RACE AND AFFIRMING OPPORTUNITY IN THE BARACK OBAMA ERA

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Julius Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Faculty Of Color ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Important Principle ◽  
Racial Preferences ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Face ◽  
The University

AbstractI first discuss the Obama administration's efforts to promote racial diversity on college campuses in the face of recent court challenges to affirmative action. I then analyze opposition in this country to “racial preferences” as a way to overcome inequality. I follow that with a discussion of why class-based affirmative action, as a response to cries from conservatives to abolish “racial preferences,” would not be an adequate substitute for race-based affirmative action. Instead of class-based affirmative action, I present an argument for opportunity enhancing affirmative action programs that rely on flexible, merit-based criteria of evaluation as opposed to numerical guidelines or quotas. Using the term “affirmative opportunity” to describe such programs, I illustrate their application with three cases: the University of California, Irvine's revised affirmative action admissions procedure; the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action program, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003; and the hiring and promotion of faculty of color at colleges and universities as seen in how I myself benefited from a type of affirmative action based on flexible merit-based criteria at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s. I conclude by relating affirmative opportunity programs for people of color to the important principle of “equality of life chances.”

Gratz v. Bollinger

2020 ◽  
pp. 215-242
Author(s):  
Matthew Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Undergraduate Admissions ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Selective Incorporation ◽  
The University

This chapter studies Gratz v. Bollinger, which challenged the racially attentive undergraduate admissions practices of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts in the University of Michigan (UM). Grutter v. Bollinger, which challenged the Law School's admissions practices, was filed soon thereafter. These cases put UM on a crash course with the Supreme Court. The chapter then highlights UM's defense of affirmative action, showing how the university's co-optation of racial justice aligned with the rightward shift of the Supreme Court since the 1980s. UM leaders' preference for diversity over the social justice rationale, their discomfort with enrollment targets, their efforts to make affirmative action serve business interests, and their selective incorporation of social science that promoted the benefits of interracial contact all made UM's chances of swaying at least one conservative justice more likely.

Case Study 1: The Gratz and Grutter Supreme Court Cases against the University of Michigan

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-154
Author(s):  
J. Scott Carter ◽  
Cameron D. Lippard
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Higher Education Admissions ◽  
First Case ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Color Blind ◽  
The University

The purpose of this chapter is to understand arguments put forth by these social authorities (individuals and groups) in support and opposition to affirmative action within a prominent debate on affirmative action in higher education admissions. We are particularly interested in advocacy groups that have the ability and resources not afforded to most individuals to lobby the Supreme Court. We used the Gratz v. Bollinger et al. and Grutter v. Bollinger et al. U.S. Supreme Court cases as the site of the first case study. We look at how these entities deployed specific arguments and rhetoric within court documents to frame affirmative action to Supreme Court Justices. In particular, while all frames were considered, we look at two discursive frames prominent in the literature and how they were used by supporters and opponents of the policy: color-blind and threat frames. Findings demonstrate that while supporters often used color-blind arguments (and some threat as well), the opponent briefs were saturated with both color-blind frames.

Sustaining Racial Retrenchment

2020 ◽  
pp. 164-187
Author(s):  
Matthew Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Black Students ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Student Body ◽  
New Policies ◽  
The University ◽  
Corporate Model

This chapter describes how the University of Michigan (UM) leaders fought to preserve the new affirmative action policies. In this context, diversity—the idea that a racially heterogeneous student body improved education and prepared students for a multiracial democracy and global economy—became a tool to defend and sustain the new policies. Diversity helped sever the purpose of affirmative action from addressing the inequality rooted in cities, offered ambiguous goals that helped officials avoid accountability, and advanced administrators' interests in introducing a corporate model for the university. The diversity ideal, in other words, did not spark racial retrenchment. Instead, diversity became a tool to sustain the university's policies of retrenchment. Administrators still had to work to retain control over the meaning of diversity and ensure it supported the new policies. When diversity took hold among administrators, black students and their allies tried to employ diversity language to undermine the policies of retrenchment. Administrators ensured that never happened.

The Informational Value of Affirmative Action in College Admissions

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric K Furstenberg
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
College Admissions ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Admissions Policies ◽  
Racial Preferences ◽  
Admissions Officers ◽  
The University ◽  
Admissions Process ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract This article develops a theoretical model of college admissions to investigate the effects of banning affirmative action admissions policies on the efficiency of the admissions process. Previous work in this area has shown that prohibiting affirmative action causes inefficiency when college quality is an increasing function of diversity. This article identifies an additional reason why colleges and universities use racial preferences in admissions, setting aside explicit demands for diversity. In the theoretical model, the racial identity of the applicants is relevant information for making inferences about an applicant's true academic ability. Preventing admissions officers from using this information results in inefficient selection of applicants, even if diversity does not explicitly enter the objective of the university. Thus, affirmative action is justified solely on informational grounds.

scholarly journals Affirmative Action And The “Individual” Right To Equal Protection

2009 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Farrell
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Action Program ◽  
Class Membership ◽  
Equal Protection Clause ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

When the Supreme Court, or one its Justices, writes an opinion invalidating a race-conscious affirmative action program, it is commonplace for the opinion to note that the rights protected by the Equal Protection Clause are “individual” or “personal,” and thus require the state to treat every person as an individual, not simply as a member of a class. This assertion about the nature of equal protection rights is assumed to be inconsistent with the classbased underpinning of affirmative action programs, and thus determinative of their invalidation. The problem with affirmative action programs, under this view, is that they ignore the individual characteristics of the persons affected and instead assign different treatment to persons based on their membership in a class. If, for example, the University of California Medical School at Davis assigns a certain number of seats in its entering class to black, Chicano, Asian, and Native-American applicants,2 it has made overly broad assumptions about the characteristics of the members of those classes, and then assigned a benefit on the basis of class membership without regard to individual merit or accomplishment.

Talking Tenure

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarita Echavez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Assistant Professor ◽  
The United States ◽  
Faculty Of Color ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Asian Pacific American ◽  
Asian Pacific ◽  
The University

Written in the wake of her tenure case at the University of Michigan, Sarita See's essay reflects the various subject positions she has held in the academy from untenured, and therefore vulnerable, assistant professor to a powerful advocate and organizer calling for institutions to closely interrogate what is at stake when faculty of color face tenure battles. Reflecting the challenges of writing about the unwritten record of racism and sexism in the United States academy, this essay documents and juxtaposes two radio segments with the radio collective "Asian Pacific American (APA): A Compass"—a rant and an interview—that See did as part of two national tenure justice campaigns on behalf of women of color academics that she helped organize.

From Discrimination to Affirmative Action

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas A. Powe
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Action Program ◽  
Primary Case ◽  
Undergraduate Admissions ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Supreme Court Case ◽  
The University

This chapter discusses the legal battles involving the University of Texas School of Law and its affirmative action program. In the wake of its success in 1944 in the all-white primary case, Smith v. Allwright, the Texas NAACP called for the integration of Texas's flagship university in Austin. Some months later Thurgood Marshall wrote a letter to Austin's only African American lawyer asking for information about how to apply to the UT School of Law. The chapter examines the Supreme Court case of Heman Marion Sweatt that produced a major stepping-stone toward Brown v. Board of Education, along with another case involving UT's undergraduate admissions that reaffirmed a state's right to implement affirmative action policies. In particular, it analyzes McLaurin v. Regents and Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, along with the Texas legislature's response to Hopwood v. Texas in the form of the “10% rule.”

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