{"id":110076,"date":"2023-04-18T07:20:28","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T12:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=110076"},"modified":"2023-04-18T07:20:28","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T12:20:28","slug":"why-affirmative-action-started-and-what-happens-if-it-goes-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2023\/04\/18\/why-affirmative-action-started-and-what-happens-if-it-goes-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Affirmative Action Started and What Happens If It Goes Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"VOA \u2014 In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order that called on government contractors to “take affirmative action\u201d to ensure that applicants and employees be treated \u201cwithout regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really a recognition that African Americans were excluded from the American dream for many years,\u201d says Natasha Warikoo, author of \u201cIs Affirmative Action Fair? The Myth of Equity in College Admissions.\u201d \u201cMeanwhile, selective colleges also wanted to increase representation, particularly of African Americans, because there were very few African Americans in these elite colleges. And so, they had their own kind of programs to bring in more African American students \u2026 and then taking into account race in the admissions process grew, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Supreme Court is considering challenges to policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard (seen here on April 27, 2022) that consider race as a factor in evaluating applications for admission.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Today, affirmative action refers to policies designed to increase representation of minorities and women at work and in higher education. The purpose of affirmative action in higher education is two-fold, says Katharine Meyer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne is to increase the diversity of the student body, the rationale there being that exposure to diverse viewpoints and diverse perspectives is going to enrich the experience of all students,\u201d Meyer says.<\/p>\n

The second purpose is more reparative, to reach out to students who might not have equal access to a high-quality high school education or quality advice on how to navigate the college admissions process.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of affirmative action is to identify students who would have thrived had they been placed in a ZIP code, say, that had the higher quality teachers, higher quality counselors, higher quality academic experiences, and to admit them to the institution where they believe they will thrive when they have access to those resources,\u201d Meyer says.<\/p>\n

Sixty years later, affirmative action remains controversial in the United States and has faced earlier court challenges. Right now, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering two cases that argue that affirmative action discriminates against Asian American students. As a result, the justices could ban admissions policy that uses race as a factor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really violates all of our ideals,\u201d says Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who supports ending affirmative action. \u201cWe’re a multiethnic country where it’s very important that government, or even the private sector, do not use race to pick and choose who rises and who doesn’t rise. And getting into a school is one of the most important rungs in the ladder of success.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Supreme Court justices, Bottom row, from left, Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Oct. 7, 2022.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Nine states \u2014 California, Washington, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Idaho \u2014 have outlawed affirmative action based on race. Some colleges in those states now use other criteria \u2014 like admitting students in the top 10% of their high school’s graduating class \u2014 in an effort to ensure diversity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn places where they have banned affirmative action \u2026 we’ve seen drops with the racial representation relative to the high school population, when the school stopped engaging in affirmative action,\u201d Meyer says.<\/p>\n

A\u00a02013 study<\/a>\u00a0found that, following an affirmative action ban in some states, there was a 23% drop in the likelihood of admission for students of color at those states\u2019 public colleges.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should never be OK with injustice. We should never be OK with disparities that persist. We should be constantly trying to address them. So, that\u2019s not OK,\u201d Gonzales says. \u201cWe should have an urge, as a society, to see what we can do to improve America and make sure that everybody has the opportunity to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

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People rally as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on two cases that could decide the future of affirmative action in college admissions, in Washington, Oct. 31, 2022.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Warikoo, who is also a sociology professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts, says there is no way to select the very best students, because not everyone agrees on what qualities and qualifications a \u201cbest\u201d student should have.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should get away from this idea of what’s fair and what’s not fair and think much more about what is our goal here as university?\u201d she says. \u201cDo we want to have a higher education system that is accessible to people regardless of their class backgrounds or their racial background?… Are we trying to create diverse leadership for tomorrow? These are the kinds of things that I think colleges should be thinking much more about. What is our mission, and how do we select students to best further that mission?\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzales says there are certain qualities that don\u2019t include race or ethnicity that colleges should look for in a student.<\/p>\n

\u201cActivities, what you contribute to charity, how well-rounded a person you are, how much leadership you demonstrate. All of these things have to do with merit and good citizenship. None of those things have to do with the immutable characteristic of what your race is or your category,\u201d Gonzales says. \u201cRace or category or national background is an awful way to make any choice by government or by the private sector. It should be so obvious to everybody that I don’t even understand why I have to explain this.\u201d<\/p>\n

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FILE — Graduates of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government celebrate during Harvard University’s commencement exercises in Cambridge, Mass., May 30, 2019.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Warikoo worries about the potential long-term impacts of the Supreme Court striking down race-based admissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t want to be dramatic, but I think it undermines our democracy,\u201d Warikoo says. \u201c[Americans] are very much invested in this idea of education as a pathway to social mobility, to success, to a good life. But if we have a kind of elite education system in which students are selected that don’t look like a cross-section of 18-year-olds in the United States, then that’s problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the future of race-based admissions by June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order that called on government contractors to “take affirmative action\u201d to ensure that applicants and employees be treated \u201cwithout regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” \u201cIt was really a recognition that African Americans were excluded from the American dream for many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":110077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110079,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110076\/revisions\/110079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}