Doped Affirmative Action Can Do Only So
Much Doped Affirmative Action Can Do Only So
Much
http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-vmartin0327.artmar27,0,4035838.column?coll=hc%2Dheadlines%2
Vivian B. Martin
March 27 2003
On the eve of arguments in two key affirmative action cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, a study financed by anti-affirmative action groups takes jabs at the often expressed claim that racial and ethnic diversity on college campuses improves tolerance and education. No surprise there. Some knowledgeable scholars take issue with the way the researchers have selectively used data to make the claim that students of all ethnic backgrounds think racial tensions and discrimination increase along with diversity.
But I don't think these findings are completely off. People have the opportunity to learn from others of different backgrounds, but such outcomes are not inevitable. Listening and learning across race and culture takes an effort that some people don't go out of their way to make. The competing ways the study is interpreted by different camps suggests that people probably aren't going to change their thinking on affirmative action on the spot, no matter what the Supreme Court does in the two cases involving race-conscious policies at the University of Michigan.
Nonetheless, the presentation of arguments next week will be an important moment in affirmative action history. Even some of the staunchest supporters of affirmative action must wonder what it would take for them to decide that the United States doesn't need affirmative action anymore, that the moral ambiguities and questions of fairness outweigh the barriers to opportunity for African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and other groups.
This isn't the kind of thinking most would do out loud, though. The climate created by anti-affirmative action forces, some of whom reveal little understanding of how race shapes life experience, doesn't lend itself to hopeful dialogue. The Center for Individual Rights, one of the groups behind one of the Michigan lawsuits as well as other efforts to end affirmative action, is distracting the country from the real work. More than 300 civil rights and legal organizations, corporations and retired military leaders, among others, have signed 60 legal briefs written in support of the University of Michigan's affirmative action program.
The unprecedented array of support has provided a sense of vindication for affirmative action proponents, especially as the Bush administration has lined up with the far smaller band of plaintiff supporters. But it is regrettable that so many resources had to be marshaled to hold on to a policy that, although important to admissions in the nation's 300 or so most selective colleges, isn't a primary factor in admissions at the colleges most American students attend, and doesn't begin to speak to the areas in greatest need of action. Several months ago, the monthly book club that meets at the Albany Avenue branch of Hartford Public Library was discussing "Race Matters," by philosopher and activist Cornel West.
West, who recently moved from Harvard to Princeton University, writes of a nihilism within the poor black communities that causes people to believe they have nothing to live for. I had some skepticism about that thesis, but to others around the table, those who have lived in neighborhoods where shootings and other signs of despair are common, West was giving a name to something they'd witnessed. The exchange with a couple of book club members seemed all the more powerful because of the way the sudden awareness and its implications crept into my peripheral vision. People without a sense of hope can't buy into the path - school, careers, future-planning - that seems so natural to those in the mainstream. They haven't yet had a reason.
Affirmative action programs have never dipped deep into the inner city to lift up people there. Affirmative action was created at a time when blacks with education, even advanced degrees, couldn't gain full access to their professions, so there were many levels of inequities to address. Clearly, the problems of poverty, bad schools and dangerous neighborhoods in Hartford and other cities in the state and country require more than an affirmative action program.
However, if people have to fight as hard as they are now doing to hold on to small admissions gains at some colleges, the country will be fighting over affirmative action programs for some time to come.
Vivian B. Martin teaches journalism at Central Connecticut State University. Her column appears every other Thursday. To leave her a comment, please call 860-241-3167. Or e-mail her at talktovbmartin@aol.com.
Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant
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