In Opposition of Affirmative Action

Prior to the infamous Bakke case, affirmative action policies were perceived as compensatory justice initiatives designed to offset the negative impact of slavery, first and foremost, and then the Draconian Jim Crow laws that followed. However, Justice Lewis Powell changed all this when he identified race as a potential “plus factor” in the interest of diversity. Since this time, institutions of higher education and employers, in general, have abandoned a merits-based approach to the identification of talent in favor of one that offers a distinct advantage to individuals belonging to traditionally underrepresented minority groups. Whether as applied to college and graduate school admissions or hiring practices, gaining a more diverse environment at the expense of accomplished individuals benefits neither the college, the graduate school, the workplace, nor even the marginalized individual ostensibly benefitted through the exercise of affirmative action.

Proponents of affirmative action policies almost universally argue that its ends justify its means in generating diversity within a given setting. Diversity, argue affirmative action proponents, functions to eliminate cultural prejudices, thereby enhancing the manner in which education is delivered and allowing underrepresented minorities to enjoy opportunities that they otherwise would not have, but which they do deserve. Based on the “contact hypothesis,” these affirmative action proponents argue that only a diverse campus can expose students to various cultures in such a way as will work against institutionally ingrained racial and ethnic stereotypes. Indeed, a study by Shook and Fazio (2008) suggests that interracial roommates were initially dissatisfied with their counterpart, but nevertheless experienced substantial improvement in their racial attitudes over time.

The Bakke case provided the foundation for the application of modern affirmative action standards. Ironically, this foundation was predicated upon an analogy that has not necessarily been applied in equitable fashion. The argument that won the Bakke case was stated thusly: “a farm boy from Idaho can bring something to Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarly, a black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer” (Nieli, 2012). This is entirely possible, but if that farm boy from Idaho can offer something a Bostonian cannot then by virtue of its own argument, should not colleges be obligated to maintain quota systems that would ensure equal representation of each American locale in which different dialects, customs, and traditions flourish? In other words, there is no plausible basis for suggesting that only diversity of race is entitled to privileged status in the consideration of educational institution admission or employment.

Ultimately, as posited by Jonah Goldberg, an attempt to cultivate a student body whose diversity parallels that of the American Public amounts to a recipe for disaster in achievement, to say nothing of the fact that this standard is almost entirely unattainable. Over-represented high-achieving groups such as Asians or Jews would be then be marginalized, thereby depriving a given college of many of its finest students. Furthermore, argues Goldberg, the university exists for purposes of cultivating scholastic interests and their corresponding professional goals, which logically suggests that they should not also be focused on teaching the values of cultural, ethnic or racial diversity. Indeed, to the extent that a university might incur an obligation to teach to this effect, most offer a host of curriculum initiatives dealing in various cultural, religious, ethnic and geographical mores.

When one evaluates the so-called “contact hypothesis” relative to the “mismatch hypothesis,” the costs of widespread diversity initiatives become far clearer. “Contact hypothesis” proponents tend to evaluate the need for diversity within the context of professional sports and military apparatuses, suggesting that these socio-professional bodies serve to propagate notions of racial discord that can be eliminated through mere interracial contact, forced or otherwise. However, in order to operate with any degree of reliability, the “contact hypothesis” insists upon several pre-conditions that are rarely if ever operational: wholesale status equality, a non-competitive environment, a shared objective, a wholesale absence of superficiality or artificiality and understanding and support of global community norms. Unfortunately, these criteria are never met in any academic setting in which students of historically underrepresented backgrounds tend to self-segregate, thereby precluding the contact intended to bridge the racial or ethnic divide, thus animating genuine diversity.

The absence of conditions necessary for the “contact hypothesis” to successful operate is exacerbated by the fact that students of Black and Hispanic descent are universally understood as having been admitted to a given college, despite scholastic capacity inferior to that of their peers. It is thus illogical to fail to understand that Asians and Caucasians have a sound rational basis for avoiding contact with minority students within the context of searching for a lab partner or incorporating themselves into study groups. Research further indicates shows that Caucasian and Asian students tend to resent students who benefited from affirmative action, at the expense of many of their friends, and that satisfaction with the university experience decreases in proportion with this sense of resentment and as diversity enrollment increases. In fact, as suggested by Nieli, affirmative action leads to a phenomenon known as “downward parasitism,” in which minority students are accepted to and enrolled in colleges where they will operate at a distinct scholastic disadvantage, whereas they might have been admitted to lesser schools in which they might have reasonably contributed to diversity, as the “contact hypothesis” might have been operable at these lesser schools.

