Affirmative Action was a USA program/policy that was started in the liberal period of the '60s and '70s as a way to introduce a more racially diversified mix of students into universities and government institutions. At some levels, it even applied to major corporations for tax and government contracting purposes. It was a reaction to the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and to a lesser extent, the Black Panthers and Malcolm X.
While the need for Affirmative Action was certainly present 30 years ago, has that need been answered? Is Affirmative Action a dinosaur?
In my opinion, the answer is "yes". Affirmative Action was a form of charity that was intended to address the shortcomings of education wrought by the "separate" and "separate but equal" policies of public education - to correct the wrongs of previous policies. But now that all children have equal access to public education, AA is now becoming an inhibitor to the development of careers for people with the talent and the desire to improve their lot in life by enrolling in higher educational systems. AA was intended to raise people up, not keep them down. For this reason, I believe AA should be abolished. Let people stand on their own two feet, and give everyone a fair shot at improving themselves.
=========From Yahoo News=========
High Court Takes Affirmative Action Case
37 minutes ago
By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court re-entered the debate over affirmative action Monday, agreeing to decide if minorities can be given a boost to get into public universities.
The court will decide by next June if race can be used in college admissions, an issue that the justices have dealt with only once before, in a cloudy 1978 ruling that led to more confusion.
The justices will consider whether white applicants to the University of Michigan and its law school were unconstitutionally turned down because of their race.
The cases give the court an opportunity to ban affirmative action in higher education or say how much weight universities may assign to an applicant's race. The stakes are high because many colleges have race-conscious admissions policies.
Affirmative action supporters argue that without policies that encourage diverse student bodies, the top public colleges in the country would not be representative. Representative of what? A bogus racial census, or representative of treating all students equally, with acceptance criteria based on academic success rather than DNA?
Opponents contend that those policies discriminate against white students, giving slots to less qualified minorities. Ain't that the truth.
A divided appeals court upheld the law school's practices in May, saying the Constitution allows colleges and graduate schools to seek "a meaningful number" of minority students, so long as the school avoids a fixed quota system.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has not ruled in a companion case addressing the school's undergraduate policy, which was argued on the same day as the law school case.
Justices took the unusual step of taking the case anyway, without awaiting a ruling.
The high court has passed up other well-known cases that presented similar questions about the role of race in higher education.
There was pressure from both sides of the debate for the court to intervene now.
"It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the court's decision in these cases will directly affect the lives not only of this generation of students but of generations of students to follow," Theodore Shaw, counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told justices in a filing on behalf of black and Hispanic students. Well of course, because abolishing AA will finally acknowledge that all men are truly created equal and should have equal access based on academic qualifications rather than the color of their skin. Isn't that what all future generations should be taught to believe?
The last college higher education case at the high court involved Allan Bakke, a white man rejected for admission to a California medical school while minorities with lower test scores got in through a special program. The court on a 5-4 vote outlawed racial quotas. Justice Lewis F. Powell wrote separately that schools could still consider race, so long as they did not use quotas. Courts around the country have set contradictory rules.
Only two of the justices who considered that 1978 case still sit on the court — Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice John Paul Stevens.
"Many questions cry out for clarification," lawyers for white law school applicant Barbara Grutter told justices in a filing.
Grutter was a 43-year-old businesswoman and mother when she applied to the law school in 1996 but was not accepted. She said that she suspected reverse discrimination after seeing statistics about the racial makeup and qualifications of recent Michigan law classes. That's odd. I would've thought that a school priding itself on racial diversity would want to include sexual diversity as well.
Her appeal, and the other one by two would-be undergraduate students, center on the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection for all under the law.
Maureen E. Mahoney, a lawyer for the university, told the court in a filing that if the 1978 ruling is overturned, it "would produce the immediate resegregation of many — and perhaps most — of this nation's finest and most selective institutions." How? How can the removal of race as an acceptance criteria create a racially segregated student population? Logically, her position makes no sense. Its like saying "if we remove the policy of including green M&Ms in each bag, then we'll end up with bags containing only yellow and blue M&Ms." She makes no sense.
She said colleges are trying to improve learning with a diverse environment.
About 15 percent of the first year Michigan law students are minorities. The Supreme Court was told that without diversity considerations, the number of minorities in a freshman class could plunge to less than .04 percent. So, in essence, the school is admitting that 10 percent of the students don't have the academic qualifications to be in the Michigan law school and are keeping students who qualify academically from being accepted? If so, then maybe the school should have separate acceptance criteria: "If you're white, then you have to have a 3.8 GPA to get in, but if you're black, hispanic, or other minority, then you only need a 3.5 because we understand you need special help to overcome your limitations."
Mark Rahdert, a professor at Temple University, said it's difficult to predict how the conservative Supreme Court will rule, but that justices had little choice but to again take up the divisive subject.
"It could literally change the face of the student body in public colleges and universities around the country," he said. Yes, by allowing only the talented students to get in, rather than the talented white students and some others who didn't make the grades but got in because they came from minority parents.
The cases are Grutter v. Bollinger, 02-241, and Gratz v. Bollinger, 02-516.
