The New Face of Affirmative Action
September 29, 2007
In another time, it wouldn’t have been too hard to guess where Frances Harris would have ended up going to college. She has managed to do very well in very difficult circumstances, and she is African-American. Her high school, in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, was shut down as an irremediable failure the spring before her freshman year, then reopened months later as a charter school. Midway through high school, her father developed heart problems and became an irritable fixture around the home. She also discovered that he was not actually her biological father. That was a man named Leroy who, when her mother took Harris to see him, simply said his name was George and waited for her to leave. In Harris’s senior year, her mother lost her job at a nursing home and the family filed for bankruptcy.
Harris somehow stayed focused on teenage life. She earned an A-minus average and she distinguished herself as a debater. Her basketball teammates sometimes teased her for using big words, but they also elected her co-captain. As she led me on a tour of her school and her neighborhood one day this summer, she introduced me around with an assured ease that most adults can’t manage, even if her sentences are peppered with “like,” “you know” and “Oh, my God.” Her bedroom in the bungalow she shares with her parents is a masterpiece of teenage energy, the walls covered with her prom-queen tiara, her purple-and-white basketball jersey (No. 3) and photos of her friends. “The hardest part of high school,” she says, “was to be smart and cool at the same time.” She decided her dream college was the University of California, Los Angeles.
Ten or 20 years ago, Frances Harris almost certainly would have been admitted. Her excellent grades might not have even been necessary, because Berkeley and U.C.L.A. — the jewels in the U.C. system — accepted almost all of the African-Americans who met the basic application requirements. To an admissions officer, Harris would have seemed like gold: diversity and achievement, wrapped up in a single kid.
But in the early 1990s, the elite campuses began to pull back from their aggressive affirmative-action policies, and in 1996, California voters passed the California Civil Rights Initiative, also known as Proposition 209. After that, race could no longer be a factor in government hiring or public-university admissions. The number of black students at both Berkeley and U.C.L.A. plummeted, and at U.C.L.A. the declines continued throughout the next decade. The reasons weren’t entirely clear, but they seemed to include some combination of the admissions office taking Proposition 209 to heart and black students falling further behind in the academic arms race. (Harris, for instance, scored a 22 on the ACT test — slightly above the national average and well below the U.C.L.A. average.) The changes on U.C.L.A.’s campus were hard to miss. In 1997, the freshman class included 221 black students; last fall it had only 100. In the region with easily the largest black population west of the Mississippi River, the top public university had a freshman class in which barely 1 in 50 students was black.
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1.
KeVin K. | September 30, 2007 at 7:07 pm
The landscape is so complex now. I work in the mental health field in the south. Community support services — helping folks with special needs live independently. We deal a lot with Medicaid, we deal with state health funding, we deal a lot with the poor (because the rich don’t need us). And we have to jump through seven kinds of hoops to not say being black in the American south is a factor in these people’s lives while at the same time address the disenfranchisement they must struggle to overcome. Before the Reagan Revolution one could speak plainly on the issue — say that, yes, because of this person’s race they have not had access, they have not had opportunity, they have not had parity. But now the language has been taken away from us by the right-wing shell game. Dialog about redressing the ways people have been mistreated because of the color of their skin has become about giving special favors because of the color of their skin. (”Are you saying their race is a handicapping condition? Isn’t that racist? You’re claiming black people should receive special treatment because you don’t believe they’re as smart or able as whites. We’re about addressing real needs, not assuaging your hypocritical liberal guilt trips.”
Arguing wins nothing. The laws have been passed and here in the south where most Democrats are somewhere to the right of national average for Republicans they aren’t going to get changed back again. I wish we had a few Peter Taylors in our corner.
2.
blackromancereader | October 1, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Since I was born in the mid 80s, I’m not a witness to the Reagan era, but I find that interesting because it answers a lot of questions I have over why the complete stubbornness over admitting the inconsistencies and disadvantages that continue to plague minorities from most of the white people I’ve crossed paths with online–and these are young people so it’s obvious that their parents have passed this down to them.
It’s nuts how nowadays, there is so much anger and resentment funneled towards minorities–with black Americans bearing the brunt of the scrutiny–possibly getting “breaks” over white people. The venom spewed more and more makes me recoil in shock and confusion–what happened in between the Civil Rights Movement and today? I need to read up on this…
3.
