Meir Weinberg
Professor Dominique Zino
English 110
October 12, 2010
Affirmative Action Debate
CHARLES GIBSON: Good Evening. I’m Charles Gibson, former host of ABC’s World
News Tonight, one of the premier television news magazines in the United States. It is
my honor to welcome the audience here to Lincoln Center in New York City as well as
those watching the debate from home on this November 4, 2009, the one year anniversary
of President Obama’s election, and hope you enjoy and gain from the debate. The topic
that will be discussed tonight is Affirmative Action, focusing primarily on the issue of
minorities in education. I am absolutely delighted that these very prominent debaters
opened up space in their very busy schedules to debate this important issue. The purpose
of tonight’s debate is solely recreational and educational and I would just like to remind
everyone that no policy changes will be directly linked to this debate.
On the Republican podium we have Roger Clegg. Mr. Clegg served as Deputy Attorney
General in the Reagan and Bush Sr. Administrations. He is a graduate of Rice University
as well as Yale University Law School. As Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Clegg held the
second highest positions in the both the Civil Rights and the Environment and Natural
Resource Divisions. He is currently the President and General Counsel of the Center for
Equal Opportunity3.
On the Democratic side we have the Honorable Sonya Sotomayor. Judge Sotomayor
graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and received her Juris Doctorate
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from Yale University Law School. Her honor also served as the Judge of the District
Court for the Southern District of New York as well as a judge in the Federal Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit. She is currently an Associate Justice on the United States
Supreme Court6.
The format for tonight’s debate is as follows:
I will ask three questions to each speaker and they will be given two minutes to respond
to the question. As the two minutes begin to run out, the speakers will be signaled with a
light on the top of their podiums. I discussed the order of the debate with the participants,
and both agreed to allow Judge Sotomayor to begin the debate.
The first question is:
What is your position on the current state of Affirmative Action in the United States?
SONYA SOTOMAYOR: Good Evening Charlie. I would just like to thank you, Lincoln
Center, and the people of New York for hosting this debate. I am certain that this will be
a very educational experience and I am excited to debate with someone with the
experience of Mr. Clegg.
Affirmative Action is a policy that ensures the rights of minorities in this country. As
much as people try to deny it, the fact is that many people do have racial prejudices, and
minorities are treated unfairly and unequally. Some of you may remember the case of the
New Haven Firefighters. The firefighters were given a test for promotions, but the way
that the test was designed gave a bias against minorities. When the results of the test were
returned, only two Hispanics and no blacks scored high enough to receive promotions. I
voted in favor of the firefighters, because an unbiased test would not have only 3.8
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percent of those who passed being minorities. Again, out of nineteen firefighters who
passed, seventeen were white7.
It is unjust for a test to be geared toward one race’s success while minorities suffer and
lose out on the ability to receive well deserved promotions because of their color or
nationality. America is a melting pot of cultures and it is an absolute injustice that the pot
has not been stirred and the minorities are still stuck at the bottom.
CHARLES GIBSON: Thank you Judge Sotomayor. Mr. Clegg, your response.
ROGER CLEGG: Thank you Charlie. I want to thank her Honor Sotomayor for
agreeing to debate this issue with me, and as many of you may know it is an issue that I
am very involved with daily.
Affirmative Action is a policy that was adopted by President Johnson in 1965 to combat
discrimination. I want to remind everyone what was going on at that time in the United
States. The Civil Rights movement was in full swing and discrimination was still
rampant. At that time there was a need for what President Kennedy had called
“affirmative action”, because the reality was that regardless of merit, minorities were not
being admitted into institutions of higher learning solely because they were not white9.
Fortunately, that is not the world that we live in today. College admissions boards work
to admit students based on merit, yet there is still a push to admit a quota of minority
students, which consequently pushes more qualified students out of the door. England has
adopted a policy similar to affirmative action called positive discrimination. The reality
with affirmative action is just that—while trying to equal the playing field for minorities,
they are discriminated for, which is then an injustice toward those slighted because they
are not minorities and it devaluates the academic achievements of minorities.
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If we ever want to have true equality in this country, then affirmative action must be
abolished.
CHARLES GIBSON: Thank you for those strong words, Mr. Clegg. Moving on to the
next question, which will be answered first by Ms. Sotomayor:
Do you think that affirmative action is a social or a political policy?
SONYA SOTOMAYOR: I think that it’s a political reaction to a social problem,
Charlie. The politicians in Washington and the state capitals saw that if the trend of
discrimination in the college acceptance offices did not end, then society would end up
with a bunch of educated whites and uneducated minorities. Throughout my career on the
bench I’ve consistently voted to ensure equality for people of all colors, races, religions,
sexual orientations and creeds. I would like to correct a misconception that some of you
may have. I am only pro affirmative action because of the need for it. I wish there wasn’t
a need and that people have the same rights and advantages regardless of whether they
are white, black, yellow, or red.