Yet another long-term and unfortunate effect of affirmative action policies is highlight by Nieli, who explains that minority students derive an unhealthy sense of complacency from the belief that they can “coast through” high school as a result of the advantages provided for them by affirmative action admissions policies. By placing such a student at schools for which they do not qualify according to the same objective standards to which all other students are held, affirmative action might also exacerbate this complacency by actualizing its effect; namely, these students will find themselves unable to perform at schools with challenging curriculums of the kind they have not hitherto encountered. Here, we turn to the mismatch hypothesis: “If there is a very large disparity at a school between the entering credentials of the median student and the credentials of students receiving large preferences, then the credentials gap will hurt those the preferences are intended to help” (Sander, 2006). Bowen and Bok push up against this hypothesis by arguing that because 75% of Black students entering America’s top colleges graduated within six years of enrollment, and subsequently earned salaries far more comparable to their white counterparts than they otherwise would, affirmative action only furthers the academic and professional ambitions of students benefitted by it.

However, Gose and Fund each found that minorities not only held lower GPAs but were also consistently ranked in the bottom quarter of their respective graduating classes. In fact, they also found that approximately only 1 in 6 such students go on to graduate. Elliot’s work further demonstrates the validity of the “mismatch hypothesis” in illustrating that minority students typically abandon their initial scholastic interest, especially where that interest is rooted in the hard sciences, as a result of attending selective schools for which they were poorly prepared, and not on account of some lack of continued interest or changed interest (Elliot, 1998). Further buttressing this analysis, Leef confirms that Black students are more likely to pursue rigorous fields of study when enrolled at historically black colleges, such as Howard or Grambling, because their qualifications render them well-prepared to meet the scholastic demands of such schools, with which they are far better matched (Leef, 2012). To be sure, students who excel at these schools are not today viewed as somehow inferior to those who excel at purportedly more prestigious schools, as is common knowledge.

These findings call into question the effectiveness of affirmative action in not only achieving genuine diversity through mere contact but also furthering the scholastic and professional ambitions of the students ostensibly benefitted by it. To be sure, the ills of affirmative action are established not merely within a racial or ethnic context, but also as applied to recruited athletes admitted to selective colleges. Traditionally, these athletes are unable to compete academically at selective institutions, where their graduation rates are notoriously low. This not only impacts the school’s bottom line in the way of financial resources spent on students unable to take advantage of the scholastic opportunities offered them, but also exacerbates the already substantial impact of racially-motivated affirmative action in denying admission to an even greater number of qualified students; students who would likely have excelled if offered admission, and proceeded to contribute to the professional community and, ultimately, the university. If the goal of universities is to prepare students for a life of contribution to their professional paths of choosing, it cannot be argued that universities are presently failing themselves in admitting students whom they know full well will be unable to meet the demands of their institution’s standards.

To be sure, admission to selective schools does create the potential for a superior professional path. However, returning to the context of professional sports relied upon by the “contact hypothesis,” no one could seriously suggest that the National Basketball Association (NBA) would qualitatively benefit from an influx of Caucasian players. Such an influx would only lower the quality of the NBA product, thereby not only detracting from its aesthetics, but also severely harming its capacity to generate the enormous revenues it continues to generate on behalf of not just owners of teams, but also locales and their citizens. This undesirable outcome is thus perhaps more easily identified within the context of affirmative action policies applied to workplace hiring, promotion and retention practices.

