Affirmative Action

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Regarding the discussion dealing with Bush's standpoints on Affirmative Action (which I agree with - a race-neutral standpoint) specifically in the case of Michigan State and other universities being discussed, do you think that Affirmative Action is still a necessary "program?"

Is Affirmative Action really necessary anymore - should the "race/nationality" blank be taken off of college applications, job applications, and other applications permanently, making race a completely non-issue in the most early stages of any application process?

This is my belief - if we live in a society where jobs and education are supposed to be indiscriminatory, should the question: "WHat is your race?" even be asked anymore? I would say "NO." THis is not to say that racism does not exist, but that racial discrimination, which should not be an issue in any application process, is only further propogated by that simple, quite unnecessary question.

 

No, they shouldn't. Continuing to collect the data means that some flunkie somewhere will find something to do with it, and there are far too many people out there (of many demographic categories) who are just looking for a reason to be offended.

Does this neutrality extend to gender, as it should? The implication of all this is that all forms for any federally- (or state) supported position have to replace the first-name line with a space for an initial. Anymore, few names are completely gender or race transparent.

 

I don't think it should be continued either. I think it causes a lot more problems that good. I've had a couple friend get passed up for a job because the employer had to fill a quota. I had a friend who had a masters, but lost the job for a minority who only had a bachelors.
But I think it goes the other direction, and will continue to do so. There are a lot of other places were people will not get hired because of their race. I know, I lived in one of those areas of the US for several years.
Wouldn't it be great if someone really could get hired based on their qualifications?

 

Well I myself disagree, because in the college acceptance is dependedant on a certain point system in which everything counts. Such as money and so on. And, it seems that you lose some points if you are Asian! doesn't seem too fair does it?

 

I am principally against affirmative action as the best candidate for each position should get it and race/gender/religion/sexual orientation should never enter the discussion at all. But sadly it does so, without affirmative action people are being discriminated on basis those things. Therefore I think we are more or less stuck with 'positive' affirmative action for some time yet. Atleast until we have achieved a more equal society where it is no longer needed.

 

Disregarding visible natural differences in the name of and for the sake of political correctness is a sign of mental weakness. Unless if it serves political aims and playing on human stupidity. Heheh, what if they remove the 'race' rubric from dating/matching agencies questionnaires?

 

Discriminating against one group to make up for discrimination against another group is wrong.

It is pretty stupid if you get to looking at it.

 

Any preference based on race is wrong. If individuals in the racial minority are having difficulty getting admitted to universities or getting jobs, then we should treat the cause of the problem, not the symptom.
I am glad that Bush had the courage (especially after the Trent Lott debacle) to take a stand against a policy that is clearly racist and discriminates against individuals who meet the academic criteria but are not in a racial minority.

 

Did any of you see the statistics that job applicants with "white-sounding" names are 50% more likely to get through resume-screening and get an interview than those with "black-sounding" names? Food for thought...

 

There used to be a thread revolving around this disucssion, it has disappeared I guess. I'll say here what I did there -- the talk about "affirmative action" is complex and should be grounded in concrete examples.

What you mean by affirmative action and what someone else means may well be different. For example, some people, usually opponets of "affirmative action" talk about quota systems. Well, quota systems are illegal in the United States. They have been for a long time. The problem is that the leading case with regards to affirmative action is the Bakke case which was a plurality decision. For all of its failings though Bakke made clear by a slim majority that quota programs are illegal. It is also clear that any program which takes race into account is measured by strict scrutiny -- the most intense judicial scrutiny -- and that program must serve a compelling governmental purpose and it must be narrowly tailored to achieve that purpose.

Some people don't have quota systems in mind though. Some people are thinking of programs like the Harvard University program which was specifically mentioned in approval in the Bakke case.

There are good reasons for not wanting to talk about affirmative action out of context; not only are we not sure what others mean but it is also difficult to gauge a potentially confusing subject when it is divorced from reality. I think affirmative action is still necessary for various reasons and I'll try to give an example below.

The CDC (center for disease control), AMA (american medical association) and individual medical schools have determined that certain neighborhoods in the United States are underserved by the medical community. This makes treatment more difficult to access than it is for the typical middle class or upper class community. The ramifications of having difficulty accessing medical care are obvious but the results can be particularly dangerous for pregnant mothers who need pre-natal care. The fact is that if you have to spend at least an hour up to hours on buses to just get to a doctor then the odds of you seeing the doctor are drastically reduced.

One of the Pennsylvania medical schools (something like Eastern Penn I think, sorry I'm working on memory here and its been a long time) thought that since they received federal funding they had the obligation to try to help assure that the citizens of its state had access to medical care regardless of financial background or race. The most compelling duty of a government is to safeguard the protection and health of its citizens and it can do so not only via the military but by assuring that all members of society have the chance to see a doctor. This is a compelling governmental interest. (edit-- Supreme court has made this clear in other contexts such as abortion.)