Although some people believe that affirmative action is a racist agenda in its own nature,
the reality is not so. Yes, minorities do get benefits, but look at the facts. There are
certain situations where consciously or not, minorities are given a difficult time. This is
just telling the minorities that someone does care about them and wants them to succeed.
I’ve said it many times before, and I’ll say it again. I was accepted to college with the
help of affirmative action. That is not to say that my credentials lacked merit, rather it is
saying that I was given a chance and as a result I sit on the High Court of this great
nation.
The need for affirmative action is a political answer to a social problem.
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CHARLES GIBSON: Mr. Clegg?
ROGER CLEGG: I think that affirmative action is strictly political. The politicians in
Washington are committing a crime against people of all races. I think that if you would
ask President Obama, he would agree with me, off the record of course—he did in fact
want to be accepted at Harvard University based on academic merit, not based on the fact
that he is African American, so he omitted the “race” section on his application. If a
young liberal as Mr. Obama could see the injustice and inequality of affirmative action, it
should be a message to all of us; that affirmative action is not an appropriate reaction in
today’s day and age to the Jim Crow racism of forty years ago. The wigs in Washington
must understand that and not allow this discrimination to continue.
CHARLES GIBSON: We are running out of time, so I will ask each of the speakers one
more question and ask that they limit their responses and to include their closing remarks
in their responses.
Justice Sotomayor, Do you think that Affirmative Action encourages or discourages
minorities?
SONYA SOTOMAYOR: I think that affirmative action is a very strong motivator for
today’s youth. In 2010, children are constantly being told that they can’t; that they will
not succeed. I think affirmative action sends a message to students telling them that there
is a program out there endorsed by our government saying, “Yes you can”.
The other reality is what I mentioned earlier. Many people do have racial prejudices, and
students from minorities can often start out with a disadvantage because they are
minorities, and that is exactly what a program like affirmative action was created to
combat.
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I want to thank Charles Gibson and Roger Clegg for an excellent debate and I do look
forward to debating again in the future.
ROGER CLEGG: If I were to approach a student and inform them that certain
applicants only needed a GPA of 3.4 to get into Harvard while the rest need a 4.0, I think
the response would be outrage from the students required to achieve a 4.0, while the
students required to attain a 3.4 would breathe a sigh of relief. But then if I would say the
criterion for the lower GPA requirement was that the student had to be from a minority
race because that was their only chance of gaining admission, there would be an outcry
from the minority community1.
When the case of Bakke v. University of California occurred, the first massive debate
questioning affirmative action took place. One of the big injustices was that “the full
admissions committee formed a sub-committee to process black and Mexican- American
applicants only” (Eastland, 69). Is that not discrimination? That is exactly what
affirmative action does. It is condescending to minorities to say that they can only be
accepted and succeed with affirmative action. I’ve seen many people from minority
groups who have succeeded based on the fact that they were hard workers, not the fact
that they received affirmative action benefits. One of those people debated with me
splendidly tonight.
On that note, I would like to thank Judge Sotomayor and Charles Gibson for the
outstanding and stimulating debate tonight, as well as the audience for listening—I hope
you gained as much as I did.
CHARLES GIBSON: I would like to thank both of our debaters for the enlightening
debate tonight, and I regret that we did not have more time to give to them to discuss this
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issue. To our audience and viewers, I would like to thank you for taking part in this
debate and wish you a wonderful night.
*This was a fictitious debate and does not represent either of the candidate’s or the moderator’s views
regarding this topic or any other issue.
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WORKS CITED
1) Balanced Politics: Pros and Cons of Affirmative Action
http://www.balancedpolitics.org/affirmative_action.htm
2) Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Opponents and Supporters of Affirmative Action
Debate Use of Race in College Admissions. Nealy, Michael J. May 22, 2008
http://diverseeducation.com/article/11185/
3) Center for Equal Opportunity: Biography of Roger Clegg
http://www.ceousa.org/content/view/507/123/
4) CNN Political Ticker Online State of the Union: Powell on Sotomayor, affirmative
action. July 5, 2009. Stewart, Martine
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/05/state-of-the-union-powell-onsotomayoraffirmative-action/
5) Fox News Sotomayor: Affirmative Action Sent Me to College June 11, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/11/sotomayor-affirmative-actionsent-princeton/
6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonya_Sotomayor
7) Forbes Magazine The Supreme Court And New Haven's Firefighters. June 29, 2009.
Bolick, Clint
http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/29/new-haven-firefighters-opinionscontributors- racial-equality.html
8) Eastland, Terry Ending Affirmative Action: The Case for Colorblind Justice.
“Remediation and Diversity: Affirmative Action in Higher Action”.
BasicBooks/HarperCollins. 1996
9) Infoplease.com Affirmative Action History. Brunner, Borgna
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/affirmative1.html