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Does the US Need Affirmative Action? - ACLU - ProCon.org

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Does the US Need Affirmative Action?

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General Reference (not clearly pro or con)

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a report on Dec. 15, 2004 titled "Affirmative Action Revisited: A
Legal History and Prospectus":
"The origins of affirmative action law may be traced to the early 1960's... Judicial rulings from this period
recognized an 'affirmative duty,' cast upon local school boards by the Equal Protection Clause, to desegregate
formerly 'dual school' systems and to eliminate 'root and branch' the last 'vestiges' of state-enforced
segregation...

Congress and the Executive Branch soon followed by adopting a panoply of laws and regulations authorizing,
either directly or by judicial or administrative interpretation, 'race-conscious' strategies to promote minority
opportunity in jobs, education, and governmental contracting. The basic statutory framework for affirmative
action in employment and education derives from the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Public and private employers
with 15 or more employees are subject to a comprehensive code of equal employment opportunity regulations
under Title VII of the 1964 Act...

Official approval of 'affirmative action' remedies was further codified by federal regulations construing the 1964
Acts Title VI, which prohibits racial or ethnic discrimination in all federally assisted 'programs' and activities,
including public or private educational institutions. The Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education
interpreted Title VI to require schools and colleges to take affirmative action to overcome the effects of past
discrimination and to encourage 'voluntary affirmative action to attain a diverse student body.'"

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Dec. 15, 2004 - "Affirmative Action Revisited: A Legal History and Prospectus" (315KB)
Congressional Research Service

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Does the US Need Affirmative Action?

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How They Do It
9. Opinion Polls/Surveys

PRO (yes)

CON (no)

10. US Constitution and Bill of

Rights

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated the

following in its Mar. 21, 2008 publication "Striving for Equal
Opportunity: Why the ACLU Supports Affirmative Action,"
available at www.aclu.org:

John A. Farrell, Contributing Editor at US News and World

Report, stated the following in his June 10, 2009 article
"Obama's Election Shows That Affirmative Action's Day Has
Passed," published in US News and World Report:

"We have come a long way since the Civil

Rights Movement, and many Americans feel
that the time for affirmative action is over.
Opportunities for women and people of color
have expanded, and many believe that the
unequal conditions that once justified
affirmative action no longer exist. Sadly, this is
just not true. Millions of Americans continue to
experience race and gender barriers in
education, contracting and employment.
Existing laws help to prevent outright
discrimination on the basis of race and gender,
but they alone are not enough to create equal
opportunities for every American.

"In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against

Barbara Grutter, a [white] college grad who
sued the University of Michigan law school
because it employed racial preferences in its
admissions process to achieve academic
diversity.

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Affirmative action programs including

targeted outreach and recruitment efforts, the
use of non-traditional criteria for hiring and
admissions, after-school and mentorship
programs, and training and apprenticeship
opportunities are tailored to fit specific
instances where race and gender must be
taken into account in order to provide fair and
equal access to minorities and women. These
programs recognize and strive to correct the
barriers that continue to block the paths of
many individual Americans, including women,
Native Americans, Arab Americans, Latinos,
Asian Americans, and African Americans.
Affirmative action helps ensure equal access to
opportunities and brings our nation closer to
the ideal of giving everyone a fair chance. We

http://aclu.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000697

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joined the court's

four liberal justices to keep affirmative action
alive that day, in a 5-to-4 decision. But the
moment was fast approaching, O'Connor said,
when the promotion of people of color, solely
because of their race, would not be justified.
No one knew precisely when the tipping point
would be reached, O'Connor wrote, but 'the
court expects that 25 years from now the use
of racial preferences will no longer be
necessary.' Five years later, Barack Obama
was elected president of the United States.
Obama's election was the sign we've been
waiting for. It is time we do away with
preferences and recognize people, as Martin
Luther King urged us, by the content of their
character. Today, a black man sits in the Oval
Office, having narrowly defeated a woman for
the Democratic nomination whom, to
considerable acclaim, he then appointed
secretary of state."
June 10, 2009 - John A. Farrell

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support affirmative action and other race- and
gender-conscious policies as vital tools in the
struggle to provide all Americans with equal
opportunity, to promote diversity in academic
and professional settings, and to give each and
every one of us a fair chance to compete."
Mar. 21, 2008 - American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

