women as well. (Sykes, 1)

There were other equal protection laws passed to make discrimination illegal as well. Some were the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title II and VII of which forbid racial discrimination in "public accommodations" and race and sex discrimination in employment, respectively; and the 1965 Voting Rights Act adopted after Congress found "that racial discrimination in voting was an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of the country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution." (Sykes, 1)

So, in essence, affirmative action found its origins in the civil rights movement, and thus was a response to the inequities inherent in the American system of voting and economics.

Reactions to Affirmative Action

In its tumultuous, nearly 40-year history, affirmative action has been both praised and crucified as an answer to racial inequality. As mentioned in the previous section of this paper, the policy was introduced in 1965 by President Johnson as a method of redressing discrimination that had persisted in spite of civil rights laws and constitutional guarantees. "This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights," Johnson asserted. "We seek... not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result." (Brunner, 1)

Focusing in particular on education and employment, affirmative action policies mandated that active measures be taken to ensure that African-Americans and other minorities enjoyed the same opportunities for promotions, salary increases, career advancement, admissions to universities and graduate programs, scholarships and financial aid that had been the nearly exclusive province of whites. From the outset, the legislators envisioned affirmative action as a temporary remedy that would end once there was a "level playing field" for all Americans. (Brunner, 1)

By the late 1970s, however, flaws in the policy began to surface amid its good intentions. Reverse discrimination became an issue, accented by the famous Bakke case in 1978. Allan Bakke, a caucasian male, had been rejected two years in a row by a medical school that had - it turned out - accepted less qualified minority applicants -- " this was because the school had a separate admissions policy for minorities and reserved 4 out of 25 places for minority students. (Brunner, 1) the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed inflexible quota systems in affirmative action programs, which in this situation had unfairly discriminated against a caucasian applicant. In the same decision, however, the Court upheld the legality of affirmative action per se. (Brunner, 1)

Fueled by the prototypical "angry white men," a backlash against affirmative action was bound to occur, and finally began to mount. To conservatives, the system was a zero-sum game that opened the door for jobs, promotions, or education to minorities while that same affirmative action system shut the door on whites. (Brunner, 1) in a country that prized the values of self-reliance and independently creating successful lives on people's own, conservatives resented the idea that some underqualified African-Americans were getting a "free ride" on the American system.

Preferential treatment" and "quotas," in fact, became expressions of contempt. Even more controversial was the accusation that some minorities actually enjoyed playing the role of "professional victim." (Brunner, 1) Why could some minorities who had similarly experienced terrible adversity and racism -- "Jews and Asian-Americans, in particular -- "manage to make the American way work for them without large government handouts?

Of course, Jews and Asian-Americans, however discriminated against they have been in American history, simply were never enslaved. This makes a huge difference to proponents of Affirmative Action, but not as much of a difference to those against it.

Liberals countered that this melting pot and of opportunity was in reality a very different place for the European immigrants who landed on its shores than it was for those who unwittingly arrived in the chains of slavery. As historian Roger Wilkins pointed out, "blacks have a 375-year history on this continent: 245 involving slavery, 100 involving legalized discrimination, and only 30 involving anything else." (Brunner, 1)

Since Jim Crow laws and lynching existed well into the '60s, and considering that a veritable plethora of subtler forms of racism in housing, employment, and education persisted well beyond the civil rights movement, conservatives impatient for blacks to get over the legacy of slavery failed to realize that slavery was just the beginning of racism in America. (Greenhouse, 1) Liberals also pointed out that another increasingly prevalent conservative argument -- "that because of affirmative action, minorities were usurping the jobs of whites -- "belied the reality that white men were still the unchallenged rulers of the situation when it came to salaries, positions, and, of course, socio-economic prestige. (Holmes, 1996, 1)

The debate about affirmative action has also grown murkier and more difficult as the public has begun to appreciate its complexity. Many liberals, for example, can begin to understand the inequity of affirmative action in a case like Wygant (1986): Most African-American employees kept their jobs while white employees with much more seniority were laid off or otherwise terminated. Similarly, many conservatives would find it difficult to come up with a better alternative to the imposition of a strict quota system in Paradise (1987), in which the defiantly racist Alabama Department of Public Safety refused to promote any African-American above entry level even after a full 12 years of court orders mandated that they did. (Greenhouse, 1)

The U.S. Supreme Court justices have long been divided in their opinions in affirmative action cases, partially because of opposing political ideologies but also because the issue is simply so legally complicated. The Court has attacked most of the cases in a piecemeal fashion, focusing on narrow aspects of policy or civil procedure rather than grappling with the whole legal mess that is affirmative action. (Greenhouse, 1)

Even in Bakke -- "the closest America had until the University of Michigan cases in 2003 to a landmark affirmative action case -- "the Court was split closely 5-4, and the judges' various opinions were far more nuanced than most critical or biased glosses of the case indicate. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, often characterized as the lynchpin judge in such cases because she straddles conservative and liberal views about affirmative action and related post-reconstruction measures, has been described by University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein as "nervous about rules and abstractions going wrong. She's very alert to the need for the Court to depend on the details of each case." (Homles, 1998, 1)

But in the landmark 2003 Supreme Court decision involving the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies -- "one of the most important rulings on the issue, or indeed any race-oriented issue, in twenty-five years -- "the Supreme Court decisively upheld the right of affirmative action in higher education. Two cases, first tried in lower federal courts in 2000 and 2001, were instrumental: the University of Michigan's undergraduate program (Gratz v. Bollinger) and its law school (Grutter v. Bollinger).

The Supreme Court (5-4) upheld the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race can be one of the many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." (Gratz, Grutter) the Supreme Court, however, ruled (6-3) that the more formulaic approach of the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions program, which uses a point system that rates students and awards additional points to minorities - tantamount to quotas -- had to be modified. The undergraduate program, unlike the law school's, did not provide the "individualized consideration" of applicants deemed mandatory in previous Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action. (Brunner, 1)

In the Michigan cases, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that although affirmative action was no longer justified as a viable way of redressing and rectifying past oppression and injustice, it promoted a "compelling state interest" in diversity at all levels of society. This is a marked shift from the previous legal position: which was that affirmative action was necessary to right historical wrongs. (Brunner, 1) a record number of amicus briefs - or "friend-of-court" briefs -- were filed in support of Michigan's affirmative action case by hundreds of organizations representing academia, business, labor unions, and even the military, arguing the benefits of broad racial representation. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the majority, "In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity." (Gratz & Grutter).

