Does race really matter?
By Colleen Snyder
Deliberations are set to begin in April for the case that could very well change affirmative action as we know it. The Bush administration will present its arguments before the Supreme Court in an effort to halt affirmative action processes in place at the University of Michigan, and depending on how much pressure Bush decides to place on his already-conservative Supreme Court, this case will likely affect schools across the country - even Santa Clara.
"As of yet, no president has dared to touch affirmative action," explains university Affirmative Action Director Conchita Serri. "Will Bush?"
Chances are that he might. "Affirmative action is by no means permanent legislation," Serri pointed out. "It is merely an executive order, meant to be temporary until the problems with institutional racism are fixed." Forty years later, affirmative action is still in place - it may well be our longest running executive order, according to Serri.
How could we not question the effectiveness of such a policy? After all, affirmative action was designed to be a temporary solution, but an entire generation later, it still seems necessary to maintain some level of equality in schools.
What we must understand, however, is that affirmative action by itself will take forever to balance out the inequalities at hand in the United States today. There must be many more institutional changes within society if we expect power to be distributed more evenly any time soon.
It is inarguably true that certain ethnicities in the United States have been placed at a disadvantage throughout history. Their past is entrenched in racism and oppression - certainly they are deserving of opportunities equal to those the white majority has come to expect.
This is the goal of affirmative action in its purest form - to give the advantage to minorities that white males have historically always had. It is essentially just leveling the playing field.
In terms of college admissions, there is a definite imbalance which favors the wealthy (which just so happens to be a white majority in the United States).
Such institutions as the SATs, application fees, sky-high college tuitions, access to better secondary educations and AP courses (not usually offered at lower-income schools) and of course, the luxury of being able to go to college instead of immediately entering the job market, all work in favor of the white majority.
This is why most universities see fit to consider an applicant's ethnicity when making decisions amongst qualified applicants. Santa Clara is one of these schools. Serri explains that Santa Clara admits "the best qualified students - taking into consideration all pertinent factors, race/ethnicity included as a significant positive factor."
She explains that this stems from "the university's ultimate goal, which is the marketplace of ideas - the more diverse the group, the more interesting the dialogue."
The Santa Clara policy is based on the same ruling as that of the University of Michigan. This ruling is referred to as the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision, in which Justice Powell ruled that "the state has a substantial interest that legitimately may be served by a properly devised admissions program involving the competitive consideration of race and ethnic origin."
If Michigan's policies are simply deemed to be out of keeping with Bakke, the ruling will have little effect on other schools. However, it is not unlikely that the conservative Supreme Court, with pressures from the Bush administration, will decide that the Bakke ruling is in and of itself unconsitutional.
If this happens and Bakke is overturned, affirmative action, even in it's mildest form, could be deemed unconstitutional.
Although there will definitely come a time when affirmative action is no longer necessary (that is, after all, the purpose of the policy), we are far from that time. There is still a great discrepancy between the opportunities taken for granted by the more privileged in our society (mostly whites) and those that are faced daily with daunting obstacles while working toward an equal level of opportunity.
Most likely, achieving this equality will take a long while. One reasonable place to start may be the public school system. We need to increase spending on education in order to provide better teachers, smaller student to teacher ratios, a more rigorous level of studies and therefore, a slightly more balanced starting point between the classes (which also happens to be the dividing point between the races in many cases).
However, we cannot stop here. This is a problem with poverty and racial issues in the United States - two issues that run deep within our social and political systems.
There is no easy answer, and so affirmative action is, in effect, a temporary attempt to solve an extremely long-term problem. We will not be ready as a country to eliminate affirmative action until we solve the broader social problems at hand.
And so, before Bush and his conservative Supreme Court eliminate the band-aid on this problem, let's hope they have the sense to let the wound heal.