Race to the Top?
Is positive discrimination on the basis of race a proper remedy for centuries of negative discrimination on the basis of race?
The latest front in this more than 40-year-old battle is the University of Texas, which has been sued for an affirmative action policy that gives weight to a person’s race in admissions. The case has now gone to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments this week.
Arguing against the university’s admissions policy was attorney Bert Rein, who, according to the Los Angeles Times, asserted that “large numbers of Latinos and blacks were admitted as top high school graduates” already. Defending the policy was U.S. Solicitor Gen. Donald Verrilli Jr. who argued, as the Times summarized it, that “college officials should be allowed the flexibility to design admissions policies that bring a diverse group of students to their campuses.”
Peter Drucker wrote quite a lot about race, and in his later career he often stressed dramatic improvement in the standing of black Americans. “If anyone around 1960, in the waning days of the Eisenhower administration and the beginning of the Kennedy presidency, had predicted the gains the American black would make in the next 10 or 15 years, he would have been dismissed as an unrealistic visionary, if not insane,” Drucker wrote in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “Never in recorded history has there been a greater change in the status of a social group within a shorter time.”
U.S. Supreme Court Building circa 1939. Image source: U.S. Library of Congress
However, as Drucker saw it, this very progress had created a split among liberals when it came to affirmative action. “The white liberal . . . has come to feel that the blacks increasingly are no longer ‘deprived,’ no longer entitled to special treatment such as reverse discrimination, no longer in need of special allowances and priority in employment, in promotion, and so on,” Drucker wrote.
About his own views on the subject Drucker was less direct, though he did once suggest that “even . . . educated American blacks are themselves members of a disadvantaged group.”
At the same time, Drucker cautioned that any institution can run into trouble when it takes on a cause beyond its core focus. “Whenever a ‘social responsibility’ of any of these institutions—the university, the business, the labor union, the hospital—is being invoked, the first question has to be: Will it impair the institution’s capacity to perform?” he wrote in The New Realities. “We may well decide that the social good outweighs the sacrifice in performance. But it is dangerous, it is indeed irresponsible, not to ask the question or to pretend that it is irrelevant.”
Do you think affirmative action is needed today? Why or why not?
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6 Comments
harold Goffeney
October 12, 2012The ethics cover the minority rules put in place title VII 1967 sub A
To give.minority the opportunity to contract over time the 10% if contracts has increased to over 80% of contract to minority.
thus laws are outdated we need to look are the futures. And ask what is society looking like?
The fastest growing race is not on the books they dont know what to call it. .based on MBA course 2010.
Richard B Mann, PhD
October 12, 2012Good Question! Blacks have made great progress. Those who really wanted to succeed have, and significant numbers have surpassed other races in various areas. To keep treating them as inferior does a disservice to those who have proved themselves. I see my black friends and associates as equals. However, to continue the admission and hiring advantages puts a cloud of stigma on their accomplishments. It is creating a permanent underclass, and diminishes their self esteem, IMHO.
I wonder if a similar advantage were given to white athletes in basketball, football, etc. that required an equal number of players from various races, what would happen to the players salaries and fan support? Everyone needs to be respected for their individual accomplishments!
Maverick18
October 13, 2012Affirmative Action has been enforced as a quota system under which the Government has imposed employment quotas on private employers and its own Government agencies. In practice, the classifications enforced were blacks and hispanics. The Government never really cared much about Asian employment and mostly ignored that classification. It is obvious that when the employer passes up a well qualified white for a lesser qualified black or hispanic due to a quota that some form of discrimination has occured. That simply was legal discrimination under AA. Such practices spawned reverse discrimination suites and the question is once more going to be before the Supreme Court in an applicable case. Let’s see if the court can come to the conclusion that historical discrimination is a thing of the past and so should be the AA enforced quota system..
Alba Patricia Valencia
October 13, 2012This day, help us to put ourselves in the place of those who feel displaced by the mere fact of belonging to a particular ethnic, group, take this or that sexual choice, have a particular color. We should make good use of the best of other cultures from knowledge and interaction with others.
Que este día, nos sirva para ponernos en el lugar de los que se sienten desplazados por el simple hecho de pertenecer a tal o cual etnia, adoptar tal o cual elección sexual, tener tal o cual color de piel. De nosotros depende aprovechar lo mejor de las demás culturas a partir del conocimiento y la interacción con los demás.
MACEO
October 14, 2012If racism still exists, affirmative action should still exist. How it exists is up for debate…
Derrick Gibson
October 15, 2012Centuries of affirmative action on behalf of whites, counterbalanced with decades of affirmative action on behalf of blacks — and we are faced with the question of: “Is enough enough?”
We come to this question, again, because we have not made explicit our goals of this latest round of affirmative action. Previously — and for hundreds of years — it was made evident: the black race had no rights which need be respected by the white race. No property rights; no personal rights — nothing. Currently, for the past forty-odd years, the black race has had made for them a preference in admittance at the highest ranks of our educational systems — but to what end?
If the goal was to uplift the black race in the entirety with which the black race was downtrodden, then this most recent round of affirmative action has been an unmitigated failure. But the failure begins with our reluctance to be as forthright in stating a goal, today as we were in stating as well as enforcing our goals, then.