The Pros and Cons of Affirmative Action

The other week, the federal court ruled against Michigan’s ban on considering gender and race in college admissions decisions. This has refueled the conversation on affirmative action policies from both sides of the debate. Just to get an idea for why each side is able to hold water in an arguments, it’s important to look at each sides arguments.

Pro– affirmative action balances out an otherwise uneven playing field

Today, there still remains a gap separating minorities. The Campbell Law Review states, “In virtually every major category, disparate treatment and limited access continue to define the lives of African-Americans and other minorities”, citing statistics in employment, college completion, and health care.

Minorities deal with a perpetual disadvantage from early on in the school system because schools are becoming more segregated. We live in a time where de facto segregation has become a norm. In fact, more than one-third of African-American and Latino students attend schools where more than ninety percent of the students are non-white.

This is a problem because just like in the civil right era – separate still remains unequal. According to the Campbell Law Review, these segregated schools have “higher turnover rates among staff, larger class size, fewer [AP] courses, poorer infrastructure, and fewer basic educational supplies”. And, to make the problem worse, we have a college application process that heavily weighs AP performance, which should be considered racially unjust.

Moreover, it is important to note that affirmative action would only apply to qualified candidates, so these policies wouldn’t pollute colleges with unqualified students. This educational equality then allows minorities the same opportunities to succeed as whites, in essence equaling the playing field.

Con – affirmative action doesn’t benefit its intended targets

One of the primary targets of affirmative action is the lower class. However, affirmative action helps the Black middle class more than anyone else. Political Commentator, Armstrong Williams, claims that this is due to the fact that “those who ought to benefit from affirmative action many times find themselves in prison or on drugs before receiving any of the benefits affirmative action promises”. Instead of actually helping the lower class, affirmative action benefits the middle class, which doesn’t need the help, making it unjust.

Affirmative action also targets specific racial groups that tend to be underrepresented. Basing decisions on race is flawed in this day and age because looking at the 2000 census, we can see that 6.8 million people consider themselves “two or more races”, which includes 5% of the black population and 37% of the Native American population. This problem also applies to Asian-white people and Indian-white people, thus making race no longer a discernible factor in the population.

The last main group that affirmative action seeks to benefit is males facing gender imbalance. However, simply put by public interest attorney, John F. Banzhaf III, “virtually all gender discrimination... is both illegal and unconstitutional… [It] would hardly justify discriminating against better candidates simply because of their genitalia”. With more women applying to colleges than men, it would be unreasonable to discriminate against them in colleges because of their minority stake in the work force. According to the American University Law Review, “women earn only seventy-seven cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts, and only six females hold the CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies”.

Pro – affirmative action policies result in higher productivity and interaction due to diversity

Affirmative action allows minorities that would otherwise be underrepresented in the workplace to take a part of business. Normally, the minorities would be rejected based on their relatively inferior education. However, we, as a society, need to come to an understanding that the highest test scores and GPAs don’t necessary predict the most successful people. Qualified people who may not have the highest scores or grades may be, in some cases, just as good candidates as those with the highest grades.

This then feeds into the idea of a more heterogenous work place. Tanya Clay of People for the American Way said, “we presented a number of reports by social scientists stating that heterogeneous groups – including those based on race – are better at creative problem solving than homogeneous groups, due to the benefits of interactions between individuals with different vantage points, skills, or values. Thus, by affirmative action, businesses can take equally qualified employees to create a more productive society.

This idea even carries over into the college setting. The Journal of College Student Development reported “that greater diversity in the student population is associated with higher levels of interaction among peers from different backgrounds… Higher levels of interactional diversity, in turn, are associated with greater gains in understanding people from different races and cultures. These relationships corroborate the legal position argued by Justice Powell… that a diverse student body enhances the quality of the educational experience on college campus”. Therefore, cultural proficiency is also increased by affirmative action in colleges.

Con – affirmative action is no longer relevant nor necessary in modern times

Affirmative action served a legitimate purpose when it was first implemented during the civil rights era, but the demographics and statuses of minorities has changed drastically since. We now live in a society that is becoming more and more of a mixing pot with more multicultural people being born every day. Additionally, the income of young, intact black families is approaching that of demographically similar whites. Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson summarizes that “at least 35% of Afro-American adult, male workers are solidly middle class.” All this is not to say that minorities have achieved complete equality in today’s society, but their situation is significantly better than it was four decades ago.

In addition, clear-cut racial divisions are no longer prevailing demographic sections, and so effective use of racial policies is increasingly difficult. Ward Connerly, chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, states that affirmative action “has survived long past its life expectancy only because it has developed a cadre of individuals and organizations who are so heavily interested in its immortality that… they simply refuse to let it go without a bitter fight. The fact that it represents a betrayal of one of our nation’s basic civic values… none of this matters to its protectors.”