You Decide

… that affirmative action has unintended negative consequences?

Some affirmative action detractors maintain that race and gender preferences actually harm the people they are supposed to benefit. Say what? Yes, some scholars have suggested that affirmative action actually fuels high dropout rates among minority college students. Blacks and Latinos consistently have higher dropout rates than whites and Asians, and a 2004 study showed that affirmative action at UCLA’s law school might have been responsible for higher rates of bar exam failure on the part of black law students. Why? Academic mismatch.

It all has to do with competitiveness. We know that some poor and minority students who graduate from poorly funded high schools aren’t as well prepared for the rigors of college life at a top school. Students who are less prepared for college are going to be less competitive than their more prepared classmates. They'll get worse grades, have trouble keeping up and have an academic career marked by struggle, even failure, whereas had those same students gone to a college better matched to their academic skills, they likely would have thrived. Affirmative action, then, does the student no favors: In effect, it’s tossing poorly trained guppies into a pool of sharks.
             
Besides the active harm of race and gender preferences, there’s the reputational harm. Let’s face it — the phrase “affirmative action” is not a positive one in the minds of many Americans. In a May 2008 Newsweek poll, 72 percent of white voters said they disapproved of race-based preferences, and nearly 75 percent of white respondents said that such policies often or sometimes result in the hiring of less-qualified people. Whether that’s true or not, the stigma of affirmative action preferences follows minorities and women wherever they go, some critics think, and creates resentment among their peers. Even once a person of color reaches the upper echelons, many still whisper behind their backs that they don’t deserve it. And that’s the result of an advantage?

Way back in 1865, abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, “If the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall so. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs. Let him alone! … [Y]our interference is doing him positive injury.”

More than 140 years later, doesn’t he still have a point?

… that antidiscrimination laws don’t necessarily prevent discrimination?

There are plenty of laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race and gender, among other things, but discrimination still happens in America, and on a grand scale at that.

The problem is that since plaintiffs in discrimination claims must prove intentional discrimination when they file suit, discrimination is hard to prove and litigate. So much of discrimination, from implicit stereotypes to unexamined gender and race biases, lies in unintended reactions and responses, the ones that live deep in our minds and our subconscious. Discrimination in the 21st century is rarely as brazen and obvious as the blocking of black students from the schoolhouse door, such as occurred at the University of Alabama back in 1963, yet it’s still very much a part of our public and private lives.

Consider a 2004 report published by the American Economic Review that suggested that qualified people with black-sounding names were 50 percent less likely to get callbacks for jobs than their counterparts with white-sounding names. Another recent study found that black applicants with no criminal record were less likely to be offered jobs than white ex-felons. Such examples show that bias, however subtle, plays a persistent role in hiring practices.

Moreover, some of the indicators used to measure an individual’s qualifications are unfair to begin with. For example, think about the systemic racism that underpins the instruments we use to measure students in academic settings, like the SAT, a standardized test that teenagers take for college admission. Data show that black, Latino and newer-immigrant Asian students have lower SAT scores, on average, than white students. But according to Fair Test, a nonprofit organization, higher test scores are more likely to reflect how much time and money students and/or their families spent preparing for the test — indeed, even simply learning how to take the test — than their actual skill level. Many students get into college based on their test-taking abilities and their parents’ pocketbooks, rather than on their knowledge, skills, intelligence or ability to apply themselves in school.

Eliminating affirmative action programs that proactively help the system correct built-in bias in education and hiring amounts to de facto discrimination, affirmative action proponents argue. And the results are stark. Consider California, where race- and gender-based preferences were rolled back in 1996 and minority enrollment plummeted. At UCLA, black enrollment dropped by 57 percent in a decade. Post-1996, the number of female faculty members in the University of California system also declined, as did the ranks of minority contractors awarded contracts with agencies like the California Department of Transportation.

The bottom line is that gender- and race-based preferences proactively help keep discriminatory practices at bay, whereas antidiscrimination laws merely punish after the fact. Without affirmative action preferences, the systemic racism and sexism that has dogged our society for centuries will go unchecked, and countless women and minorities continue to suffer the consequences.