ARGUMENT FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
PART 1: THE MYTH OF ‘MERITOCRACY’
Affirmative Action is the Desegregation Program for Higher Education,
Not a ‘Preference’
(From BAMN’s Liberator #1 – Used to organize for the historic Grutter v. Bollinger trial)
Standardized test scores are not a race-neutral admissions criteria. Without, affirmative action, they give a preference to white students.
In their arguments, the opponents of affirmative action constantly refer to a grid that shows SAT scores across the top and GPA down the side. They point out the fact that there are very few URM (under-represented minority) students in the the upper left hand corner of the grid (highest GPA combined with highest test scores), and that the few that are, generally have a high chance of being offered admission. They claim this demonstrates that URM students are being given a “preference.”
Quack “science”
In order to conclude that the grid shows a “preference”, one must accept the false presumption that these criteria – GPA and SAT/ACT – are racially neutral and reflect academic ability and performance equally across all races. The presumption is patently UNTRUE. Standardized tests reflect the racial inequalities and biases in our society.
Built-In Bias
Part of the racial bias of the SAT is built into the statistical methods used to create the test each year. As explained by Emory University Professor and Psychometrician Martin Shapiro in the trial testimony of Grutter v. Bollinger (http://ueaa.net/transcript/08-020601-shapiro-rosner-escobar.txt) ETS (Education Testing Service) places unscored sample questions on their tests each year and then does a statistical analysis to determine what demographic answered those questions correctly to decide whether or not to include those questions in future tests. If the demographic which has historically done well on the test overall in the past correctly answers the sample question, it is used in future tests. If the demographic (lower income and URM students) that historically has NOT done well on the test answers those sample questions correctly, the question is NOT used on future tests.
SAT/ACT/LSAT/MCAT/GRE = ‘white preference tests’
ETS does not dispute the basic facts. It is not necessarily done out of racist intent, but for “statistical consistency” – so that each test, each year, measures more or less the same thing and thus a certain score means the same thing over the years. On the other hand, ETS has known of the disparate impact of its methodology, and has chosen to do nothing. It is why the use of standardized tests in admissions should be eliminated. Standardized tests are the sentinel at the door of higher education keeping black, Latino/a, Native American, and Asian students from many countries (Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, Hmong, etc.) out.
Study Proves that Black and White Students With Identical Academic Performance Have Huge Test Score Discrepancy
Another way of demonstrating the bias of standardized tests was shown in a 1998 study performed for the co-defendants in Grutter. David White and Bill Kidder (http://ueaa.net/transcript/11-020901-garcia-white.txt) refined a previous study of 19,000 college students that graduated from elite colleges who then took the LSAT. They paired white and black, and white and Latino students who graduated from the same elite college, in the same major, and had the same GPA within a 10th of a point – i.e. they paired white and URM students who had demonstrated identical academic achievement, and then compared their standardized test scores.
They found a huge racial gap in test scores – between black and white students, black students scored 9.2 points lower than their white peers with the same GPA, a score gap that represents the difference between being admitted or rejected – not just a difference of which tier of law school they might gain admittance to. The difference between white and Latino students was 7.0 – also significant. Clearly, test scores don’t represent academic ability.
SAT Does Not Predict Academic Success
The University of Texas system’s abandonment of the SAT requirement for the top 10 percent of every high school (according to GPA) has led to an increase in academic success. In 1997, the UT system began admitting the top 10 percent of each Texas high school, regardless of their SAT scores. Since then, the average SAT of these top 10 percent students has gone down from 1242 to 1212, but their average first-year GPA has risen. Also, these top 10 percent students, in terms of academic performance in college, have outperformed non-top 10 percent students with SAT scores that are 200 to 300 points higher. (University of Texas-Austin Admissions
Research: Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Summer 1998, p. 6
http://www.utexas.edu/student/research/reports/admissions/ResearchHome.htm)
The Effects of Test Prep
Statistical analysis also shows that URM students score slightly higher than white students on the most difficult questions, and worse on what are considered the easiest questions. The explanation generally offered to explain this trend is that minority students tend to second-guess themselves much more than white students. They think they are being “tricked” when they see questions that seem too obvious –as a result of their life experience with racism. There are other facts that highlight the fact that standardized tests are not racially neutral . One of them is the effect of test prep or the lack thereof. White students, for reasons of cost and information, have far greater access to test prep classes that substantially boost scores.
