Tomorrow the Supreme Court hears another “affirmative action” case. Can race be used as a factor in college admissions? I’m hoping the Supreme Court rules that it can’t.
I first spoke out against affirmative action when I was a professor at Hartnell College in Salinas, California, in the early Seventies. I took some heat for that, but I thought it was wrong to base any decision on hiring or college admissions to be based on a person’s parentage. You judge the individual, not the race or gender. I have not changed my mind.
I do believe there are times when a racial or gender quota can be justified. It can be used, for example, to remedy deliberate past discrimination. I am also aware that groups that have been discriminated against in the past have a harder road to travel. As a former college professor, I realize that a diverse classroom is far better for teaching purposes than an all-white classroom.
Nevertheless, the bottom line is that you can’t discriminate for someone without at the same time discriminating against someone else.
Affirmative action programs focus on gender or race, never on class. The group that is left out in higher education enrollment is not African-Americans or Latinos or women, it is all genders and races in the bottom third of the American class system. If we had an affirmative action program based on income, I’d be for it. If it is based on race or gender, I’m opposed.
That might be the best post I have ever read from you. Grat point about income over race. In the mid 1990's my parents income was in the 26th percentile and I can tell you life was very hard. There were colleges I knew I could never consider based on price.
ReplyDelete