Much of the non-legal opposition to affirmative action, Sykes comments, is framed on the grounds of so-called "reverse discrimination and unwarranted preferences." In fact, less than 2% of the 91,000 employment discrimination cases pending before the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission are actually reverse discrimination cases. (Sykes, 1) Under the law as written in Executive Orders and interpreted by the courts, anyone benefiting from affirmative action must have relevant and valid job or educational qualifications.

These positions against affirmative action are incredibly necessary in divining the correct course of action with regard to the future of affirmative action in America.

Legal Precedence

The previous sub-chapter touched upon the legal background - especially recently - of affirmative action, but a more thorough explanation and exploration is required.

In its first ruling on affirmative action in higher education admissions in almost 25 years, the nation's highest court ruled in June 2003 that race can be used in university admission decisions. But the narrowly divided Court also seemed to put limits on how much of a factor race can play in giving minority students an advantage in the university admissions process. (Gratz)

The U.S. Supreme Court decided on two separate but parallel cases -- they voted 5-4 to uphold the University of Michigan's law school affirmative action policy, which favors minorities. But in a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court justices struck down the affirmative action policy for undergraduate admissions, which awards 20 points for blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans on an admissions rating scale. This may seem that affirmative action is legal in graduate school but not in undergraduate school, but it is hardly that cut-and-dried. (Grutter)

The cases tested whether the university is allowed to discriminate because it values diversity in its student population, or whether discrimination is only justified to reverse past racial injustice. (Gratz)

The pivotal case, Grutter v. Bollinger, involved the university's venerable law school. Barbara Grutter, who is white, applied for admission there in 1996. She was rejected that same year. She investigated and found out that African-Americans and ethnic minorities who had lower overall admissions scores were admitted despite these scores. Grutter sued, saying she was a victim of constitutionally illegal discrimination. (Grutter)

Grutter's lawyers argued that the admissions processes at the university's law school were unconstitutional. They based the argument on a 1978 case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (referenced above), where the court ruled that a school could indeed take race and ethnicity into account -- but could not use quotas. Instead, admissions programs must be "narrowly tailored" to harm as few applicants and students as possible. (Bakke)

Grutter and her supporters (via amicus briefs) won the first round in U.S. District Court, but lost in a close decision in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers the federal cases in the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. The majority of the appellate court justices sided with the university's view that a diverse student body has its own benefits, and that a "points" system for admission that takes the race of the applicant into account in an overall score was not in fact a quota. Grutter appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Grutter, appeals)

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the eventual deciding vote in the Grutter case, opining that affirmative action is still needed in America -- but hoped that its days are numbered. "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today," she opined. (Grutter)

In striking contrast, in the undergraduate case, Gratz v. Bollinger, the 6-3 majority ruled the points system violated equal protection provisions of the Constitution. Chief Justice William Rehnquist said the use of race was not at all "narrowly tailored" to achieve the university's diversity goals.

The differences in the two cases mean much for the future of education and minority advancement in America. On a basic level, it will mean that minorities will have a more practical advantage in gaining admission to college than they will to graduate school. (Gratz)

This may indeed be a positive development. In our society, undergraduate work is deemed more of a right, pending, of course, desire and ability, than a graduate education. It is also deemed more of a necessity to succeed in our economy.

Many of our successful citizens do not have graduate educations, but far fewer do not have undergraduate educations. So from a purely practical standpoint, it makes sense that minorities are still granted (for the time being, at least, according to Justice O'Connor) an advantage at the college level.

However, from a constitutional perspective, where are we to go? The laws must be narrowly tailored, but does not this stymie their effectiveness?

In reality, the majority is hurt by the advantage given to the majority. That is the plight in India now: For years, Brahmins oppressed the other castes in India, but now because of a quota system, Brahmins are simply denied admission to schools and government jobs regardless of their grades, scores or qualifications. And very ill-qualified lower-caste members are summarily granted admission. The difficulty lies in the fact that each human enjoys his or her own life, not the betterment of lives yet to come.

So, if a majority person's life is hurt in America because of affirmative action with the promise that, down the road, that disadvantage will no longer be necessary, it is not of one bit of help to the majority person herself.

That is the crux of these two Supreme Court cases: how are we to right our wrongs without creating a whole new set of wrongs? How are we to compensate for slavery and racism without creating a new type of de facto racism and disadvantage to our majority's economy?

Right now, the status is more a practical solution than a constitutional one. Perhaps the Supreme Court is right: This is the best way to tackle the problem, until the problem no longer needs tackling.

The Numbers: Affirmative Action's grades at American Law Schools

Many activists on both sides of the affirmative action coin attack the issue purely as a moral one - based entirely on arguments of right or wrong. In fact, research indicates that the activists' views are often shaped closely by their own experiences.

However, the most effective way to discern the best possible course of affirmative action is to pit the case law evidence against socio-economic evidence, so Americans can proceed with a truly objective viewpoint of the practice.

So, now, some empirical findings, first on law school admissions.

First, the levels of racial preferences at American law schools are very large and remarkably homogenous across the hundreds of varied institutions, operating in ways that are generally hard to distinguish from racially segregated admissions. (Sander, 1)

Second, African-American students admitted through these preferences actually often have quite low grades in law school - not because of any racial characteristic, but because the self-same preferences themselves put these African-American law students at an enormous academic disadvantage. The median African-American student starting law school in 1991 received first-year grades comparable to a white student at the 7th or 8th percentile.