Reginald T. Shuford, JD, Senior Staff Attorney at the

American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Racial Justice
Program, stated the following in his May 21, 2009 article
"Why Affirmative Action Remains Essential in the Age of
Obama," published in the Campbell Law Review:
"[W]hether in the arenas of housing,
employment, education, wealth, health care, or
the justice system, African- Americans,
Latinos, and Native Americans continue to lag
way behind others. By way of example,
according to one study of over 1300 employers
in Boston and Chicago, job applicants with
'white-sounding' names are twice as likely to
be called back for interviews as equally
qualified applicants with 'black-sounding'
names. More than one million students will not
graduate from high school this year, and a
disproportionate number of them will be
African-American, Latino, or Native American.
African-American women, moreover, earn only
sixty-three cents per hour and Hispanic women
only fiftytwo cents per hour for every dollar a
white man earns for similar employment.
Given its well-documented effectiveness,
affirmative action is an appropriate tool for
combating these and other ongoing
disparities...
While it is abundantly clear that America has
made laudable progress towards racial equality
as reflected, in part, by the election of
Barack Obama as the nations forty-fourth
president... Americas promise of a fully
inclusive society has not materialized. In light
of all the relevant evidence, America has not
fulfilled Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.s dream of a
truly equal society. While Obamas election
qualifies as a down payment on equality, much
more remains to be done. Affirmative action
which is just one of many effective tools for
expanding opportunity remains essential for
the full inclusion of all of those who historically
have been and continue to be structurally
relegated to the margins of society, and who
are increasingly left further behind in the race
to achieve the American Dream."
May 21, 2009 - Reginald T. Shuford, JD

Barack Obama, JD, 44th President of the United States,

provided the following statement on affirmative action to the
NAACP "2008 Voter Action Center,"(accessed Nov. 16,
2009):
"I support affirmative action. When there is
strong evidence of prolonged and systemic
discrimination by organizations, affirmative
action may be the only meaningful remedy
available. Given the dearth of black and Latino
Ph.D. candidates in mathematics and the
sciences, for example, a scholarship program
for minorities interested in getting advanced
degrees in these fields won't keep white
students out of such programs, but can
broaden the pool of talent that we need to
prosper in the new economy. We shouldn't
ignore that race continues to matter: To
suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in
the socio-economic disparities that we often
observe turns a blind eye to both our history
and our experience - and relieves us of the
responsibility to make things right."
Nov. 16, 2009 - Barack Obama, JD

http://aclu.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000697

Clint Bolick, JD, Director of the Goldwater Institute, stated

the following in his June 29, 2009 article "The Supreme
Court and New Haven's Firefighters," published in Forbes:
"When blacks and Hispanics flunk
examinations, the cause is less likely to be
discrimination than the appalling educational
conditions to which most economically
disadvantaged black and Hispanic children are
consigned. 'Affirmative action' programs that
leap-frog less-qualified minorities over more-
qualified non-minorities sweep those systemic
problems under the carpet. As such, race-
based affirmative action programs perpetuate
fraud upon the very groups they are designed
to help."
June 29, 2009 - Clint Bolick, JD

Ward Connerly, former University of California Regent, in

his Mar. 27. 2000 interview with Salon.com titled "A 'Poison'
Divide Us," stated:
"In my view, using the powers of government to
make sure that people are not discriminated
against, I think that was the original intent of
affirmative action.... But when it gets to the
point where you are making a selection for
someone to be admitted to the university or
someone to be hired for a job, and to have one
standard for someone who is black and
another standard for someone who is white ... I
think that's a preference.... I think that when
you apply different standards to people, that's
discriminatory, no matter what you want to call
it....
But as long as you have this paradigm where
people seem to be using race and gender as a
means of making hiring decisions, as long as
they keep uttering this mindless blather about
'we've got to achieve diversity,' it kind of taints
the whole process. And the decisions that
they're making would be no different, in my
view, if they just discarded the whole system....
If we really wanted to help black people -- let's
just take black people for an example -- we
would not be putting so much emphasis on
getting them into Berkeley as we would giving
them the equivalent money to go out and buy
their own cabs, or get the tools to become an
electrician or a plumber, or the money to take a
vocational course.... But we don't even look at
that. If I proposed that, they'd think I was a
kook, because we're so hung up on the notion
that you either go to college or life's a failure.
And if you don't get into Berkeley and you're
black, there must be some institutional racism
there."
Mar. 27, 2000 - Ward Connerly

