Reconstruction and Affirmative Action

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Brown v Board, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment were instrumental in black peoples fight for equality. However the effects of over 400 years of oppression don’t disappear with the passing of a few laws. As a result of slavery, black people are at a systematic disadvantage. Affirmative Action is an attempt to overcome the structural inequities left over from slavery.

Evidence of this structural problem can be seen by the wealth gap between minorities and white people. Majority of wealth that white people accumulate is generational, families pass down property and other assets down, where as minorities do not have access to this as they were not allowed to do things like own property or work. Additionally, there are still biased legislation like sentencing minimums left over from the racially charged War on Drugs. Where white men have a 1 in 17 chance of being imprisoned in their lifetime, 1 in 3 black men have the chance of being incarcerated in their lifetime. This continues to disenfranchise and oppress minority groups and prevent them from being on an even playing field with white people.

I believe that Affirmative Action is important in combating these challenges. And although it goes against American political values and notions of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, it is still important because those ideas are inherently colour blind and assumes that people have access to the same resources. The book says that one of the critiques of Affirmative Action is that it discriminates against white people. Like notions of reverse racism, that argument does not make sense. Affirmative Action where there is no minority quota affords minority students the opportunity to be considered for a school taking into account the long term effects of slavery. Universities that look holistically at an applicant are not accepting one student over another simply based on race. I think the fact that we do not know what slavery, and the Jim Crow era looked like, and the fact that the effects of these are not tangible, it makes it easy to say that these things are no longer necessary. However statistics show that minority groups are still at a disadvantage compared to white people.

https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/

http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/24/news/economy/blacks-whites-inequality/index.html

10 Responses to "Reconstruction and Affirmative Action"

Klein Evans says:

April 18, 2018 at 12:50 pm

Thank you for your post Jennifer, this is a message worth reading and thinking about in terms of our current lives and how they are affected by this topic. Similar to your stance, I believe that affirmative action is a huge asset in attempting to equalize everyone in our nation in terms of opportunities. The part that intrigues me the post about your post is the statement concerning the past and how we compare that to the present.

It is easy to dismiss the idea of racial and ethnic inequality in our society today when we compare it to how bad things were during the Jim crow era and other past events, but that is no excuse for reoccurring disadvantages to American citizens. I believe that in order to see actual change it is going to be through small steps that eventually lead to larger changes. With more universities accepting more diverse students, corporations hiring more diverse employees, and other examples of more natural integration I believe this issue could start to get better.
Cassandra Martin says:

April 18, 2018 at 5:27 pm

Jennifer,

Thank you for a great post on a such a pressing issue. Like you, I believe that affirmative action is necessary in this day and age. As you discussed, government-sanctioned discrimination of the past didn’t not have any more consequences simply because it was ended, instead, American society is still struggling to come back from the era of slavery and Jim Crow laws. Therefore, affirmative action is essential to decreasing inequality because without it, minorities don’t have the same connections and opportunities that white people in a good socioeconomic standings have.

What is very concerning to me is that while much of the uninformed American public believes that colleges will accept any minority member just to follow the liberal agenda of increasing diversity, and therefore discriminating against whites, data does nothing to support that claim. Instead, it has been shown that despite affirmative action efforts to help underprivileged people, minorities are even more underrepresented now at top universities than they were thirty-five years ago. While they have been attending low to mid tier schools at higher rates than in the past, if proper resources are truly available to them, there should be a much closer to reality representation of minorities in top colleges. This problem stems from underserved public education schools that are predominantly African American and Hispanic having less funding, teachers with less experience, and fewer advancement opportunities in class. As the book mentions, education is a core value that is needed to help our society grow, so affirmative action should be used to help reduce inequalities in education and opportunities.

With that being said, affirmative action must stick to its intended goals of decreasing inequality and righting past wrongs in the proper manner. This shouldn’t be achieved through discrimination against whites. There is a very distinct difference between helping one group, and purposely disadvantaging another. Therefore, affirmative action needs to be executed with a clear goal for helping oppressed groups overcome inequality, such as in the case of access to education.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/24/us/affirmative-action.html
Holden Powers says:

April 19, 2018 at 1:09 pm

Jennifer,

Thank you so much for your insightful post. One of the most interesting points which you brought up was the idea of different household wealths based on race. Your argument that white families have had the ability to pass down land and assets, meanwhile, minorities couldn’t accumulate that generational wealth is definitely something which is going to change soon. Because we are still a few generations separated by slavery and civil rights issues, we can definitely make an argument like you stated which is that minorities could not accumulate the wealth like whites. However, in the next couple generations, that will not be true. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how much of the gap will come together after a few generations of wealth being passed down in minority families.