These are telling figures indeed. (Sander, 1)

Third, these low grades substantially handicap African-American students in their efforts to complete law school and pass the bar exams in their states. Only 45% of black law students in the 1991 cohort completed law school and passed the bar on their first attempt; in the absence of preferential admissions, experts estimate that this rate would rise to 74%. (Sander, 1) of course, these figures are 13 years old, and the gap has closed significantly since then; however, a gap still does exist.

Fourth, and perhaps most interestingly, the job market benefits of attending an elite law school have been substantially overrated; regression analysis of job market data strongly suggests that most African-American lawyers entering the job market would have higher salaries and earnings in the absence of preferential admissions, because better grades at lesser institutions would generally trump the costs in prestige.

Sander, 1)

Fifth, it is far from clear that racial preferences actually cause the legal education system to produce a larger number of African-American lawyers. Careful analysis indicates that 86% of African-Americans currently enrolled in law schools would have been admitted to some law school under race-blind policies, and the much lower attrition rates that would prevail in a race-blind regime would probably produce larger cohorts of black lawyers than the current system of preferences produces.

Sander, 1) So, indeed, focusing on minority admissions via affirmative action actually hurts the African-American race's overall chances of entering a particular profession.

In the case of African-Americans, at least, the objective costs of preferential admissions seem to substantially outweigh the benefits, at least in law school. The basic idea propelling many of these findings is known as the "academic mismatch" mechanism; attending an advanced school where one's credentials are far below those of one's colleagues has a variety of deleterious effects on learning, motivation and goals that harm the beneficiary of the affirmative action preference. (Sander, 1) Over the past several years in fact, a large range of academics have documented the operation of the mismatch mechanism in a number of fields of higher education, not just in law schools.

These findings have sparked substantial controversy, as one can imagine. If the concept behind affirmative action goes against real time democratic ideals in the first place, and then add to that the fact that it does not even seem to be benefiting those it is designed to benefit, the result, critics argue, is a system that only harms and does not redress.

Effect of Gratz and Grutter on Modern Day Human Resources Adaptations of Affirmative Action

The view of affirmative action both in schools and at the work place following the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Gratz and Grutter depends inherently on five distinct propositions:

The effects of affirmative action can be grouped into the following five propositions, each of which is supported by a body of empirical evidence. The propositions are:

1) Minority groups in the U.S. continue to face systemic barriers and disadvantages that limit their success in education and in the labor markets;

2) Affirmative action clearly redistributes university admissions and jobs away from white males and toward minorities and females, but the aggregate amount of this often calculated redistribution is fairly small, some would argue even negligible;

3) Affirmative action quite frequently leads to the hiring and promotion (or admissions to universities) of minority applicants who lag behind caucasians in terms of credentials and qualifications, but much less clearly in actual job performance; This is an integral observation, because at least there are some objective factors which weigh in favor of affirmative action equality;

4) Affirmative action provides a wide range of benefits to the minority community, as well as to employing companies and universities, that go considerably beyond the benefits conferred on the specific individuals who get hired/promoted or admitted to colleges; and 5) Without the explicit consideration of race in university (both undergraduate and graduate) admissions, the share of students who are minorities at prestigious universities will decline. Of course, as observed above, this may not necessarily be a negative development for minorities.

Here follows a discussion of each proposition and the evidence behind it, before considering the implications for the future of affirmative action.

Since affirmative action was designed in the 1960s to redress systemic disadvantages that limited opportunities for minorities in education and employment, scholars ask whether, in fact, such pronounced disadvantages to certain minority groups continue to exist.

The answer to this question is clearly a resounding "yes." Minorities definitely lag behind whites in educational level attainment and employment outcomes. (Smelser, 52-151) the "achievement gap" in education between whites and minorities manifests itself in fewer years of education completed and in lower test scores among the minorities. This achievement gap appears to have many disparate sources, including continuing immigration (for Hispanics and Asians), lower median family incomes, less early childhood cognitive stimulation on the homefront, segregated school districts and schools, unequal school financing (especially relative to costs/needs), and perhaps lower expectations and unequal treatment of students by school systems and their teachers as well. (Jencks, 13) the very limited access of minority students to high-quality and well-financed schools at least partly results from the continuing high level of racial segregation in American neighborhoods, itself a product of housing discrimination against minorities and the residential preferences of whites, as well as school financing schemes-based heavily on local property values and taxes. (ibid)

Some researchers have recently written that employment opportunities for minorities in labor markets have essentially been stabalized, and that only the achievement gap accounts for the continuing gaps in salaries and jobs between caucasians and minorities. (Thernstrom) but this viewpoint is based on a pronounced misreading of the research evidence, since quite large and significant gaps in employment - if not in actual wages - remain even after controlling for educational attainment and standardized and unstandardized test scores. (Johnson)

These gaps reflect a large number of problems affecting African-Americans, including persistent discrimination in hiring, what are known as spatial mismatches between the locations of jobs and worker residences, and the harmful effects of previous incarceration on one's employment opportunities. (Holzer, 74)

As Glenn Loury has pointed out, the stigmas faced by African-Americans restrict opportunities in school and workplaces in methods that traditional concepts of discrimination and racism simply fail to capture. (Loury)

Since we have only limited understanding about the causes of the "achievement gap" in K-12 education, and no public agreement at all over how to combat it, there is little point in debating that affirmative action policies should be replaced by those designed to lower this achievement gap. (Jencks, generally)

At best, these policies designed to lower the achievement gap should be considered complements to, and not substitutes for, existing affirmative action policies at universities and workplaces. (Loury)

There is of course no viable doubt that affirmative action redistributes university seats and jobs away from white males towards minorities and females; indeed, that, as mentioned above, is the precise intent of such policies. Some observers regard this as an obviously "equitable" redistribution while some do not. But what may be more surprising is that, in the aggregate, these effects are actually relatively small.