Jeff Jacoby, JD, Columnist at the Boston Globe, wrote in his

Mar. 19, 2004 article titled "On Flattering Minorities" for
Townhall.com:
"Once upon time it was racists who insisted
that 'nonwhite' was a synonym for 'intellectually
deficient.' Today that attitude is promoted most
emphatically by the defenders of affirmative
action, a system rooted in the belief that blacks
and certain other minorities can't hope to win if
they have to compete on a level playing field.
And so racial preferences are used to tilt the
field in their favor: lower admissions standards
at colleges and graduate schools, minority set-
asides for government contracts, unofficial
racial quotas to benefit those applying for jobs.
Racial preferences are clearly a boon for some
minorities -- particularly those from upper-
middle-class families who know how to
leverage them to get into a good school or land

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Scott Plous, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan
University, wrote in his article "Ten Myths About Affirmative
Action," posted on his website (accessed Aug. 17, 2005):
"Several studies have documented important
gains in racial and gender equality as a direct
result of affirmative action...
Despite the progress that has been made, the
playing field is far from level. Women continue
to earn 76 cents for every male dollar.... Black
people continue to have twice the
unemployment rate of White people, twice the
rate of infant mortality, and just over half the
proportion of people who attend four years or
more of college.... In fact, without affirmative
action the percentage of Black students at
many selective schools would drop to only 2%
of the student body....
Some writers have criticized affirmative action
as a superficial solution that does not address
deeper societal problems by redistributing
wealth and developing true educational
equality. Yet affirmative action was never
proposed as a cure-all solution to inequality.
Rather, it was intended only to redress
discrimination in hiring and academic
admissions. In assessing the value of
affirmative action, the central question is
merely this: In the absence of sweeping
societal reforms -- unlikely to take place any
time soon -- does affirmative action help
counteract the continuing injustice caused by
discrimination? The research record suggests,
unequivocally, that it does."
Aug. 17, 2005 - Scott Plous, PhD

The National Organization for Women (NOW), a national

feminist organization, stated the following in its article
"Talking About Affirmative Action," available at
www.now.org (accessed Nov. 19, 2009):
"Affirmative Action levels the playing field so
people of color and all women have the chance
to compete in education and in business.
White men hold 95% to 97% of the high-level
corporate jobs. And that's with affirmative
action programs in place. Imagine how low
figures would be without affirmative action...
Despite the enormous gains made by the civil
rights and women's rights movements, women
and people of color still face unfair obstacles in
business and education. An astonishing 70%
of schools are not in compliance with Title IX,
the federal equal education opportunity law...

a good job or get in on a good investment. But

they do no favors for minority groups as a
whole. Preferences stigmatize them as less
able than other Americans to stand on their
own two feet. Many end up resenting those
who believe they need such a crutch -- as well
as resenting those who would take the crutch
away....
Fortunately, there was no affirmative action at
the turn of the 20th century to give members of
'beaten races' a leg up in the competition for
education and jobs. They had to rise on their
own merits if they were to overcome the stigma
of inferiority -- and rise and overcome they did.
Black and Hispanic Americans would rise and
overcome as well if only they could be liberated
from the condescending mind-set that thinks
it's a compliment to tell a group of college
seniors that they show great promise -- for
minorities."
Mar. 19, 2004 - Jeff Jacoby, JD

Dana White, International Communications Associate at the

Heritage Foundation, wrote in her June 27, 2003 article
titled "Who Says I'm Inferior?":
"Thirty years ago, affirmative action may have
been a necessary step to open the doors of
American universities and companies. It helped
to correct a history of racial discrimination
propagated by whites, but its a new day in
America....
Too many blacks do remain oppressed, but not
by white Americans. Rather, it is by blacks who
relish a perverse sub-culture of low standards
and perpetual victimization. No longer do white
racists tell black children books are for white
people. Today, black people do this. Every
day, black children suffer ridicule and disgrace
for doing their homework, behaving in class,
striving for excellence -- in short, 'acting
white.'...
Affirmative action helps the children and the
grandchildren of Jesse Jackson, John Conyers
and Al Sharpton who have the money for the
SAT prep courses, private schools and the
clout to call the deans of admission should
something go awry.... It is time for liberal black
leaders to stop hiding behind racism and admit
that our priorities as a community have
become our greatest hurdle to achieving long-
term success."
June 27, 2003 - Dana White

Affirmative
Action
programs
merely
acknowledge that hundreds of years of
discrimination cannot be erased in a few
decades and still hold women and people of
color back. Affirmative Action is the bridge
between changing the laws and changing the
culture.
The radical right wing would have us believe
that women and people of color earn less
because we don't work as hard or we're not as
smart. That simply isn't the case. Laws have
changed,
but
discrimination
persists.
Affirmative Action only opens doors, women
and people of color have to walk through those
doors by themselves."
Nov. 19, 2009 - National Organization for Women (NOW)

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