The Pennsylvania school noted that in its state those who were underserved by the medical community were most often poor and most often African American. So, they started a scholarship program, offering to pay for medical school for those who after graduating would go work in one of these porr African American neighborhoods for a certain amount of time in order to pay off their medical school. The program was an abject failure. It turns out since doctors in the U.S. make huge amounts of money they were more willing to shoulder the cost of medical school through loans, get out of school and go work where they wanted (usually a more affluent area) and make enough money to quickly pay off their own bills. So, the ability of the poor, usually African Americans to see a medical professional wasn't helped in the slightest by this program. The medical school tried, it didn't work.

So, the medical school instead began an "affirmative action" program. Here is how that program works: take the college G.P.A. and multiply it by 2. Add this number to the score on the M.C.A.T. If the student scores above a certain number the student is automatically offered a seat at the medical school. If the student scores below a certain number the student is automatically rejected as a potential medical school student. What about the students who fell between the two numbers? The medical school then asked for detailed applications from these students. The medical school wanted to know the type of charitable events the students were into, their outside interests, important moments in their life, etc. etc. etc. and, yes, they wanted to know race. Students who fell between the two numbers were judged then based upon all of their criteria and one of the many elements taken into consideration was race. This was their "affirmative action" program, hardly a quota system. What were the results of the program? The number of medical professionals who were minorities increased and guess what, the number of medical professionals serving underrepresented (poor African American areas typically) skyrocketed almost 100%. Now, those areas are still drastically underrepresented but the medical school had finally succeeded in making a difference by using a program that acknowledged race while their race neutral attempts had failed. Evidence of honest race neutral attempts to achieve a compelling interest is evidence that a program is narrowly tailored. (edit-- why this result has been debated but the obvious and unflattering and most often deduced reason is that white people don't particularly want to go work in a poor black neighborhood while black people who are more likely to be from similar neighborhoods feel a moral obligation to do so. compared to "white flight.")

So, what about the above "affirmative action?" In my opinion it is not only necessary it is a good thing. People now see doctors who otherwise couldn't. Are there examples of "bad affirmative action?" Of course there are, but I'd recommend we talk about it in context and take into account the breadth of things "affirmative action" can cover.

[ January 16, 2003, 16:24: Message edited by: Laches ]

 

Rally,

I am afraid that you are running into an unfortunate fact of human nature. We want to be surrounded by those that we feel are like us. I doubt that the majority of the cases were truly intentional bigotry. I would be willing to bet that if you ran the same study but sent out the resume's to businesses that were primarily owned by minorities, you would find a positive bias toward the minority group to with they belong.

I am not saying this is right, and I do perceive that this problem is on a downward trend. Unfortunately there is not quick cure that is not just as bad as the disease. The only forms of affirmative action that can be considered fair are ones where the best candidates get the benefit (job, school, whatever).

Any time a person gets a benefit over someone else who is more qualified just because of their race, ethnicity or sexual preference, an immoral discriminatory act has occurred. This includes when a member of a minority is receiving the benefit over a more qualified person who is not considered a part of any minority group. Unfortunately, too many forms of affirmative action do just that, including the one the President was speaking of.

 

I dont think affirmative action really picks people less qualified for appointments. In all cases I have heard it is that if two people have the same qualifications the one that comes from a discriminated group should get the place. I have seen many examples on where 10 people applied for a proffesorship, 8 of them were female, all had more or less the same qualifications the place went to a man. This is consistant and not something that only happens now and then.

 

Joacqin,

In the that was the catalyst for this thread, minorities are given 20 extra points on an entrance exam for at an state university. The maximum score on this test is 160, so they are receiving a 12.5% bonus for being a minority. So if I wanted to attend that University, and lets say I score a 120 on the test, and a member of a minority group scores a 101 before adjustment, I don't get to go. Does that seem fair?

It gets even worse in some other schools. Some schools require that a certain percentage of minority students be admitted regardless of qualification. Lets say that a school accepts 10,000 new students per semester. 20% of those students must be from a recognized minority group. Now lets say that the university receives 14,000 qualified applicants, but that only 1,500 of those are from minority applicants. The school is mandated to admit 2,000 minority students. So the school must admit 500 students, all minority students, who did not qualify. This means that 500 otherwise qualified students, are not allowed to go to that school because they were guilty of the crime of being born to parents of European descent. This scenario actually is played out in California public schools every semester.