For instance, David Neumark has noted that affirmative action seems to reduce employment opportunities for white men in contractor establishments by only 3 to 5 percentage points, and Jonathan Leonard has found effects even smaller than that. (Leonard, 47) Since contractors account for 50-60% of all jobs, the aggregate effects of affirmative action are smaller than these numbers might indicate; indeed, these policies likely shift employment from the contractor to the noncontractor sector (perhaps at somewhat lower wages), but they do not reduce overall employment levels for white males. (ibid, at 51) similar story can be woven about university admissions. Recent research shows that affirmative action has little or no effect on admissions in most universities, perhaps because the admissions standards used by most universities are not all that high to begin with, and fairly few applicants are rejected. (Kane) in all, these studies suggest that 1-2% of college and university seats are redistributed from whites to blacks and Hispanics in total by affirmative action procedures.

Needless to say, the impact of affirmative action on admissions rises with the quality of the university. Thus, for schools in the top 10% of the average test score distribution, affirmative action redistributes roughly 3-4% of slots to underrepresented minority groups; in the most elite schools (including the Universities of Michigan and California at Berkeley, as well as top private universities), as many as 8-10% of all slots may be reallocated that way. (Bowen) at prestigious graduate programs, the effects are similarly larger.

Yet even in the most pronounced cases, the overall share of university slots redistributed from whites to minorities is a tenth of the total or sometimes even less. From the point-of-view of minorities such as African-Americans, these slots are critical - indeed, they double or even triple the representation of these minority groups at the elite schools. From the caucasians' perspective, however, the share of college slots to which they have reduced access is in all actuality quite small.

If that is the case, why does affirmative action generate such intense controversy and cantankerousness from whites? Indeed, why do other forms of redistribution - in which elite schools reserve fairly large numbers of slots for "legacies," athletes, and even for the sake of "geographic diversity" - generate so much less of a protest?

Here researchers can only speculate. Perhaps there is a systemic tendency for caucasians to overstate the costs imposed on them by affirmative action. For example, if ten caucasian males apply for a position that ultimately goes to a minority with somewhat lower credentials, all ten will likely feel cheated - even though only one of them would have obtained the actual position in question in the absence of affirmative action. Moreover, the greater perceived cost suffered by caucasian males may have to do with the saliency of, and ongoing emotions and mutual recriminations surrounding, the issue of race in America. (Jacoby, generally)

It is important to recall that undergraduate and graduate admissions have never been narrowly defined meritocracies based exclusively on grades and/or test scores, and most university administrators would argue that they should not be today. (Rosovsky, generally) but the grievances felt by many caucasian applicants when, for instance, African-Americans with lower test scores and grades are selected for admission instead of them seem out of proportion to the fairly small numbers in which these preferences are granted.

If affirmative action policy results in university degrees, jobs, and promotions for minorities who are under-qualified and perform poorly, it might then have negative effects on the efficiency of American workplaces, as well as on their equity. Is this scenario, in fact, the case?

David Neumark's research here in this regard is again instructive. (Neumark, 13) Neumark finds that the qualifications of minorities - primarily in terms of education and experience - in U.S. establishments that practice affirmative action in hiring (either because they are federal contractors, or face court-ordered remedies for past discrimination, or do so voluntarily) lag behind those of caucasians by more than is true at non- affirmative action establishments. (ibid)

And yet Neumark finds fairly little evidence that their relative performance on the job in these establishments is actually lower. (ibid)

This scenario is true regardless of whether performance is measured by wages/promotions, supervisor ratings, or outcome measures that are specific to a particular economic sector - such as crime rates in large cities where affirmative action affects police department hiring as well. (ibid)

How can it be that criteria designed to predict workplace performance have so little effect on actual performance gaps between these two ethnic groups? For one thing, we must recall that any such criterion likely has limited predictive power with regard to outcomes. if, indeed, some educational credentials have less power to predict for the performance of minorities than for caucasians, then it is perfectly rational for employers and schools to put less weight on these credentials for their minority - mostly African-American -- candidates. Furthermore, the evidence also suggests that employers practicing affirmative action set off the weaker credentials of minority candidates in a variety of methods, for example by recruiting applicants more broadly, screening candidates more carefully, looking for other evidence of potential quality and performance, carefully evaluating job and school performance, and providing corrective training. (Holzer 240)

This is not to imply that our current affirmative action policies are implemented perfectly. No doubt, the bar is sometimes lowered, in terms of actual performance, for those who are members of the "protected groups." But it is striking how rarely this is found to be the case, when looking at the overall body of empirical research in this field.

It is clear that some minority applicants obtain jobs and university seats that they otherwise would not have garnered in the absence of affirmative action. Are these recipients the only beneficiaries of the redistribution associated with these affirmative action policies? It has long been postulated that the wider minority community benefits resulting from affirmative action in college admissions, by providing mentors and role models to younger cohort groups of students. The actual evidence in support of this idea is somewhat mixed, though it remains anything but complete.

Indeed, there are other routes along which minority groups benefit from these policies. For instance, these groups often receive more and better professional services from minority professionals than they otherwise would receive. The clearest evidence for this phenomenon can be located in the literature on medical schools and their minority students. A number of studies have now shown that minority doctors, especially those admitted under affirmative action initiatives, are more likely than caucasian physicians to serve minority patients, including those living in inner-city/rural areas or receiving Medicaid. (Gang Xu, 817)

These minority doctors are somewhat less likely to be board-certified in specialty fields and are more likely to be general practitioners, but the benefits to the underserved population base still hold. Thus, affirmative action policies generate what economists would call positive externalities, or public goods, whose benefits go well past the individuals who are admitted to good universities or hired by federal contractors under these same policies.

Nor are the only positive recipients of such affirmative action minorities themselves. College and university leaders have long argued that their institutions are well served by student diversity. (Grutter) Whether or not the educational accomplishment or civic values picked up in the classroom by students is improved by such diversity continues to be argued. (Bowen) but it seems fair to conclude that the universities themselves serve wider groups and also gain greater legitimacy by providing opportunities for admission to a much broader cross-section of the population. Indeed, the "compelling interest" of states in affirmative action policies that the U.S. Supreme Court has identified in the Bakke and Grutter cases could rest largely on the greater opportunity that is so provided. (Bakke, Grutter)

Employers are yet another group that benefits from affirmative action policies. The United States of America is clearly growing more racially and ethnically diverse over the years; accordingly, larger shares of applicant and customer pools faced by employers will be of a minority background as well. Affirmative action policies enable participating employers to better identify qualified applicants, and to hire workers who can effectively serve those in their own ethnic groups. (Bowen)

Indeed, many economists would argue that, if it is in their interest to do so, rationally thinking and acting employers would make these choices anyway, even in the absence of affirmative action policies. (Xu, generally) Perhaps this is now the case. But given the imperfect information and uncertainty under which most companies operate when hiring, and given the short-run costs associated with such policies, it seems quite unlikely that many would have developed the human resources agendas that now constitute affirmative action alone, and without significant government involvement.

