Long road to healing washingtonpost.com
Long road to healing
We still need race-conscious admissions
Apr. 18, 2003 12:00 AM
Racism, it has been said, is America's original sin, the central, most persistent and divisive problem in our history. It remains so today.
This month, the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the Bakke decision, in which a fractured U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of quotas in admissions for higher education. At the same time, it reversed a lower court ruling, which held that race could not be used as a factor in admitting students to college. Using race as one of several factors but not the sole factor, was, a divided court instructed a divided nation, "constitutionally permissible."
And controversial. The restrictive yet permissive Bakke was critical. It established the legal foundation on which rests myriad affirmative action programs in education, business, even the military. Once again, the nation's highest court considers a challenge to affirmative action, to Bakke, and to the nation's racial accommodation. At issue are the race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan, in which White women claim they were denied admission because they were White, thus denied "equal protection" guaranteed under the Constitution. These cases combine narrow legal interpretations and volatile emotions.
But in the end, it comes down to a few simple questions: Is it lawful, acceptable and appropriate for government to take special measures to promote racial diversity? As a nation, are we better for Bakke or not? To both questions, we say unequivocally: Yes. Certainly, we have made substantial progress in race relations over the past five decades.
We are closer to the day that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of, when people are judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. That progress didn't happen by accident, without conscious effort, but by positive, courageous, responsible actions in our courts, in Congress and our legislatures, in education and in business. But race still matters; it still divides. Perhaps not as much as a generation ago. Perhaps even less a generation from now. But it still matters.
Those who would discard race-conscious admissions policies use terms we all can embrace: "Colorblind," "racially neutral" and "equal opportunity." But these words, regrettably, do not even come close to describing contemporary America, where public schools remain woefully segregated by race and social class. Those who would scrap affirmative action would rely instead on "percentage plans," like those in Texas and California. They say that equal opportunity will not arrive for Black and other minority students until public schools are improved dramatically.
True enough, but what are we to do until then? Keep the doors closed to qualified minority students, depriving them and their White counterparts the benefit of learning in a diverse university culture? Percentage plans, we fear, are fatally flawed, relying as they do on largely segregated and widely unequal school systems. If these plans are rooted in social failure, how can they be successful? Academically competitive, selective schools like Michigan would have to spend enormous sums for outreach, recruitment and special academic services to make their diversity efforts successful.
We believe that there is a compelling educational interest in ensuring diversity and that using race as one factor, not the only factor, not the single most important factor, is a legally acceptable and socially responsible action in a country less than 40 years removed from polls taxes and literacy tests. The justices would act in the best interests of the nation if they upheld as constitutional these race-conscious admissions policies. We are moving in the right direction, to a better America, closer to the ideals of our Founding Fathers and the words of its Declaration of Independence.
But still have miles to go before we rest.
Find this article at: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/0418fri1-18.html
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