 

Well, under your first scenario Darwolf, it isn't clear that the minority candidates are less qualified. People conveniently overlook the fact that the average African American is significantly less afluent than the average white American. Being less afluent usually means you have a poorer education. I'm a good example in that my geography education throughout highschool was piss poor and my knowledge of the subject to this day is significantly deficient. Likewise, I had a law professor who stayed in an inner city neighborhood in Chicago during the white flight phenomenon of our nation (which continues to a lesser extent today.) He has noted that as the schools he attended began to have more African Americans the quality of education went down and he notices everyday things that his colleagues know that he does not because he suffered from a poor highschool education. So, the added points aren't necessarily giving an unfair advantage but rather making up for the failings of our public education system. These are public universities right?

The second scenario is clearly unconstitutional and I'm surprised they continue. Can I see some cites out of curiousity?

 

Political, economical, civil and any other 'official' or social (in the meaning related to 'social circles') discrimination is plainly wrong, but preferences will exist and they are not wrong as long as the differences are true. I shall take my humble person as an example: I generally prefer on physical basis tall slim long-haired white girls. Every criterion being equally important. Are you going to call me a racist? Do. Oh, sorry, actually one criterion is 'more equal' and the only one w/o exceptions: slim. It's almost a fetish. Heheh, am I discriminating anyone more? Anyway: It's stupid to neglect nature. It's stupid to pretend we're all the same. We're unique and it's just the way God meant us to be, if my views are concerned.

 

Ideally, race should not enter into qualifications at all. However, as Laches has pointed out, racial divisions can be used to help the poor receive the advantages they need to achieve middle class. The African-American ghetto society is a legacy of our country; unfortunately, the problem seems too big for us to tackle directly (which would be the optimal solution), so we use these racial discriminations as workarounds. Maybe someone should come up with a brilliant scheme for cleaning up racial division in the ghetto. After all, you are so willing to talk about how unfair it is when a minority gets preferential treatment at a school or university or public job -- what about the glaring racial divide amongst the poor? Doesn't anyone care about that?

 

No preferences for minorities. That's racism too. Power-ups for the poor and uneducated regardless of race, but in terms of help and guidance, even material help, but not giving them additional rights.

 

Personally, I'm opposed to affirmative action. To me, it's putting a bandaid on a gushing wound.

What you say about "affluence" is a little shaky, Laches. So a poor African American kid doesn't get as good of an education as a poor White kid? And even if the white kid DID get a better education, that's exactly the point-

The child that is better educated, smarter, is more prepared to go to college, become further educated, and succeed in life. It's not a matter of convenience [that implies some kind of intent to disregard], it's a matter of truth. Rich kids get better educations. Smarter kids get to go to college. I went to a pretty damn horrible high school, ranked in the bottom 20% of all high schools in the state, in California, no less, the state with possibly the worst public school system. But- I'm white. There's my dilemma. I came from a lower-middle class white family, went to a crappy high school, and I had to work until my knuckles bled to overcome the notion that since I was white everything was handed to me. I spent my summers at community colleges learning the things my teachers were leaving out. A few of us huddled together as a group of intellectual elite, and we made it into the college world, to Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley [my school], MIT, and others.

It's moot now, I'm in college already, having a blast at one of the funkiest schools in the world, what am I complaining about? I'm complaining because I'm exhausted. The last five years I've been breaking myself to get to this point, circumventing my pathetic schooling and teaching myself or squandering summers at a local college. I bent myself out of shape to get straight As, to stay on the varsity track team, to keep captaining our academic team, to have a job to show responsibility and do volunteer work at a handicapped pool, because I thought, in addition to its obvious merit, these things would help me get into college. But where were my bonus points? I could have used them to lighten the burden. Oh yeah, I'm white. I don't deserve to be examined on a case by case basis, just lump me into a generalization and assume I'll manage because of the color of my skin.

Amon-Ra

[ January 20, 2003, 11:54: Message edited by: Amon-Ra ]

 

First, I think you're being a bit disingenuous by implying that coming from a poor background couldn't be advantageous and you are lumped in with other white kids who are better off financially when it comes to college applications -- Universities do give you bonus points for this and increased aid is available, I have first hand experience here. I worked my way through 4 years of undergrad and 3 years of law school in the Alaskan fishing industry doing 140 hour work weeks, I'm sorry, but the bloody knuckles bit isn't going to get much sympathy because I know that as a white in America I have things easier than the average black kid no matter my economic status. The point rallymama made evidences this.

Here is a question for Amon and anyone else: what is the purpose of a University such as the Univ. of Michigan?

 

Whoops!

Forgot this was Teh Alley.

Affirmative action is like a bandaid on the problem. Rather than that, I'd like to take it to the next step.

Requiring those young, black/red/green/purple/yellow males and females to go to college; books, classes, fees, tutors for every single class, not excepting underwater basketweaving or wine tasting.

Time for the next level of advancement.

[ January 20, 2003, 17:28: Message edited by: ejsmith ]