If we believe university leaders when they state that they, and their states, have compelling interests in achieving diverse student bodies, can this diversity be achieved without taking race explicitly into account in the process of admission? There are two potential methods of doing so. One option is to use income-or "class-based" affirmative action policies instead of those based on race. Another option is to use an alternative policy, such as "affirmative access" which is the case in Texas, under which a top percentile group in every high school is guaranteed admission to the state universities. (Grutter)

Unfortunately, if the goal of affirmative action policies is to obtain racially mixed admissions at prestigious universities, these alternative policies fall well short of this goal. A number of simulations have shown that policies which replace racial considerations with those based on family income would generate significant drops in the presence of minorities at highly regarded universities. (Bowen) and recent analyses of "affirmative access" in Texas and similar policies elsewhere in the United States also show substantial drops in the presence of minorities at the highly regarded state universities.

Besides the often negative impacts on minority representation at prestigious universities, policies such as "affirmative access" suffer from further large flaws. For instance, a procedure that rewards a certain top percentage of students in their high school classes rewards racial segregation by discouraging minority families and groups from moving to more integrated and academically more advanced school districts. In addition, it is not at all clear how programs like "affirmative access" in Texas would be implemented for admissions to graduate schools, where high school class ranking becomes entirely irrelevant

What, then, is the overall view of affirmative action that emerges from an examination of the empirical social science literature? Affirmative action works to offset systemic challenges that minorities continue to face in schools and in the workplace; they redistribute some university positions and jobs at contractor establishments to underrepresented groups, but without imposing huge burdens on caucasians; they lead to the hiring and promotion of applicants who are weaker in terms of formal curriculum vitae but generally not in terms of actual on-the-job history; they provide broader benefits to minority and low-income communities, as well as to universities and businesses; and the outcomes they generate are not easily copied through alternative policies of admission that downplay race. While the policies as implemented are far from ideal and much of the arena remains undiscovered, many critics and researchers would judge the net effects of affirmative action as being fairly positive.

So what does the future hold for affirmative action policies, since they were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Grutter case? On this question the empirical analysis of past and current effects gives us a lot less guidance. But some informed guesswork, in light of what we know about demographic/economic and political trends, is certainly feasible.

Since Justice O'Connor's critical opinion hinted that affirmative action policies may no longer be essential in 25 more years (Grutter) - an arbitrary ruling based on little evidence of trends over time - legal challenges to affirmative action policies in college and graduate admissions will almost certainly diminish over the next few decades but will reappear after that arbitrary timeframe. In the meantime, the Grutter decision will likely retard the momentum towards the development of alternative admissions policies - like "affirmative access" in Texas - that have come to pass over the past decade.

To be sure, that affirmative action momentum will not completely erode. As Michigan (and perhaps other states) considers popular referenda to limit affirmative action, and with the likelihood that future legal challenges still remain, many colleges and states will continue to wrestle with their policies on admission. They may seek policies that supplement information on race or ethnicity with additional data on family background and even community of birth or living, thus creating a broader version of affirmative action policies. Many will continue to study the implications of considering race vs. other alternatives, such as socio-economic ones - as well they should.

But myriad other political and demographic factors will probably limit any rapid moves to dismantle affirmative action. The presence of minorities - and especially Hispanics - in the U.S. population will continue to grow astronomically. Over the next 50 years or so, the presence of Hispanics in the U.S. population is expected to flat-out double. Political analysts from both major parties, Republican and Democrat, have clearly indicated that Hispanics are the major electoral "prize" that they will have to pursue over the next few decades. As affirmative action remains quite essential with this group, and enhances their own educational and employment opportunities, it seems highly unlikely that many national or state political figures will risk alienating them with a major new assault on the Executive Orders or legislation that generate this affirmative action policy.

This demographic context - in respect to the Hispanic population in America -- will also affect employers and university leaders. With the forthcoming retirements of Baby Boomers in the next decade and beyond, companies will likely face major shortages of skilled workers, and will welcome policies that help them find talent in all potential applicant pools - even among those whose formal curriculum vitae fall well short of what they usually seek out. Indeed, in the booming economy of the late 1990s, many companies were choosing to skip many formal credentials (such as high school or college diplomas and general work experience) when hiring in a very tight labor market. Finally, college administrators will feel more pressure than ever to make sure that their institutions are accessible to, and representative of, all Americans.

In such an economic and political environment, affirmative action - in one guise or another - is likely to remain with us for some time to come -- at least for 25 years.

The Economics Behind Affirmative Action

So far, in reviewing the labor market situation for minorities, this paper has examined their treatment at work, that is, where they are placed and what they are paid. We need also to look at their ability to find jobs. An important aspect of the labor market challenges suffered by African-Americans is their high unemployment rate. People are counted as "unemployed" in government statistics only if they are actively searching for a job. In strong times and weak, unemployment rates for African-Americans are twice as high as those for whites. The problem is particularly acute for eighteen- to nineteen-year-old black people, who suffer unemployment rates above 30%. (Bergmann) When they leave the educational sphere, it is very hard for them to find jobs, and when they lose one position, they typically suffer a long stint of unemployment before landing the next one. (ibid)

The results of a recent research proposal reveal the extent of racism against young black men in hiring and give many inroads into the connection between that discrimination and their higher rate of unemployment. The Urban Institute in Washington, DC assembled pairs of young males to serve as "testers." In each pair, one tester was African-American, the other caucasian. Entry-level job positions were chosen at random from the local newspaper, and a pair of testers was assigned to apply for each job opening.