Sherry | October 2, 2007 at 9:46 am
Angela,
Thanks for the link, I read the entire article last Sunday and found it highly thought provoking.
I think that the reasons underpinning the hostility you observe might be as much economical as racial. I could be wrong about this, but it is my feel that the pie, for most Americans, is not expanding, but shrinking. And in pie-shrinking times, it would always be the minorities who bear the brunt of the blame. After all, what’s easier, to admit that the choices you’ve made, the leaders you’ve elected, the policies you’ve supported have been detrimental, to face the fact that not only your children’s lives might not be better than yours but that yours might be inferior in optimism and comfort to your parents’–or to point fingers and say see that group there, they are taking resources and opportunities that should have been mine?
4.
blackromancereader | October 2, 2007 at 10:42 am
Sherry: that is another possible reason. Just over at AAR there was an OT discussion about how college is no longer the key to financial and career success these days, and that it’s possible that my generation won’t out-earn their parents the way previous generations have. Scary considering the fact that I’m a living testament to the increase of people of my generation–and a bit older–moving back in with their parents because it’s too expensive to live independently. O.o
5.
KeVinK | October 2, 2007 at 10:52 am
Reagan wasn’t all of it. But he helped
(And what follows is over simplified and generalized. Do ont confuse reading 600 of my words with doing your own research and forming your own opinion.)
Reagan was elected on the promise of reducing taxes and balancing the budget — two mutually exclusive goals. Of course, he only reduced the taxes of the upper few percent, shifting the burden of our paying our nation’s bills to the shoulders of those less able to afford it. (His program was called “trickle down economics” — the idea being that with less of a tax burden the rich would invest in expanding industry and create more jobs for the working class.) I can’t assess all the fiscal problems with that plan — except to say economists called it “voodoo economics” at the time. I do know that it failed spectacularly — but that’s the subject for another post.
A very big part of the domestic budget in 1980 was job training and education programs aimed at getting the poorest into the workforce. This was an expensive conglomeration of programs. And, quite honestly, it’s administration was top-heavy and inefficient. The model, the ideal, was solid and practical; the reality was in need of a good house cleaning. Cheaper than fixing the mess was getting rid of it. Replacing all the programs designed to get people out of poverty with a straightforward system of simple hand-outs worked. Saved the country billions. In the short run.
The problem with the Reagan Revolution is it addressed only the immediate situation with a stop-gap and did nothing to solve the underlying, and self-perpetuating, conditions. By deleting all the programs to help people get on their feet, the benefit structure became all-or-nothing. The last time I was aware of the figures — when I was teaching in an alternative high-school in the 1990s — for a person to give up all the benefits of welfare (free medical/dental, rent, etc.) and accept a job would require the position be full time and pay at least $16 an hour. I’m betting the gap is bigger now. But we are faced with the third and fourth generation legacy of the Reagan Revolution — multiple generations of families conditioned to believe they can accomplish nothing on their own. AND multiple generations of middleclass families conditioned to believe the poor can accomplish nothing without the government somehow giving them an unfair advantage. The racial and cultural and fiscal reality of our country is this became a white/black issue.
Of course not all blacks fell below the poverty line and certainly not all ignored what aids there were to getting ahead. As was mentioned in the article, middle and upper-middle class black families took advantage of affirmative action in education and the workplace while those most ground down by poverty were unlikely to be aware they had the option — or in a position to take advantage if they were. Again, the perception that those who did not need the help were benefiting was reinforced. Thus the backlash as even former supporters decry it’s many failures.
Fixing the current mess would cost hundreds of billions of dollars if handled by the government. The private sector — as represented by Peter Taylor’s efforts for UCLA — can do the job for substantially less (omG, I’m sounding neo-con). But those with the money to make a difference have proven time and again they can not be trusted to put the needs of their fellow Americans ahead of their own comfort and convenience (okay, back on safe ground).
Forty years ago there was no doubt in my mind I knew the answers. Now…. The only thing I can say with any certainty about the America in which my grandchildren will raise their families is that it will not be like what we have now.
6.
KeVin K. | October 2, 2007 at 6:28 pm
The idea of moving out of your parents’ home before you’re ready to marry and start your own family is a fairly recent development and American. As an ESL teacher I learned that in almost all cultures of the world, living at home until one was in one’s 30s is not unusual. Because nowhere is it economically easy to make it outside of a family support network