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"Killing Affirmative Action: Would ending it really result in a better, more perfect Union?"
(Newsweek Web Chat)
Hosted by: Ellis Cose
"In a season when voters are reflecting on everything from the war in Iraq to parental notification of abortions, affirmative action may not be the most divisive issue on the table," says NEWSWEEK Contributing Editor Ellis Cose, "but it remains an unending source of conflict and debate." In "Killing Affirmative Action: Would it really result in a better, more perfect Union?", a new report published by the Institute for Justice and Journalism, Cose examines the continuing conflict over the role of race in university admissions and in the workplace. Talk to Cose about these and other questions in a Live Talk on Thursday, Nov. 9, at noon, ET. Submit questions now.
Ellis Cose: Hello. This is Ellis Cose and for the next several minutes I will try to answer your question related to affirmative action and to my latest public, Killing Affirmative Action, published by the Institute for Justice and Journalism at USC.
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New York, NY: Do you think there's a way to create an efficient affirmative action program? What is your opinion on it?
Ellis Cose: Yes. I do think it is possible to create an efficient affirmative action program. In my opinion, several companies and universities, including the University of Michigan Law School have done so. The U.S. Supreme Court said as much in 2003. The problem is that any program that favors some people over others is going to raise issues of fairness.
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New York, NY: Does affirmative action merely help black people?
Ellis Cose: No, Affirmative action in this country has applied to a range of people--women, blacks, Latinos, certain groups of Asian Americans. Abroad, in India, is has applied to the so-called Dalits or Untouchables. And in other countries, it has applied to other groups.
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Detroit, MI: Why are the Armed Forces so supportive of affirmative action initiatives?
Ellis Cose: The armed forces are supportive of affirmative action because they have had very positive experiences with it, going back to the time of the Vietnam War. The uniformed services filed briefs in support of the University of Michigan affirmative action programs, when they were challenged before the Supreme Court, because their officer corps thinks it is important for reasons of national security.
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New York, NY: I am a big fan of Dr. Adolph Reed Jr., and though I haven't read your book on affirmative action, I am curious how you weigh in on issues of class in affirmative action?
Ellis Cose: I am totally in favor of policies than can help to close the huge and growing class gap in America. I think it is essential that we, as a country, tackle that issue.
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Glastonbury, CT: Mr. Cose, is resistance to affirmative action necessarily racist?
Ellis Cose: I believe there are a number of principled reasons that some people oppose affirmative action. So I don't think such opposition is necessarily racist, though, in some cases, it is.
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Boston, MA: Mr. Cose,
What has been your personal experience with affirmative action--if at all--in school and the workplace? Do you talk about this in your report at all?
Ellis Cose: I don't talk about my personal experiences with affirmative action because I was never the beneficiary of any formal affirmative action program. I did once run a program that helped various members of minority groups enter the field of journalism, and I have written about that.
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Elk Grove, CA: What was your experience with affirmative action, in regards to college admissions?
Ellis Cose: As I noted in the answer to another question, I did not directly have any experience with affirmative action in college admission. I have certainly observed it in practice in many places, including in Michigan and California. I think (to probably state the obvious) that is has resulted in a number of people gaining admission to universities who would otherwise have had a very difficult time. And most of those people have done very well.
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Seattle, WA: Aren't legacy slots at Ivy League schools just another form of affirmative action?
Ellis Cose: Certainly one of the big arguments used in favor of affirmative action is that there are any number of programs universities use--including providing legacy slots--that work to the disadvantage of the groups that formal affirmative action programs are supposed to benefit. So yes, I do believe legacy slots are essentially affirmative action for the privileged.
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Scottsbluff, Neb: Isn't the issue class more than race? I mean, poor people of any race need more of a leg-up than minorities from wealthy families.
Ellis Cose: I actually think they are two very related issues. I think there are people who have been disadvantaged as a consequence of their low-income status. I think there are also people who have been disadvantaged because of their racial classification. If the question is whether poor people, whatever their color, need help more than wealth minorities, I think the answer is yes. But the fact is that most affirmative action programs are not really directed at wealthy people.
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San Francisco, CA: Do you have a general plan to improve the K-12 education?