Here is the exact description of the test: "The researchers made the pairs of testers as similar as possible, except with regard to race. Testers were matched in physical size and in the education and experience they claimed to have. An attempt was also made to match each pair in openness, energy level, and articulateness. The testers were actually college students, but most of them posed as recent high school graduates and were supplied with fictional biographies that gave them similar job experience. They were put through mock interviews and coached to act like the person they were paired with to the greatest possible extent. The testers were then sent to apply for low skill, entry-level jobs usually filled by young high-school graduates in manufacturing, hotels, restaurants, retail sales, and office work. The job titles ranged from general laborer to management trainee. The testers were instructed to refuse any job offered them so that the other member of the pair could have a chance at it.

The African-American testers posing as job searchers were carefully coached to present qualifications apparently equal to those of their caucasian counterparts. In reality they were all, African-American and caucasian, extremely well-qualified for the jobs they applied for. The Urban Institute researchers found that the young white men were offered jobs 45% more often than the young black men. This result clearly reveals that some employers were not treating male minority job seekers equally with white males of similar qualifications.

The same researchers paired white Anglo testers and Hispanic testers who were fluent in English. Again, the pairs of young men were matched to minimize the differences between them; the only apparent differences were the slight accents, somewhat darker complexions, and Spanish names of the Hispanic testers. The Anglos received 52% more job offers than the Hispanics." (Bergmann)

The Argument Against Quotas recent study demonstrating that the African-American race was the only ethnic group to collectively lose jobs during the last recession has stirred controversy among black leaders, whom complain of "subtle racism," according to the Boston Globe. The recent Globe article gives statistics for black job losses in several large corporations after the recession. "General Electric Co. experienced "a 12.55% decline in its black workforce in 1990-1991." This was largely due to the closings of a Columbia, Md. plant, which was 39% black, and a Cicero, Ill. plant, which was 80% black. ITT, owner of "the Boston-based Sheraton hotel chain, had a 27% decline in its black workforce." These decisions are said to be based on business decisions like contractual failures, and not on race. The Globe article mentions other companies like the Bank of Boston and Digital Equipment Corp. And compares their similar dismissals of large numbers of black." (Chung)

However, the issue of perceived racism and discrimination perpetuates itself when minority advocates and communities speak of unfair treatment. The equal rights movement spawned good intentions to be sure: to ensure equal opportunities for all citizens, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, or gender. Ideally, the goal of non-existent discrimination would be achieved when people are thought of as merely themselves, with none of the above qualities attached to their evaluations. (Chung) as it stands, however, quotas have been incorporated into many institutions where acceptance is required -- for instance, the work industry and higher education. (ibid)

Because quotas have been established into such modes, the obligation of hiring or accepting people at least partly on the basis of their sexual, religious, or ethnic background has undoubtedly entered the psychological approach of those responsible for applicant placement.

Due to these expectations of equal outcome in such walks of life by minority communities, two things have transpired. First, "so-called "under-represented" minorities have come to essentially expect results based largely on their background." (Chung) This clearly has negative ancillary implications. One such effect is that a minority might become complacent, and may not try to achieve all that he or she can, because he or she knows that he is more or less required by a quota to maintain his position.

Secondly, "more and more "minority groups" have made their voices heard." (Chung) "Inevitably, if things continue down the "politically correct" path that they have been, complaints will be heard from such newly-formed groups as "The Coalition for Children of Single Parents," "Adults under Five Feet Tall," "People with Naturally Curly Hair," and "People who eat Peanut Butter Three Times a Day." (Chung) Before long, every single company, school, and government entity will be required to hire workforces and populations which are completely representative of the rest of the nation at any given fleeting moment, taking into consideration groups as farcical as those mentioned above.

This issue of equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome has caused much debate. On a recent Rush Limbaugh re-broadcast, the issue of the elimination of competition was debated. In such a scenario, everything would be equated, from education opportunities to job opportunities. With competition as the motivating factor, Limbaugh (and random interviewees on the streets of New York City) argued that society has advanced over the centuries, developing into the high-tech global network that it is today, and one which continues to propel itself forward. (Chung)

Limbaugh argued that the guarantee of the equality of income is essentially "a microcosm of liberalism, in that it lowers the quality of everyone, reducing the potential of our society to its lowest common denominator." (ibid) Society would have to set its pace according to its least competent members. Obviously, this hurts anyone who is not at the depths of society, attempting to equalize things that are inherently not equal to begin with. Beyond the physical differences between people lay the intangible characteristics -- characteristics such as desire, attitude, potential for development. It is the combination of these factors and other disparate traits (e.g. intelligence, life experience) which distinguish between individuals and their abilities. (Chung)

Developing the reduction-ad-absurdum argument, establishment of total equality would lead to a general collapse of society because of its very failure to establish such measures. On paper, communism is the most idealistic and aesthetically pleasing of social systems. However, if total equality is to be the goal, which, precisely, is the governing body to do so? After it does, who is there to uphold the system? Even if individuals can be trusted at such idealistic levels, let us keep in mind that the human being's predisposition for wealth, power, and personal satisfaction will always serve as fundamental roadblocks to success. A current example of failed ideology, of course, is the collapse and current turmoil of the former Soviet Republic. Complete equality simply does not work.

Give Affirmative Action Time to Act

However, that is not to say that equality cannot be the goal for a limited engagement, so to speak. "A standard objection to affirmative action and other race-based programs designed to remedy economic disadvantage is the observation that living white Americans are not responsible for past injustices visited upon black Americans. No living white American has owned slaves; no living white American voted for laws that established Jim Crow practices in the South; no living white American helped set up inferior legally separated schools for black Americans. Why, then, should living white Americans have to bear the cost of compensation for those injustices to living black Americans?" (Derity)

Furthermore, opponents of affirmative action argue, African-Americans today do not live under the horrible segregation that previous generations faced. Therefore, now is the moment to lose race-conscious policies and move toward the ideal of a truly colorblind society.

