Race should be a factor in determining college admissions in some cases, but it should never be the sole deciding factor. This is tantamount to discrimination. Under this pretense, affirmative action has failed to deliver equal opportunity to American residents, some of whom might have been University students had the situation been different. The Paul M. Hebert Law Center releases an annual report to the U.S. Department of Justice. The report shows how the law school instituted what amounts to racial quotas disguised as minority enrollment goals from 1996 to 2002. The push to attain these goals may still be occurring. In 1996, the law school instituted this policy to reserve 10 percent of its student body for black people. By 2001, black college enrollment represented 15 percent of the law school’s first-year class, according to the report. The 10 percent enrollment goals were reserved for black students, regardless of other factors such as socioeconomic background or academic achievement. Though this policy was instituted to retain 10 percent of its student population for blacks, the report said it has continued for at least seven years despite having exceeded its goal one year after the policy’s implementation. While enrollment costs have increased for other students during the years, the report claimed black law school students received tuition waivers that have grown exponentially larger since the policy’s inception. Further, the report claimed none of our law school’s black students paid tuition in 1996. For the 2003-04 school year, black students received nearly $500,000 in financial aid just for being black. I have a problem with this. Our University needs to get over its apparent “White Guilt” and reserve scholarships for those who either actually need them or undeniably deserve them. I am certainly not the only one to come to these conclusions about affirmation action – Shelby Steele’s “White Guilt,” documents America’s transformation from “the age of white supremacy to the age of white guilt,” asserting whites view blacks unfairly by seeing them as victims. Shelby claims black power originated through reliance on policies – such as affirmative action – implemented through white guilt, which undermines black achievement. It is not logical to justify one injustice with another injustice, even at the University. Affirmative action should be recognized as a temporary measure to ensure diversity and opportunity for underprivileged people. Instead it has become a permanent facet of American policy, forfeiting quality for equality. This is problematic, especially considering the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 guarantee equality to all residents. The current state of affirmative action clearly denies many Americans the chance to develop their full potential. There is no doubt affirmative action’s intentions were justified: providing opportunity to those who lacked economic and educational resources is a good thing. But today’s beneficiaries do not usually come from low-income or low-education conditions, as Peter Schuck explained in a 2002 Brookings Institution report. Schuck identifies the disadvantage white college applicants have compared to blacks with equivalent SAT and GPA scores – after all, affirmative action does anything but even the playing field when preferential treatment can be given to students whose academic achievements are equal. One reason affirmative action is still around is because the perception of discrimination has changed, as the American Psychological Association detailed in a 1995 report to Congress, which supported the continuation of affirmative action but noted data that it also “stigmatizes recipients.” Federal policy favors minorities and women over the economically and educationally disadvantaged. Affirmative action advocates often misinterpret the judgment of dissenters, dismissing them as extremists or bigots. They dismiss the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans encourage the inclusion of minorities but do not favor legal discrimination; be it segregation or affirmative action. Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald columnist, described media coverage of poor blacks that ignored poor whites, resulting in what he called “white out” in a 2007 speech given at the Journalism Building’s Holliday Forum. Whites have the highest percentage of people living in poverty, 44 percent. Blacks account for 25 percent, while Hispanics and Asians make up the remaining 31 percent, as Pitts explained. Lumping people together based on racial and sexual terms, Pitts said, allows people to ignore other elements and expand on preconceived notions about different people. Helping the economically disadvantaged by providing them with the basic necessities of life should be an imperative for all Americans. We can fix this. The federal government can raise educational standards, rather than change test score standards or reward teachers. Perhaps the best response is to redefine the objectives of affirmative action, incorporating economic and educational backgrounds rather than racial or sexual factors. The federal government is not inherently racist. It does not exclude people strictly because of their skin color. In response to the controversy, I propose the government simply prohibit the idea of race – maybe if we stop distinguishing people, we can actually end racism.
—-Contact Daniel Lumetta at [email protected]