Revisiting Affirmative Action
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Many groan when affirmative action comes up in conversation. “Aren’t we done talking about that already?” they ask. Its long history as a media darling unfortunately detracts from interest in discussing the topic. However, as the composition of the Supreme Court changes and Stanford increasingly moves to implement color-conscious programs, affirmative action once again merits investigation.
In a political culture that favors the dismantling of the affirmative action infrastructure, Stanford appears to be strengthening its policies. In 2004, it created an affirmative action program to create awareness about associations with small businesses owned by underrepresented minorities (URM). Along with many other private institutions, it also maintains an optional section for indication of ethnicity on undergraduate applications.
These actions stand in contrast to the policies of its public counterparts. The University of California system passed SP-1 over a decade ago, mandating color-blind admissions at all campuses. In 2003, in a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court deemed illegal the system of the University of Michigan, which rewarded undergraduate applications with points for minority status toward overall admission.
With the public move toward a color-blind society, at least on paper, is Stanford outdated in taking the position Justice Blackman expressed in the famous Bakke case that “to eliminate racism we must first take account of race?” Statistics on the success of the University of California system in maintaining pre-1995 levels of diversity present a convincing case that Stanford is perhaps more enlightened in its philosophies.
While the total percentage of underrepresented minorities in the student body of the UC system remained constant at about 20% in the years following the adoption of SP-1, a closer look at the admissions statistics published each year by the UC President’s Office revealed that this was accomplished only by a redistribution of those groups from UCLA and Berkeley to less competitive campuses. In other words, color-blind admissions do not maintain racial diversity on more competitive college campuses.
The common counter-argument adopts the attitude that such redistribution is only fair, given the academic abilities of the students. If everyone is going to college anyway, should we sacrifice opportunities for more high achieving non-minority students at the margin for diversity? Not if we believe that race actually does encroach on the opportunities of minorities before college.
While it is true that the lines between socioeconomic statuses (SES) do not follow racial lines as clearly as they once did, the majority of URM still reside in the lower quintiles, and the gap between average incomes between white and African American families was the same in 2001 as in 1960. Given the correlation between socioeconomic status and educational performance and opportunity, it is probably fair to assume that the inequalities thrust upon minorities in the past are not quite as far behind us as we would like to believe. Therefore, achieving a national college demographic roughly reflective of the population breakdown in the country by race is the ideal if we adhere to the notion that all human beings suffer no distinction in intellectual capabilities due to race.
Critics also posit that if poor primary education due to economic hardship affects many minorities, affirmative action should be based on socioeconomic status rather than race. This solution also addresses whites and Asians who may come from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, this solution would not affect minorities in the desired way. According to a study published in 1998 by Derek Bok, the former President of Harvard University, and William G. Bowen, the former President of Princeton University and the current President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, “even though black students are much more likely than white students to come from families of low socioeconomic status, there are almost six times as many white students as black students who come from both low-SES families and have test scores that are above the threshold for gaining admission to an academically selective college or university.” Consequently, if college admissions eliminated color-conscious policies in favor of socioeconomic considerations, the number of minority students would be positively affected only marginally.
Stanford often hides behind a veil of secrecy when questioned about its admissions policies. In fact, when I questioned them last year for a PWR assignment, they would not even tell me how many staff members were employed to review applications. This is understandable, given the politically delicate nature of legacy and color considerations in admissions. However, Stanford’s policies achieve results, with an ethnic demographic (20% URM) that more closely mirrors the composition of the population of California averaged with that of the United States (30% URM), while the presence of underrepresented minorities in the UC system (20% URM) is only half that found in the general population of California (40% URM).
This is not to say that we should complete a radical overhaul of the system to achieve an exact reflection of population demographics. However, on the margins where candidates are more or less equal, it doesn’t hurt to actively try to gradually work toward the ideal.
The UC system would probably stand to benefit from a policy similar to Stanford’s, which likely includes consideration of racial impact on education opportunities. However, it faces limitations as a public institution subject to federal law and federal funds (or lack thereof.) At Stanford, where our admissions office has more resources at hand and can read applications multiple times, the actual weight given to these factors hopefully correlates to the disadvantages of a particular applicant. However, with the sheer volume of applicants received by the system, almost 45,000 in 2006 at UCLA compared with 19,000 at Stanford for example, it may not be feasible for UC’s to take race into account in an equitable way.
An ideal situation would be to include boxes indicating race and SES on applications in public and private schools. In the UC’s, if those boxes were present and given weight based on statistics demonstrating the magnitude of correlation with educational disadvantage, it might be an improvement over the current system in which both of those factors are more or less ignored.
The point system at the University of Michigan was clearly a poor way to try to address historical disparities suffered by the victims of racial discrimination. But it would be premature to assume that it has lost any usefulness to society. Viewed in the light of Stanford’s success in maintaining a diverse and qualified demographic against the recent trend in the UC’s color-blind system, affirmative action is perhaps neither as irrelevant nor outdated as previously thought.