With regard to affirmative action hiring practices, Roger Clegg has argued adamantly against them insofar as national origin, ethnicity and race are entirely unreliable as indicators of one’s capacity to succeed in a given workplace. Furthermore, just as we see when affirmative action is applied to the admissions process, Clegg argues that affirmative action hiring policies tend to stigmatize its beneficiaries, thereby creating in their colleagues the same resentment as is created for college students not benefitted by affirmative action, as detailed above. Of course, as with the admissions application of affirmative action, the professional costs of affirmative action far outweigh their benefits insofar as quality of service provided, regardless of industry, is inevitably compromised, if only due to factors such as “poor fit.” Clegg has often discussed faculty hiring, promotion, and retention as a process by which the harmful institutional effects of affirmative action can be demonstrated.

Ultimately, the importance of diversity is neither achieved through nor entitled to a system of quantification via which college or graduate school admissions are stripped of their merits-based components, which only harms the caliber of student graduated. While race-neutral admission standards, for example, would decrease the percentage of Black and Hispanic students enrolled in top-tier universities, it would correspondingly increase their enrollment percentage at schools for which they have been far better prepared and, as such, ones at which they are far more likely to excel, both scholastically and culturally. As per Nieli:

“There are good diversities and bad diversities, and diversities brought about artificially through racial preferences –ones that reinforce negative stigmas and stereotypes about the mental competence of those in the targeted groups, which are widely viewed as unfair, and which serve to heighten racial tensions on campus –are clearly in the noxious category. The upward ratcheting and upward mismatching of the AA system insures that good diversity is always replaced by bad.” (Nieli, 2012)

In other words, affirmative action policies designed to eliminate racial or ethnic stereotypes only furthers them. This reality also applies to the professional community, where a mismatch of parties benefitted by affirmative action with positions for which they are not ideally suited results in lowered productivity, efficiency and, ultimately, industry stasis.

At the nation’s highest judicial level, the question of affirmative action has recently been considered. In order to make clear his opposition to affirmative action, Justice Scalia authored a concurrence to the following effect: “The parties asked the Court to review whether the judgment below was consistent with ‘this Court’s decisions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, including Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003). In so stating, Justice Scalia made clear that he would have overturned the foundations of affirmative action had he been asked to evaluate its merits, as opposed to merely evaluating the consistency of the Supreme Court’s line of analysis. Indeed, in a separate concurrence, African-American Justice Thomas wrote the following with regard to the potential of affirmative action to function as a tool of reverse-racism: “following in these inauspicious footsteps, the University would have us believe that its discrimination is likewise benign. I think the lesson of history is clear enough: Racial discrimination is never benign.” These forceful words from two Supreme Court Justices indicate the extent to which affirmative action is viewed as a failure of sociologically epic proportions.

Ultimately, diversity can be achieved without bearing upon college admissions, graduate school admissions, and professional placement. If we continue to insist on appropriating these apparatus as tools of social engineering, we will find that we have engineered our highest institutions of learning, in addition to our economy, toward the brink of disaster. So many disadvantaged students hailing from underprivileged or traditionally underrepresented backgrounds deserve opportunities to excel in higher education, but not at the expense it entails, especially considering that such students arrive at such institutions ill-equipped to take advantage of such opportunities. With federal funding injected at the grassroots and early childhood education level, this gap in scholastic capacity might be achieved over time. However, the attempt to circumvent the curing of this capacity gap defeats the very purpose of affirmative action in depriving underprivileged and minority individuals of a genuine opportunity to level the playing field against their peers. As such, we would be wise to remove the concept of diversity achievement through enactment of affirmative action-based initiatives from our institutions of higher learning, in addition to all settings in which merits-based evaluation is desperately needed in order to ensure continued growth.

References

Bowen, W.G., Bok, D. (1998). The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. New Jersey: Princeton University Press (1998).

Elliot, R. (1996). “The role of ethnicity in choosing and leaving science in highly selective institutions.” Research in Higher Education, Fall 37.6 (1996), Pp. 681-709.

Goldberg, J. (2012). The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. New York: Sentinel Press (2012).

Leef, G. (2013). “The price was high: affirmative action and the betrayal of a colorblind society.” The Weekly Standard, 18.18 (213)

Nieli, R.K. (2012). Wounds that Will Not Heal. New York: Encounter Books (2012).

Sander, R.H. (2006). “Mismeasuring the Mismatch: A response to Ho.” The Yale Law Journal, Fall 1.114 (2006)