The lynchpin of that argument is the idea that African-Americans should give up their 'attachment' to blackness. These terms are thrown around often as if agency over such a movement is universal. "The call for blacks to cease being black is oddly unilateral, seldom accompanied by a call for whites to cease being white. The subordinate group is to surrender an identity that helps shield its members from the power of the dominant group, while the dominant group does not need to surrender an identity that confers racial privilege upon its members. The foundation of that philosophical position is the view that the past is irrelevant in explaining black-white relations in the United States today." (Derity)

To believe that only the present matters is to deny the continued economic subordination of blacks. Yet as we enter the 21st century, black Americans' income per capita, is only 59% of that for white Americans -- the same percentage that the economists Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, and David C. Klingaman estimate was the case in 1880." (Derity)

The continued subordination of African-Americans is because of noteworthy measures to persistent discrimination against them at all stages of the employment process, form recruitment to interview, job offer, and promotion. Studies conducted in the 1990's by the Urban Institute in Chicago, San Diego, and Washington, and by the Fair Employment Council of Greater Washington Inc. In the Washington, DC metropolitan area, show levels of discrimination that are impossible to ignore in the labor market against black and Hispanic job applicants. "Patrick Mason, an economist at Florida State University, and I recently reviewed the statistical research for the past 25 years and found that current discrimination in the labor market causes black men to earn 12 to 15% less than white men." (Derity)

The discrimination that previous generations of African-Americans experienced in the labor market also harms modern African-Americans' employment ability. For a paper forthcoming in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Jason Dietrich, David Guilkey, and Derity looked at census data for various ethnic and racial groups from 1880 to 1990. They controlled for variables like the individual's age, years of education, marital status, and whether he or she was born in the United States of America. We found astonishingly tight correlations between, on the one hand, the occupational status of American men and women in the 1980 and 1990 censuses, and, on the other, whether their ethnic or racial group had had to deal with discrimination a century ago.

A critical process for the transmission of discrimination's effects across generations is the transfer of wealth. Indeed, the most striking economic gap between blacks and whites in the United States today is the gap in wealth. Unlike income or earnings, wealth is a measure of what an individual owns, like a house or stocks. Ngina Chiteji and Frank Stafford have examined studies of wealth, and concluded -- in an article published in the American Economic Review in May 1999 -- that the medium white household wealth exceeds $10,000, while the median black household wealth is near zero. (Derity)

The sociologists Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro have proven in "Black Wealth/White Wealth" that access to wealth affects people in many ways, and interesting ways at that: whether they attend college, and where; how well they can survive critical emergencies, like the loss of a job; whether they are self-employed; whether they own homes or condominiums; and, of course, what they can give via inheritances to their children. (Derity) Moreover, a study by Dalton Conley, another sociologist, concludes that the disparity in wealth accumulation among racial groups is one of the most crucial determinants explaining racial differences in standardized tests performance. (ibid)

In today's America, as Francine Blau and John Graham documented in a 1990 article in "The Quarterly Journal of Economics," the major source of wealth accumulation is via inheritance. Although at all income levels, African-Americans actually save more of their money than do caucasians, African-American families now have comparatively less wealth than do Caucasian families, because black parents had less to begin with to bestow upon their offspring. And the offspring of today's African-American families will, consequently, have comparatively less wealth, because their ancestors will have less to bestow upon them. (Bowen)

Affirmative action can address continuing discrimination and racism, but it cannot right the wrong in the racial gap in wealth. Michael Steman and other policymakers have proposed class-based measures to actually redistribute assets -- for example, supplementing poorer people's savings with matching funds from government agencies via handouts. Some policy-makers also consider race-based policies -- for instance, having the government pay African-Americans' college tuition.

The social construct that we term race has a powerful effect on an individual's opportunities during the course of his or her life. Because that effect persists over many generations, policies like affirmative action may actually have to be applied for a century to have a significant effect.

As mentioned in our overview, the case of India is instructive here: "Soon after the nation became independent, the government adopted a national system of preferences for members of the untouchable Hindu castes and certain tribal groups, to erode disparities that the caste system had produced. In the state of Kerala, the Ezhava caste, once a despised group, has displayed substantial upward mobility in recent years, to the point at which some younger members of the caste question whether they still need the preferences.

But there is more to the story. The system of preferences has been in place at the national level since 1950, but Kerala, a politically progressive state, had initiated the preferences on behalf of the lower castes half a century earlier. Thus, the Ezhava have benefited from preferences for close to 100 years, or about four generations.

Affirmative action in the United States, conducted on a much narrower scale than the Indian system, has been in effect for only a quarter of a century, and today it is being rolled back rapidly. Instead of pretending that racism and its effects no longer exist, we need to strengthen affirmative action and devise a new set of policies that directly tackle the racial gap in wealth." (Derity)

The Implications of Affirmative Action in Higher Education

The United States of America enjoys a vast higher education system, heavily funded by state and federal dollars, that assures its residents that educational opportunities will be possible for all who can benefit from them. Americans intuit, correctly, that our colleges and universities have rarely been more critical for the health of our nation and our children's lives.

However, most Americans are considerably concerned about their ability to pay for their children's college educations. The 1992 Clinton campaign turned this concern into a countrywide political debate. "The campaign tapped into middle-class hopes by a promise of loans for tuition forgivable through public service, all done without the kind of needs test that has traditionally been basic to federal grant assistance. Unfortunately, not much was said about grants for the poor, which are needed to restore the bright vision of access and equity that was so central to the expansion of the federal role in higher education during the 1960s and 1970s." (Orfield, 1) major challenge for the Clinton administration was to respond to middle class fears and hopes without losing this goal of equal opportunity, which is so prized in America, and to do so in a period of harsh budgetary constraints.

So, how does federal funding for schools tie into affirmative action policies in the United States?

