Mikhail Klimentov—mdk2146
Issue brief
Affirmative Action and Socioeconomic status
Keywords: Socioeconomic status, affirmative action, financial aid, low-income,
first generation students, racial disparities, quota
Description: This issue brief concerns the relationship between affirmative
action, a policy meant to advance qualified members of underprivileged groups,
and socioeconomic status.
Key Points:
1. Affirmative action was developed to create equality of opportunity—not
equal results—for underprivileged minorities. President Johnson best
outlined the philosophy in a 1965 speech, when he said: “You do not take a
person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him,
bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are free to
compete with all the others, and still just believe that you have been
completely fair.”
2. “The National Asian and Pacific American Legal Consortium reports that
although white men make up only 48% of the college-educated workforce,
they hold over 90% of the top jobs in the news media, 96% of CEO
positions, 86% of law firm partnerships, and 85% of tenured college
faculty positions.” (Civil Rights 101—see relevant links below)
3. Affirmative action was first formally established by President Kennedy’s
Executive Order 10925, which states that federal contractors must “take
affirmative action to ensure” equal opportunity. Most presidents since
Kennedy, with the notable exceptions of Reagan and Bush, have made
certain efforts to further affirmative action policies.
4. California and Washington have Proposition 209 and Initiative 200,
respectively: these outlaw any kind of affirmative action programming in
education, employment, and contracting. Florida, California, and
Michigan are among states that ban affirmative action for admission to
public universities.
5. In anticipation of a vote in Colorado to ban race-based affirmative action,
CU-Boulder investigated class based affirmative action policies, and found
that an “admissions boost based on class had significant positive impact
on both socioeconomic and racial diversity of admitted students.”
(Considering Class: College Access and Diversity—see Relevant Links below)
Mikhail Klimentov—mdk2146
Issue brief
Images:
(Figure 1)
(Separate & Unequal: How Higher-Education Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of
White Privilege, Georgetown Public Policy Institute—see relevant links below)
(Figure 2)
(Separate & Unequal: How Higher-Education Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of
White Privilege, Georgetown Public Policy Institute—see relevant links below)
Mikhail Klimentov—mdk2146
Issue brief
(Figure 3)
(Separate & Unequal: How Higher-Education Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of
White Privilege, Georgetown Public Policy Institute—see relevant links below)
Mikhail Klimentov—mdk2146
Issue brief
(Figure 4)
Substantive Brief:
Affirmative action is a policy enforced by organizations and institutions
that is meant to advance qualified minorities and underprivileged groups through
outreach efforts, targeted hiring practices, and other positive measures. It
revolves around providing equality of opportunity for traditionally
underrepresented groups in the United States. The name “Affirmative Action”
was derived from Executive Order 10925, enacted by President Kennedy, which
stated that federal contractors must “take affirmative action to ensure” equal
opportunity.
Originally, affirmative action was meant as a redress for years of
discrimination against Black America. However, over time, the more conservative
part of the population grew wary of affirmative action, viewing it as reverse
racism that fundamentally worked against the American promise of a
meritocracy. Terms like “quota” and “preferential treatment” gained pejorative
connotations; many accused those who benefitted from affirmative action of
being “professional victims.” This was based on the observation that certain
minority groups, namely Jews and Asian Americans, managed to succeed without
affirmative action.
Mikhail Klimentov—mdk2146
Issue brief
Ever since Kennedy established affirmative action, responses to it have
split on a largely partisan basis: Democrats generally seek the continuation of
affirmative action policies, whereas Republicans are generally either neutral or
hostile to such policies. This partisan divide becomes especially clear in the
context of court cases: decisions regarding affirmative action policies are
generally split on a right-left basis.
The debate over affirmative action has been particularly relevant to
educational institutions in the United States. Affirmative action at universities is
predominantly based on race. This was most famously upheld during two cases
involving the University of Michigan, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger.
Both cases were decided in 2003, and upheld race-based affirmative action.
However, the cases also made very clear that affirmative action was no longer
seen as redress for past injustices; instead, affirmative action was useful as a
means of promoting diversity at all levels, a “compelling state interest.”
Recently, opponents of race-based affirmative action have proposed that
class and socioeconomic status be used as the basis for affirmative action, arguing
that the metric is more likely to benefit truly disadvantaged people.
Figure 1 factors into this argument—net new freshman enrollment for
Hispanics and African Americans in all post-secondary institutions between 1995
and 2009 has increased significantly more than Caucasian new freshman
enrollment. Given this data, it would be fair to consider that underprivileged
minorities have benefitted significantly from race-based affirmative action, and
that now would be a good time to transition to class-based affirmative action. To
this end, critics generally note that there are more white children living in lowincome families than children of any other racial or ethnic groups (see Figure 4).
These children would not receive any benefits of race-based affirmative action.
However, this can be explained by the fact that whites make up a majority
of the population of the United States; given that fact, a larger amount of white
low-income students is to be expected. What’s more relevant, perhaps, is that
Figure 4 shows a larger percent of black children within the black population
living in a low-income household.
One potential medium between race-based and class-based affirmative
action can be found in Texas, California, and Florida, where “percent plans” have
been implemented: these “percent plans” guarantee admission to state
universities to top graduates of all high schools in the state, effectively
guaranteeing a route of advancement to students in poorer school districts. In
fact, in her Fisher v. University of Texas dissent, Justice Ginsberg wrote in
support of the University of Texas’s percent plan that “only an ostrich could
regard the supposedly neutral alternatives as race unconscious.”
Mikhail Klimentov—mdk2146
Issue brief
However, according to Figure 3, plans such as the percent plan do not
necessarily provide an adequate alternative: the increased enrollment
demonstrated in Figure 1 doesn’t necessarily advance underprivileged minorities.
Instead, according to Figure 3, an overwhelming amount of new enrollments
among the Hispanic and African American population attend Open-access
schools, as opposed to more selective schools.
Work cited:
Carnevale, Anthony and Strohl, Jeff, Separate and Unequal: How HigherEducation Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of White
Privilege (July 31, 2013). Georgetown University Center on Education and
the Workforce. Available at: https://cew.georgetown.edu/report/separateunequal
Gaertner, Matthew and Hart, Melissa, Considering Class: College Access and
Diversity (August 27, 2012). U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research
Paper No. 12-18. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2137126
or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2137126
Relevant Links:
NYTimes Room for debate re: Class-based affirmative action in schools
US DOL Affirmative Action topic page
Civil Rights 101 Affirmative Action background
NYTimes interactive graph re: affirmative action bans and enrollment
National Center for Children in Poverty Fact-sheet on Low-income children
under 18 years