Ellis Cose: I do not have a point-by-point plan; but I have many ideas and have written on the subject in other venues. In essence, I think we need to invest in poor children, in poor schools, the same way we invest in wealthy children--not just financially. We need to hold them to the same performance expectations and give them their wherewithal to achieve.
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Ashville, NC: Why is affirmative action always viewed as a black-white thing? Don't Asians and Hispanics benefit too?
Ellis Cose: As I noted in answer to a previous questions, many groups have benefited from affirmative action in this country and elsewhere. Race, in America, has traditionally been seen as largely a black and white issue. Affirmative action began as a way to give assistance to African-Americans. So it still carries a lot of the baggage of history.
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Charlottsville, VA: Why do you think affirmative action has taken a bigger toll on America now than during the Civil Rights movements in the 60s?
Ellis Cose: I'm not sure I agree that affirmative action has taken a bigger toll on America. It clearly has become a hot issue in certain places. And I think that is largely because there is an organized opposition to affirmative action that did not exist in the same way in the 1960s. Also, affirmative action was new in the 1960s; so there was not the same sense that some people have now that it has been around too long.
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Los Angeles, CA: Do people actually understand affirmative action or are they overlaying misunderstood nuggets of information and/or stereotypes onto a fairly innocent initiative?
Ellis Cose: I believe there are a great many misunderstandings associated with affirmative action. I also think there has been a certain amount of misinformation. That is a consequence of many things--including a sound bite culture in which complex issues get reduced to slogans.
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Cincinnati, OH: Why do you think affirmative action has become such a hot issue in Michigan and not, say, Georgia or another state in the South that has been more historically opposed to equality between the races?
Ellis Cose: Affirmative action became a very hot issue in Michigan because opponents of affirmative action took aim at programs at the University of Michigan that they believed the Supreme Court would strike down. When the Court did not do so, they decided to organize in Michigan via a ballot initiative, which prevailed on Tuesday.
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Seattle, WA: I haven't yet read your report, but in my opinion, some form of AA is needed--though I think the program we have in place is rather antiquated. Shouldn't we be basing affirmative action on ECONOMICS rather than race?
Ellis Cose: That is clearly a question many people are asking. My own view is that affirmative action should have certainly take economics into account, but that it should also take the reality of racial segregation and America's racial history into account.
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Atlanta, Georgia: Do you think that affirmative action will last and prevail?
Ellis Cose: I don't think that any set of policies last forever. Since the 1960s, when affirmative action programs began, there have been many twists and turns in the road. The programs expanded to include more groups and they also contracted, in terms of scope, largely in response to legal challenges. I suspect the evolution will continue and that, in the long term, American's interested in social equity will find themselves focusing more sharply on the issue of economic disadvantage.
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Memphis, TN: How can minorities combat the idea that they got their jobs, school acceptance letters, etc. through affirmative action and hence aren't really worth being there?
Ellis Cose: In my experience, people tend to believe what they want to believe. An unfortunate reality of life is that many people of color who have achieved much are suspected by certain other people of having only gotten by on the basis of race. That is, as I said, unfortunate.
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Minnesota, MN: Are a majority of African Americans really in favor of affirmative actions? How about Hispanics or Asians?
Ellis Cose: The short answer is yes; but it obviously depends on how the question is asked in an opinion poll. Certainly, when the issue has been put on the ballot, people of color have tended to vote for affirmative action. In California, for instance, African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos all voted against Proposition 209, even though that anti-affirmative action initiative ended up passing.
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Dallas, TX: Are there any particular fields that have really benefited from AA?
Ellis Cose: The armed forces have some very prominent examples. Many people think the medical field and social service fields (and others) have benefited as well.
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San Francisco, CA: How else can society put forward a diverse workplace, if not affirmative action?
Ellis Cose: I think it is quite possible to have a diverse workplace without affirmative action, provided that non-discriminatory and fair hiring standards are the norm. I think is much harder to achieve real diversity in extremely selective universities if the only factors really considered are test scores and GPAs.
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Elk Grove, CA: What is your opinion on affirmative action in Minnesota? Should it have been put on the ballot?
Ellis Cose: I don't have a particular opinion of affirmative action in Minnesota, and know of no attempt to put the issue on the ballot there. You may be thinking of Michigan, where it was on the ballot Tuesday.
