COUNTERPOINT: Afirmative action — Reverse discrimination or just fair?
As recent Utah legislative actions are threatening USU’s out-of-state students, university students have expressed concern in maintaining a more diverse student body.
This acceptance of diversity as a worthy goal for university classes reflects the same logic that resulted in the foundation of affirmative action. However, in conversations people have concerning this program, it is evident that most opinions about the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) stem from relative ignorance. For most people, the reasons for and motivations behind affirmative action remain mysterious. Therefore, in order to support affirmative action, the history and assumptions behind the program must be explained.
According to the “Oxford Companion to American Law,” edited by President Kermit L. Hall, affirmative action came from the Kennedy administration as a catch phrase, but was not institutionalized until Lyndon Johnson compelled Congress to create the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1965 (10).
In that same year, Johnson said: “Freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please” (10).
As a result, affirmative action became a program meant to redress past discrimination. However, this goal of the EEOC has been modified through Supreme Court cases.
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) found quota or percentage requirements in university admissions unconstitutional (11). The Supreme Court’s ruling is important because I have often heard the assumption that affirmative action means “less-qualified” minorities take jobs or admission places from white males.
This is false. Ethnicity can only be a factor in a decision to accept an employee or a student. Racial minority applicants have always at least as many qualifications, and usually exceed the qualifications of white males. Belief otherwise reveals prejudice.
This commonly held misconception concerning affirmative action has led to more absurd arguments. Opponents of affirmative action argue the program undermines capitalism by lowering standards, and therefore, weakening the marketplace. This argument assumes not only minority incompetence as before, but also that WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) business practices and white male contributions to higher learning are the most valuable.
This is not only racist and sexist, but also flatly wrong. As a result of Bakke, affirmative action long ago lost its quota requirement. Even if I wanted to argue for quotas by emphasizing that the white male power structure constructs entrance requirements that further its self-interest and fail to recognize alternate forms of excellence, my point would be moot.
The main purpose of affirmative action now is to encourage diversity.
Diversity represents a real boon to the economy as well as the academy. Diversity is a worthy goal in any institution, and USU students are fighting (hopefully not in vain) to ensure its survival at USU. In higher learning, a true understanding of the American experience and, in business,inventive approaches to old problems can both be facilitated by affirmative action programs and the diversity they provide.
I’ve often heard the hypothetical proposal that had racial and gender minorities been given equal opportunities, a medical genius may have been able to find a cure for cancer. The more I consider it, the more I think it’s true. That is why affirmative action is so important today. Not because of mistakes we’ve made in the past, but because of opportunities we could miss in the future.
Just as discrimination stifled progress in the past, opposition to affirmative action could prevent potential failure in our future.
Aaron Law is a senior majoring in political science. Comments can be sent to him at sinatrastrashcan@yahoo.com