By Ben Markley
The Supreme Court is currently trying to decide whether Affirmative Action is a constitutional policy for college admissions.
The case, Fisher v. University of Texas, began in 2008 after two white students felt they were passed over for admission to UT on account of their non-minority status and sued the college. The case has since reached the Supreme Court, where the justices must decide whether to uphold their 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger.
“The old ruling was that it was unconstitutional to look solely at race in college admissions, but it could be one of several factors that you could look at,” said Brian Zirkle, assistant professor of sociology.
Zirkle said the goal of Affirmative Action in higher education was to admit students solely on their individual merit while eliminating factors of privilege.
“If you’re going to a poorly funded school, and you end up testing out in the 80th percentile, but the other student who goes to the other school tests out in the 90th percentile, you’re left with the question: How much of that is left with the individual achievement of the student, and how much of it is that one student went to a good school or a bad school?” Zirkle said.
One argument of opponents of Affirmative Action is that the policy encourages reverse discrimination against non-minority students, such as the accusation in Fisher v. University of Texas.
“If you are a minority and let’s say you have qualifications that are the same as mine or maybe not as good as mine, but you get preferential treatment, then I would claim that’s reverse discrimination,” said Lynn Richards, associate professor of business. “Those reverse discrimination claims have largely not been recognized, and courts have not in general gone along with that.”
Zirkle said reverse discrimination is not a valid argument against the policy.
“I’d say it’s a myth and a misunderstanding because white people like myself, we typically don’t recognize our own whiteness and the privileges that we get because we›re white,” Zirkle said. “What happens is that my loss of privilege starts to feel like it’s discrimination. Ultimately it’s not, but it’s trying to not include those privileges that we tend to take for granted, so it feels like discrimination.”
Others question the relevance of Affirmative Action nowadays.
“There are people who would claim today that Affirmative Action may have been a necessary thing in the past but that women and minorities can compete on their own merit today,” Richards said.
Zirkle cited California’s Proposition 209 as an example of Affirmative Action’s relevance. Prop 209 was a state law prohibiting employers and schools from considering race, ethnicity or sex in admissions, in 1996.
By 2000, admission rates for Latinos at Berkeley University of California had dropped 64 percent, with African American admissions dropping 88 percent.
“When they took away the policy, then we saw this massive explosion in inequality again,” Zirkle said. “So Affirmative Action has proven to be successful. Maybe not as successful as we would like, but it has been successful.”
Richards said he was unsure about what to do with Affirmative Action.
“It depends upon the situation,” Richards said. “I think you need to look at the composition of a school and the reason for that composition. Do you have a proportionate representation at that point? I guess you could make the point that if you do, then Affirmative Action is no longer needed in that situation, and that›s kind of where the controversy is.”
Zirkle was not so torn.
“If the Supreme Court rules that Affirmative Action policies in education are unconstitutional, it’s going to have a very negative impact on the rates of college attendance by minorities,” he said.
As for students, the question may be a hard one.
“I don’t feel like there’s an easy answer,” said Taylor Givens, student. “Just because someone’s white doesn’t make it less bad to discriminate against them, but I guess, are they really being discriminated against?”
Contact Ben Markley, sports editor, at bmarkle2@jccc.edu.