The federal government historically has taken on a larger role in funding higher education than in elementary and secondary education. The federal government's role has emphasized expansion of opportunity. Many of our largest and most prestigious universities were founded in response to the Land Grant College Acts, intended, in part, to reach students with very limited resources. Since the 1960s, we have been through two great responses to this role, each strongly related to the periods of liberal and conservative domination of American politics. (Orfield, 1)

The first response, ranging from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, was indeed consistent with the federal government's historic role. Starting with the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act and the 1965 Higher Education Act, the United States government became both the dominant source of money that kept higher education accessible to lower income families, and a vital source of college tuition revenue. (Orfield, 1)

These policies were partly responsible for vast institutional growth in universities. "Moreover, after 1964, federal civil rights laws and court decisions became critical to achieving racial and gender equity. Federal efforts helped break the racial wall in southern higher education and supported the access of minorities and women to the full range of college opportunities and faculty positions. In brief, the federal government -- "in both a legal and broad sense -- "acted affirmatively." (Orfield, 1)

The second response, from the late 1970s to the current era, has been a period of institutional consolidation and retrenchment: in other words, a decline in the reach of student assistance and a massive increase in the cost of higher education; as well as an emphasis on institutional protection, the increasing of faculty salaries, and an larger focus on research, especially applied research. (Orfield, 1) "A very different politics has also replaced the bright and optimistic vision of the 1960s, that is, affordable colleges for all who could benefit regardless of race, gender, income, and wealth." (ibid)

Sooner or later, adequate accounts of this second cataloged response will be written. But for now, it is important to note three related developments. The first was that driving the different politics were different fears: fears by the middle class that its children would not be able to afford college and fears by higher education's captains that their institutions would deteriorate. During the 1980s the actual cost of college had soared relative to family income for the first time in recent history. (Orfield, 1)

The year 1978 brought the Middle Income Student Assistance Act and this was a first large move in the direction of putting middle-class concerns first, as was the huge shift from grants to loans as the basic form of federal aid. (Orfield, 1) All this occurred during a timeframe of conservative politics committed to tax cuts and opposed to the use of the federal government to redistribute opportunity in American society. The consequences were not at all alarming - universities struggled to protect themselves by raising their tuition and fees. They just assumed that families would be able to pay a higher portion of the increasing costs of college even though family income was not moving up. (Orfield, 1)

Also, the recession of the early 1990s led to huge increases in the price tag of attending a number of public universities. State budgets were cut. The largest federal scholarship program -- the Pell Grants -- lagged further and further behind rising costs.

Orfield tackles the next step in the puzzle: "The middle class responded with powerful political demands for help that shifted governmental assistance in their direction, culminating in the reauthorization decisions on the Higher Education Act in 1992, which produced a cut in low income grants and a great increase in the eligibility for student aid among families with more wealth. This irresponsible congressional decision deepened financial aid problems. It not only reduced support for poor students, it also excluded the largest source of wealth of most middle-class families home equity from financial aid calculations and failed to provide needed funds for the Pell Grants." (Orfield, 1)

The second occurrence was the Reagan/Bush about face on the civil rights policies of the previous two decades. This inevitably slowed down access to education for the poor of all American races, and to issues of equity for women of all races and minorities, indeed, of both genders. When the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, forbidding discrimination in all universities receiving federal financial assistance, higher education had finally and irrevocably become subject to the non-discrimination requirements of federal regulations. Then, the federal courts found the Nixon administration guilty of intentionally refusing to enforce this law, the courts attempted, in the Adams cases, to compel action by the executive branch for 15 years; and these were the true beginnings of the consideration of affirmative action in the courts.

The Carter administration had major arguments with southern university systems, especially the University of North Carolina, over their failure to equalize and integrate formerly unequal black and white campuses. Under the Reagan and Bush administrations, however, the enforcement agencies reversed Carter's policies. "Reagan administration Office for Civil Rights officials abandoned the earlier commitment to plans for increasing minority opportunity, particularly in the state higher education systems of the South. Bush administration officials went even further, taking action against local and private efforts such as minority scholarships, accreditation standards, and admissions policies intended to increase minority access. To their credit, much of the leadership of higher education resisted the Bush administration's efforts." (Orfield, 1)

To compound the difficulties, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the coverage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and lower federal courts were persuaded to drop their attempts to supervise the executive branch's enforcement of the law. The overall result was the federal government's veritable disappearance as an enforcer of the rights of minority students -- apart from investigating individual claims of discrimination, of course.

The third related occurrence has most assuredly been less fully recognized. An important educational move, which stemmed from both the poverty program and from the civil rights movement, involved unique efforts to make it possible for promising students with poor preparation to make it to and through college. These programs included Upward Bound, which provides summer preparation on college campuses for high school students, as well as many other programs of recruitment, training, remediation, and support for students - especially minority students -- on campuses. The goal underlying these programs was that minority and low-income students do not have equal opportunities to prepare for college and that colleges must make significant special efforts if able students from weaker cultural and familial traditions are to take advantage of higher education.

The policies of the 1980s contravened this idea directly. A fundamental recommendation of the famous Reagan administration report, "A Nation at Risk," was that states up their high school graduation rates and also their university admissions requirements. A great many states did exactly that, without assuring that students in lesser high schools got the help and counseling needed to meet the higher university and graduation requirements. "States adopting requirements for more math and science credits, for example, often did nothing to find out whether or not the teachers and labs needed to meet the requirements in inner city schools even existed." (Orfield, 2)

When colleges faced their monetary difficulties of the early 1980s and the early 1990s, there was a strong movement toward increasing the "efficiency" of the states' public university systems by axing compensatory programs from four-year campuses and expecting high schools or community colleges to solve the problems of inadequate readiness for higher education. Institutions trimmed costs by assuming, wrongly, that the problems would be solved somewhere else

The highly stratified California system, with an increasingly heavy concentration on limited admissions based on tests and grades, was adopted in an increasing number of sister states. State university systems with traditions of free or very low tuition for universities often abandoned these incredibly helpful traditions. The idea propelling these efforts was that the universities should serve only those college students who were prepared for higher education and that inequities of preparation should be dealt with in some other venue or method. The policies were implemented, however, without any assurance that this "somewhere else" did exist or that such programs worked fairly. Actually, the best available evidence suggests that they did not.