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Turlock, CA: Could Governor Schwarzenegger enforce affirmative action through the state due to the high diversity in the school systems, specifically the UC’s?
Ellis Cose: The governor of California has announced a plan to try to promote diversity in state contracting. There are real limits to how affirmative action can be promoted in California because Proposition 209, which prohibits many forms of affirmative action in state government, including in the university system.
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New Canaan, CT: How do you define affirmative action in college admissions? Does it include giving a plus for being a member of an under represented minority?
Ellis Cose: Affirmative action in college admissions means taking race, ethnicity and, in some cases, gender into account in some way. It does not necessarily mean, "giving a plus." Indeed, the Supreme Court ruled a program unconstitutional because it simply gave a certain number of points to minority candidates. I think a more thoughtful form of affirmative action tries to look at a person in his or her totality, including what role race has played in his or her life.
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Boise, ID: Do you think affirmative action to competitive preschools is needed?
Ellis Cose: That is a very good question. I live in New York and have seen up close how insane, in my opinion, competition can become to get into selective preschools. Many of them do attempt to promote ethnic and socio-economic diversity, to some extent, and I think that is good. I think the larger problem is that really good preschools are the preserve of a very tiny sliver of the population. That is unfair to everyone except the privileged. And I believe that is a huge problem.
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St. Paul, MN: In your study of AA, what examples can you give of situations where it truly benefited an individual, along with his/her institution?
Ellis Cose: A book, The Shape of the River, came out a few years ago written by a former president of Harvard University and also by a former head of the Carnegie Corporation documenting the experience of a large group of individuals with affirmative action at elite universities. They concluded that, uniformly, the students had done much better in life than those who had not received such an advantage. They also argued that the universities had benefited from their presence.
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Las Vegas, NV: Is there any kind of proof that AA results in positives to society as a whole?
Ellis Cose: I'm not sure what standard of proof would be acceptable; but there are clearly many people of all political persuasions and ethnicities who believe that affirmative action has made the United States a better place. In Brazil, the country is not experimenting with affirmative action because the president there concluded that people who essentially had been excluded from the university system needed to be integrated into middle-class society. In India, many Dalits and their advocate argue that affirmative action has made a positive difference--at least in the lives of some people and therefore in society. Because affirmative action embraces such a range of approaches and has yielded such a range of results, opinions differ on just how much of a contribution it has made.
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Houston, TX: Is affirmative action only about setting aside more school slots for minorities with lower test
scores?
Ellis Cose: Not really. Affirmative action these days is not really about setting aside slots at all, since the Supreme Court has pretty much prohibited that. It is about trying to look at a wider range of measures than test scores and GPAs, partly because people of color tend to go the schools where it is more difficult to take, say, college placement courses, which often give you additional GPA points. But it is also recognition of the fact that being a good student and a productive citizen depends on much more than a single test score.
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Miami, FL: How does Affirmative Action work?
Ellis Cose: As I noted previously, affirmative action works in a variety or ways; but what it generally does, in one way or another, is to take certain race, ethnicity and or gender into account to the extent those attributed are deemed relevant by a particular institution.
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Portland, OR: It seems like the affirmative action debate, in recent years, has somewhat died down. Why do you think this is? In my opinion it's just as important an issue as ever.
Ellis Cose: I think the debate has died down for a variety of reasons, including the fact that a series of court decisions have restricted the reach of affirmative action programs. As a result is not something that as many people feel directly affects them.
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Miami, FL: Can you outline what specific elements would go into a successful affirmative action program?
Ellis Cose: I think a successful affirmative action program is one that selects people who can contribute something worthwhile to an institution and who also can benefit from being there. The specific elements of that obviously would vary depending on the type of institution we are talking about.
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Ellis Cose: Thanks so much for participating in a very interesting conversation. I am logging out for now. Best regards. Ellis Cose.
Articles and Other Information:
"AFFIRMATIVE ACTION SLIPS BUT WILL FAIRNESS STAND?"
An op-ed, written by Ellis Cose, concerning the approval of The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.
"The Color of Change"
An article (PDF FORMATED) written by Ellis Cose, for Newsweek Magazine, with information taken from "Killing Affimative Action..." |