Furthermore, given the fact that more and more minorities are becoming educated, we should also be seeing higher levels of income for minorities. This should also bridge the gap of wealth and hopefully result in more minorities going to college (kids of educated minorities) and less people of color in jail. Can the government do more things to speed up this process? Absolutely! However, I believe that overtime change is going to happen organically and the divide will eventually come together.
Thomas Cody says:

April 21, 2018 at 10:56 pm

Jennifer,
Thank you for a very interesting post to read! While I agree that Affirmative Action programs can help fight historic injustices and help even the playing field, it feels a bit like slapping a band-aid on a bullet hole. In the graphs you used, it shows the huge income discrepancy between whites and minorities as well as the issues mass incarceration has caused. While Affirmative Action programs certainly do not hurt the push for racial equality, I feel that a bigger effort should be made in law enforcement and crime policies to stop mass incarceration. In addition, economic policies like raising the minimum wage or requiring time and a half pay for those working overtime hours would do far more to help even the playing field than just helping a few more kids get into college.
Haley Overlander says:

April 22, 2018 at 6:44 pm

Jennifer,

Thank you for your post. I do agree that solely laws, though many monumental in the history of the United States, will not be enough to overcome the structural inequalities of racism in our current society. When looking at inequalities, it is important to focus on the structural differences that have existed for decades. How can we say there is equality when our nation is plagued by a massive opportunity gap?

I believe that in order to further justify the reasoning behind affirmative action, it is important to understand the opportunity gap. The opportunity gap focuses on the basis of a child’s early life and education rather than the outcomes. It assesses who has the greater opportunities educationally, socially, economically, and contrasts that starting point to where people of different races, ethnicities, and economic backgrounds end up.

While discussing Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam’s study on opportunity inequality, David Brooks of The New York Times states, “Putnam’s data verifies what many of us have seen anecdotally, that the children of the more affluent and less affluent are raised in starkly different ways and have different opportunities…Decades ago, college-graduate parents and high-school-graduate parents invested similarly in their children…Recently, more affluent parents have invested much more in their children’s futures while less affluent parents have not” (Brooks).

When adding in time allotted to extra-curricular activities, payment for tutoring, access to computers/textbooks, and even a stable home life, it is clear that there is an apparent minority/majority separation of opportunity. When taking this opportunity factor into mind and understanding that many children from low socio-economic classes simply do not have the same resources to drive achievement as wealthy socio- economic classes, one can see that programs put into place such as affirmative action, really do help to level the playing field and enforce a greater sense of opportunity equality for minorities.

Citation:

Brooks, David. “The Opportunity Gap.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 July 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/opinion/brooks-the-opportunity-gap.html.
Langley Crisp says:

April 22, 2018 at 6:53 pm

Jennifer,

I agree with your points, and I believe that you articulated well the issues with our society’s view of racism, and the benefits that Affirmative Action has. I do however disagree with your argument that it does not make sense that the book states that Affirmative Actions discriminates against white people. I believe that this is partly the point of Affirmative Action. By definition, it discriminates against white people. This is in an effort to increase equity for minorities due to historic discrimination against them. This, in essence, is what makes this discrimination okay (although, is discrimination ever really okay?) When you take into account the disadvantage that minorities, especially black people, are at due to white people’s treatment of them, I believe that discrimination against privileged white people, like Affirmative Action, is appropriate.

While equality is a right that all American’s share, you are right that equality is not the same as equity. Like you stated, white people grow up advantaged because they have access to family money which entails access to education and property. This then greatly reduces their chances of living in poverty, committing crimes, being involved in gang related activities, and being incarcerated. Whereas a young black person has a much higher chance of being born into poverty which then leads to activities that perpetuate a cycle of incarceration and not gaining the wealth in order to receive an education that is necessary to succeed in this society.

Affirmative Action contributes to the equity that is so necessary in order for black people to rise out of the disadvantage history has put them at. Equity is leveling the playing field. For example, if there are two people watching a baseball game over a fence, equality would permit them both to stand on one block to see over the fence. However, if one was already tall enough to see over and one was too short to see, equity would permit that the shorter of the two people get both blocks. Now both men can see, even though the distribution of blocks was not equal. Affirmative Action accomplishes, or at least attempts to accomplish this for minorities — which is completely fair and necessary in order to establish an equal society.