Stereotype Threat
When capable black college students fail to perform as well as their white counterparts, the explanation often has less to do with preparation or ability than with the threat of stereotypes about their capacity to succeed. Stanford Sociology Professor Claude Steele has dubbed this dynamic ”stereotype threat”
(see: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/08/thin-ice-stereotypethreat-and-black-college-students/4663/). Professor Steele carried out studies that have been successfully reproduced by other researchers that show that the threat of negative stereotypes about one’s race causes test anxiety that has a significantly negative affect on test performance. In plain language, when black or Latino students sit down to take a high-stakes test, they carry the burden of feeling they must disprove all the negative stereotypes about their race, a burden which white students do not shoulder. As a result of this same dynamic, studies show that the highest performing minority students – i.e. those that care the most about their performance – exhibit the greatest disparity between their general academic performance and their test scores.
The Real Preferences: Invisible to Those That Most Enjoy Them
These arguments undermine the assumptions of the opponents of affirmative action, and those that so wrongly apply the term “preferences” to minority students when, if you look at real society in the most concrete, rather than abstract terms – who gets the best educational opportunities, who get the best healthcare (even among those who are insured), who gets the longest prison sentence for the same offense, etc. it is obvious that white people are the ones who receive “preferences”. It’s just that the preferences are so much a part of dominant culture, and so universal, they are invisible to those who enjoy them.
ARGUMENT FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
PART 2: THE MYTH OF ‘MERITOCRACY’, CONTINUED
Why GPA is not a race-neutral admissions criterion
From kindergarten through high school, racist inequality and segregation permeate education in America. Majority black and Latina/o schools receive less per-pupil funding, have fewer books, less academic, sports and art equipment and facilities, and have less diversity of course options, more uncertified teachers and larger class sizes. Latina/o K-12 students face more segregated conditions now than in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Inequality and Segregation in K-12
The racial inequalities in K-12 are one of the obstacles that black, Latino and Native American students must overcome when they reach college, and with adequate support to compensate for the inferior education they received earlier, they DO overcome it – but they have to work HARDER than white students to do so . The first year that minority students who attended substandard K-12 schools spend ‘catching up’ is reflected in their GPA when they apply to graduate and professional schools.
A study of the period 1968-1987 conducted by UCSD School of Medicine professors shows that initial gaps in performance between students admitted under the regular and affirmative action admission standards narrowed and then disappeared over the course of medical education. (see Robert Davidson end Ernest Lewis, “Affirmative Action and Other Special Consideration Admissions at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine,” 278 Journal of the American Medical Association 1153 (1997).
Uncapped GPA
Many universities, including the University of California, utilize “inflated” or “uncapped” GPA – the points added to a GPA of 4.0 for completion of AP, honors and IB courses. Some colleges simply give extra weight for graduation from “rigorous” programs or schools – which amounts to the same thing. The majority of Latino/a, black and Native American students attend schools that offer very few if any such courses. The first year that affirmative action was banned in California, 808 black and Latina/o students with a GPA of 4.0 were rejected from UC Berkeley. Such polices obviously privilege applicants who attend wealthier, better equipped high schools.
Racist Barriers Faced By Minority Students Who Attend Majority-White K-12
Racism also weighs on Latina/o and black students who attend majority white schools through tracking (which disproportionately pushes minority students into narrow vocational training), unequal discipline, higher suspension rates, and lower teacher expectations. Added to this, complex forms of prejudice challenge minority students in majority white schools, forcing students who would otherwise spend their full energy learning about the world and working out who they are to spend precious energy negotiating the rock-strewn waters between self-effacement and angry overreaction. Complicating this job further are both the variety of white comments and gestures that express some form of prejudice and also the uncertainty of calculating the proportions of ignorance and/or ill-will behind these comments and gestures.
