Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action

Rethinking Quotas

Affirmative action, which relies upon race-or gender-based preferences in school admissions, public hiring, and public contracting decisions for an institution, suffered a major defeat in the 1990s. California voters passed Proposition 209 in November 1996, making the state the first in the nation to bar state-sponsored affirmative action programs. After extensive legal battles, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the case that ruled that the law did not violate the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment. Also in 1996, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Louisiana, struck down an affirmative action admissions policy at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin. That decision effectively banned race-based admissions at state-run schools in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, the three states that came under the jurisdiction of the appeals court.

Resegregation

President Bill Clinton at the commencement address of the University of San Diego in 1997 said, "I know that the people of California voted to repeal affirmative action without any ill motive. The vast majority of them simply did it with a conviction that discrimination and isolation are no longer barriers to achievement. But consider the results. Minority enrollments in law school and other graduate programs are plummeting for the first time in decades. Assuming the same will likely happen in undergraduate education, we must not resegregate higher education or leave it to the private universities to do the public's work. To those who oppose affirmative action, I ask you to come up with an alternative. I would embrace it if I could find a better way."

Initiative 200

At the time of the California ruling, twenty-six states had similar initiatives pending. In 1998, 58 percent of the voters in Washington State approved the ban of state and local agencies from granting preferential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity or gender when admitting students to state schools, hiring for state jobs, or awarding state contracts in a measure known as Initiative 200. The debate raged on across the country.

EBONICS

Late in December 1996, the local school board in Oakland, California, unanimously decided that the district would recognize "black English" as a separate language as opposed to a dialect of English or a form of slang. As a distinct language, Ebonics (from the words ebony and phonics) could be used to teach students in their primary language with the aim of improving achievement for the city's black children. Proponents of the plan asserted that Ebonics contained linguistic elements from African languages and that many black Americans had retained speaking patterns from their African roots. By allowing teachers to recognize the separate language, supporters argued that more effective teaching could take place.

Critics immediately condemned the move as an abrogation of the need to teach standard English to African American children. Accusations that the move was a ploy to enable the district to access funds aimed at non-English speaking students were denied by the district. African American civilrights leader, Reverend Jesse Jackson, called for the district to reverse its decision, arguing that black students who could not use standard English would have difficulty finding jobs. A week after the school board announced its decision, Secretary of Education Richard Riley confirmed that the Clinton administration could not accept the concept of Ebonics as a separate language. The following month, the Oakland school board altered its plan in the wake of rising criticisms that they had insulted the learning abilities of black children.

Some linguists supported the notion of recognizing Ebonics in schools and teaching that it was different, not wrong. One teacher in a Los Angeles elementary school shared with children that there was "home language" and "school language." Others asserted that the differences in language were not issues of heritage but of class. In all cases, teachers were encouraged to teach standard English to their students. Al Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers, asked, "How can teachers juggle 'maintaining the legitimacy of Ebonics' with teaching children not to use it?" Several analysts feared that the entire issue had caused a backlash against programs (like Affirmative Action) designed to address the statistically poor academic performance of minorities. Although the issue of Ebonics disappeared from the national scene, the underlying problems the Oakland School Board sought to address continued.

Sources:

Karen Hopkins Movers, "Oakland, California Ebonics Doliate,' American Education Annual: Trends and Issues in the Educational Community, edited by Mary Alampi and Poter M. Comean (Detroit: Gale, 1999).

Lucille Remviek, "Ebonics: The Sound und the Fury," F amily.corn, Internet website.

THE BELL CURVE

The publication in 1994 of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure, authored by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, sparked major controversy across the nation. Although it echoed many of the ideas of current thinking about intelligence and its link to heredity, many scholars continued to debate the degree to which intelligence is inherited. Chief among the complaints of the book, and why it attracted such widespread attention, were the assertions that "blacks as a group are intellectually inferior to whites and that there is not much that education—or intervention of any sort—can do to close that gap."

The 860-page book, full of statistics and the culmination of an eight-year collaboration, put forth as its central theme the idea that America is increasingly divided by intellectual ability. The authors raised the concern that the leaders of the country, the intellectual elite, were further removed and isolated from the growing underclass. In presenting their arguments, Herrnstein and Murray condemned efforts to solve the nation's problems through attempts at raising intellectual levels as a move that had no chance of success. Although they offered little in the way of remedies, the two did suggest that parents be allowed greater freedom in choosing the schools that their children attend and that more funds be targeted toward the most gifted students.

Source:

Debra Viadero, "Education Experts Assail Book on l.Q. and Class," Education Weck, 2b October 1994.

King

Many representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and black civil rights organizations decried the move as a step backward. Martin Luther King III, the oldest son of slain civilrights leader Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., announced that he was forming a new national coalition to fight for affirmative action. The Atlanta-based Americans United for Affirmative Action was developed in response to the vote in California and to the launch of the American Civil Rights Institute, a national anti-affirmative-action group headed by Ward Connerly, a black California businessman who had pushed for Proposition 209, legislation designed to eliminate quotas in higher education.

Test Case

Opponents of affirmative action were frustrated, however, by the settlement in 1997 of a Supreme Court case just weeks before the decision could be rendered relating to the choice of firing a white teacher in New Jersey based on the need to maintain racial balance within her business education department. The case, Piscataway v. Taxman, was viewed as a good test case for the Supreme Court because the facts of the case-two teachers equally qualified and the school board's preference criterion narrowly defined-were so clearly drawn.

Enrollment Figures

Proponents of affirmative action pointed to enrollment figures at schools affected by the recent measures as justification for the need of affirmative action programs. The law school at the University of California at Los Angeles reported that only twenty-one black students had been admitted for the 1997-1998 school year, the lowest total in nearly thirty years and down 80 percent from the previous year. About one hundred black applicants had gained admission for the 1996-1997 academic year. The law school at the system's Berkeley campus had admitted fourteen black students for the coming school year, down from seventy-five from the previous year. Both law schools said that similar drops in admissions had occurred among Hispanic applicants.

Sources:

Facts on File, volumes 56, 57, 58 (New York: Facts on File, 1996, 1997, 1998).