Thanks again for your perspective.
Akshit Sharma says:

April 22, 2018 at 7:00 pm

Thank you for your blog post Jennifer, I enjoyed reading it. You bring up the very important and controversial topic of affirmative action in your blog post. The statistics you talk about are compelling and I cannot argue with them. However I would like to challenge the existence of affirmative action itself. Let me give you an example of why I think it is not the best idea in general. There are plenty of examples we have heard and seen in the U.S. so I will give you an example of how it works in India. India has a system of “reservation” that is quite similar to affirmative action wherein a series of action measures serve the purpose of reserving access to seats in various legislatures, government jobs, and enrollment in higher educational institutions. Here’s a link if you would like to learn more about it – https://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2013/06/affirmative-action

The point is that it is in place to ensure that people from backwards income categories and castes are not discriminated against and so they are allotted a certain number of seats in the aforementioned areas. It is highly unpopular in India and one of the biggest reasons that people are unable to attend the colleges of their choice or get a government job, etc. The reason why reservation and affirmative action are so controversial is because they are discriminating against people to make up for the fact that in the past there was discrimination against a certain group of people. That moves me to wonder if, like Madison said in Federalist 10, the cure is worse than the disease itself. And I am inclined to think that it most definitely is.
Andrew Griffin says:

April 22, 2018 at 11:32 pm

Jennifer-

Your post regarding Affirmative Action is one that is quite interesting. Many Americans, of course, believe this to be a racist policy that discriminates against whites. Of course, these same people forget that affirmative action was first put in place because black students had to be escorted to universities by the US army.

However, these critics do raise a valid point: how do we provide an affordable college education to poor whites? This is a question that is uneasy to answer.

Ultimately, we should keep affirmative action in place whilst making public college completely tuition free. This will allow anyone with academic merit to get a quality education, but it will also ensure universities and colleges can maintain diversity in their academic programs. Free college will prevent racial discrimination whilst also ensuring Americans do not sign away their lives to college loans.

-Drew
Marc Bosch Valentines says:

April 22, 2018 at 11:56 pm

Jennifer,

Thank you for your post. I honestly agree with the arguments you give about affirmative action. In fact, I am completely in favour of doing Affirmative Action because even if some may say that this is discrimination against white people that is not completely true because when there is a minority the majority has an advantage per se, therefore, I don’t see Affirmative Action as being something discriminatory towards the white people as they already have a better situation in terms of discrimination beforehand. I also liked the example you gave about college. I truly believe that a lot more people should have the opportunity to go to college. In Europe, college is much more affordable than in the US, at least public universities have tuitions that barely cost $2000 which allows much more people to get a qualified education. Therefore, let me use part of my comment to say that the whole system should be changed to be more inclusive. Sometimes, students coming from minorities that have had hard times do not have the same conditions to show up their potential, which is why a merit-based only system would not solve that situation. Finally, the government should really tackle those issues and work once and for all to make society more equal and respectful.
Brett Tivnan says:

April 23, 2018 at 3:21 pm

Hi Jennifer,
I enjoyed reading your post on inequality and it definitely opened my eyes to some things I had not considered regarding the state of inequality in the U.S. even today. The CNN article you linked in your post discussed how even now, most black and Hispanic citizens with college degrees are not significantly advantaged financially over their less-educated peers. To me this is perhaps most alarming, as it shows that even despite the measures that have been taken to even the playing field between all races such as affirmative action, the system is still flawed, and minorities still suffer.
The notion that whites are disadvantaged by affirmative action, while technically true, is grossly overstated in my eyes. Whites still dominate the best paying jobs, as well as many of the best schools in the country, despite programs like affirmative action supposedly creating an uneven playing field. In most situations, whites are not even the ethnic group that has been most disadvantaged by affirmative action in terms of college admissions. In an article by the New York Times, it was found that Asian-Americans needed to score higher on their SATs by 140 over whites, 270 points over Hispanics, and 450 points over blacks on average in order to have the same chance at admissions at most universities. This is said to stem from the oversaturated Asian populations at schools, such as the 42% Asian student body at the non-affirmative action admissions at UC Berkeley, yet there is no such limit on the white populations at any of the same schools. Harvard University, which has been sued at least three separate times in major cases over discrimination against Asians, retains a near majority white population despite priding itself on its diverse student body. In fact, this past admissions year marked the first year in school history where less than half of the student body is white (49.2 %). Thus, I don’t believe that there is any real validity to the argument that whites have been discriminated against when it comes to college admissions or employment.
Though affirmative action is a step in the right direction towards racial equality, I believe more has to be done in education of minorities. Public schools in predominantly black or Hispanic areas are often underfunded with little support for the students. Contrasting that with schools in predominantly white areas, such as my hometown in Massachusetts, services are provided at the drop of a hat if a student is struggling and needs help with schoolwork or personal issues. However, as funding for the school board primarily comes from taxpayers, it is much easier for the school board in my hometown to acquire funding due to the high taxes many households pay. School districts in minority areas are often without many homeowners, as evidenced by the CNN article, thus it is difficult to acquire funding through tax dollars. Though I am not particularly fond of federal involvement in state issues, I believe that school districts that have historically been underfunded need government support if we are to truly combat wealth inequality in the U.S.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/08/02/harvard-incoming-class-majority-nonwhite/5yOoqrsQ4SePRRNFemuQ2M/story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-unfair-advantage-in-admissions.html

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