Adding responsibility to education, black, Latino/a and other minority students in majority white schools are impelled to represent their race in a way that society never asks of white students; this task can be an honor and a source of pride, but also a burden. Racism and sexism have an encumbering effect: they absorb mental energy, undermine self-confidence and influence academic performance. Affirmative action recognizes the encumbering effects of racism and sexism on student performance and seeks to counteract it – to reduce the effects of inequality and discrimination.
Negotiating a Racist Society Develops Character and Leadership Skills That Can’t be Quantified
While all these conditions are “obstacles” for black, Latina/o and Native American students that white students never face, they are also a singular source of strength of character that cannot be reflected in GPA or standardized test scores. Racism compels the development of resolve and thoughtful reflection. Academically successful minority students are forced to hone their socialassessment skills, enabling them to relate to people from a variety of different backgrounds often at a higher level of understanding than their white peers. Character sowed in the fields of racism harvests hard-won strengths.
Any real element of integration or equality in higher education in today’s America is not possible without offsetting the effects of racism by means of affirmative action.
ARGUMENT FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
PART 3: FIGHT FOR INTEGRATION & EQUALITY
“You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair…This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result…To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough.”
President Lyndon Johnson, 1965
Only Independent Mass Action by Latina/o, black and Native American students and their allies can win full equality and integration
Opponents of affirmative action aim to eliminate the only social policies that have been an effective counterweight to the racism and sexism of our society – the only social policies that have achieved some measure of integration in higher education and employment.
Affirmative action, along with other social policies and programs designed to remedy the segregation and inequality of American society, arose out of the civil rights struggles and urban rebellions of the 1960’s. The contradiction between the newly achieved steps in the direction of equality before the law in the 1960’s and the persisting stark inequality in both northern and southern states between black and white was the material context for the implementation of affirmative action.
Integration and equality are inseparable. The degree to which they have been achieved measures the real progress and the real democracy of the nation.
Before the implementation of affirmative action, graduate and professional schools (excluding Historically Black Colleges and Universities) were almost all white, and overwhelmingly male. The chart below from the trial of Grutter makes clear that in the absence of race-conscious admissions policies – there exists de facto segregation. The dates that punctuate a rise in black enrollment also make clear that only independent mass action led by black students forced the implementation of these policies.
Between 1950 and 1970, the University of Michigan Law School graduated 5,573 people. Of these graduates, 5,543 were white, 30 were black, and none were Latino/a, Asian American, or Native American. These figures stand in stark contrast to the demographics of the 2000 entering class of the University of Michigan Law School which was composed of 28% minority students.
– From the Trial Testimony of Professor John Hope Franklin, one of the nation’s premiere scholars on black history and expert witness for the student defendant intervenors in the University of Michigan Law School affirmative action case, Grutter v. Bollinger. For more from John Hope Franklin’s
testimony, see Trial Transcript Vol. 7 – www.umich.edu/~daap/facts.htm
Affirmative action programs opened up educational opportunities for all minorities and women of
all races.
Between 1890 and 1970, the percentage of lawyers who were black increased less than one percentage point: from 0.48% to 1.29%.Fifteen years later, in response to the urban uprisings of the 1960′s and militant mass actions by black and Latina/o students on campuses across the nation, 5.1% of law students were black. In 1995, the last year affirmative action programs existed at every law school, black students comprised 7.5% of all law students. In 1960, a tiny number of all law students were women; today, just over 50% of law students are women. In 1971, women received 6.3% of all professional degrees. Ten years later, the figure had more than quadrupled to 27.5%.
Conversely, after the ban on affirmative action in California the number of women faculty decreased by 22% throughout the UC system. The first year that affirmative action was banned in California, 808 black, Latina/o and Native American students with a 4.0 GPA and SAT scores over 1200 were rejected from UC Berkeley. Last year, only 4 Black and 4 Latino students from the entire Oakland Unified School District were admitted to UC Berkeley or UCLA.
