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Don’t quell right to affirmative action
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The state of Wisconsin, which used to continually espouse a fundamental ideal of social progress, has begun to charter a new course that follows the lodestar of tradition and status quo. Worst of all is that the vessel of choice has become our state constitution.
On Monday, Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, said he plans to introduce legislation that would lead to a constitutional amendment banning affirmative action in the state. His proposal is similar to the Michigan ban that became law last year after 64 percent of voters agreed to ban the practice in university admissions and public hiring policies.
This is not the first time Mr. Grothman has stated his desire to have affirmative action banned in the state, but it is the first time he has proposed legislation that could lead to a constitutional amendment. And in light of the 2006 constitutional ban on gay marriages and civil unions, residents of this city — or at least students on this campus — should have sirens and red, flashing lights going off in their heads at the first mention of another constitutional amendment that does not have the word “Frankenstein” anywhere in it.
The constitution, state or federal, should never be used to entrench the status quo in the face of change.
Before any amendment ever comes to the Senate floor or to our ballots, legislators and citizens are obligated to consider a wide range of consequences when the stakes are so high. For this reason, and in light of Mr. Grothman’s proposal, we owe it to ourselves to assess the exceedingly important and relevant case in Michigan.
Yesterday, when discussing his proposal in relation to the Michigan ban, Mr. Grothman asked me “Do you think to yourself, Andy, when you’re talking to a girl you’re interested in, ‘Hmm, I wonder if she’s a quarter Cuban?’ No, you don’t. You treat everyone the same, and that’s how it should be in the lawbooks, too.”
Well, I’m actually not so sure about that Mr. Grothman, and neither are many attorneys and civil rights groups across the country. Let us consider the claims of the ACLU and NAACP attorneys representing plaintiffs in a lawsuit aimed at challenging the federal constitutionality of the recently passed ban in Michigan.
The fundamental claim made by the attorneys opposing the Michigan ban, specifically ACLU attorney Marc Rosenbaum, is that by denying admissions offices the ability to take into account factors of race and ethnicity when making admissions decisions, the ban is violating the equal protections clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The equal protections clause reads as follows: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall… deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
More specifically, Mr. Rosenbaum’s primary argument is that by singling out race and gender as factors no longer permissible to be taken into account, an oppressive race-based classification has been made, which appropriately gives rise to an equal protections-violation claim.
The claim asks, why should an applicant be given special consideration for his or her ability to play tuba, to play volleyball or because he or she comes from a remote area of the state, yet not have special consideration be given to factors of identity as fundamental as race or gender?
To quote NAACP Detroit Branch general counsel Butch Hollowell, “What [the ban] does is it acts like a giant pair of scissors, and it says ‘we’re going to make you cut away a piece of your identity.’”
The ban on affirmative action is being argued against on the grounds that removing race from the realm of permissible criteria is itself a race-based classification, which would mean it has grounds to be argued under the equal protections clause.
And this may be true, but here’s why the claim won’t stick in either Federal Court in Michigan or the U.S. Supreme Court: The 14th Amendment permits affirmative action, but nowhere does it, or any credible court decision, say that it is required. Therefore, the voters in Michigan had every right to ban it.
We must also consider the highly publicized 2003 Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger that upheld the right of admissions offices to use race as a factor when assessing students if they so choose, as long as race, and other extracurricular factors, are not assessed in a quantifiable point system.
In the court’s ruling, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s majority opinion held that the U.S. Constitution “does not prohibit the law school’s narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”
Yet the Michigan state Legislature and the people of Michigan decided this shouldn’t be, and the affirmative action ban in question was passed.
However, this should not be a deciding factor in assessing Mr. Grothman’s proposal. The fact that it is constitutional does not necessarily make it good policy. What the likely pending ruling neglects is that it will leave open the possibility for ensuing lawsuits to force jurisprudence that would drastically change, and severely limit, the factors a state university could take into consideration when assessing applicants.
Imagine there is a white, male student who has a good GPA and good test scores, but has never engaged in any extracurricular activities and decided not to do the optional personal essay portion of his application. If he were denied admission while another student with an equal or lower GPA or test scores was admitted because of the deciding factor of his noteworthy extracurriculars (say he was city council president in his hometown, for example), the denied student would have grounds for litigation.
If the entirety of an individual is not allowed assessment in the admissions process — in this case the qualities of race and gender because of a state ban on affirmative action — then the equal protections clause will have no grounds to protect any other curricula for consideration outside of academic merit. The end result will be an admissions process for public universities comprised of entering your GPA and your test scores into an equation that will immediately determine your admission status.
If Wisconsin voters did not have the foresight to see the consequences of a ban on gay marriage, one can only hope they would have the foresight to see what a ban on affirmative action could result in.
So when I came to Mr. Grothman yesterday consumed with questions about the reach of the equal protections clause, the consideration of substantive equal protection and the fate of public university admissions as we know them — all hinging on the possibility of his proposal actually becoming part of our state constitution — I expected nothing less than a reflective and thoughtful rationale. What I got was anything but.
“Proponents of affirmative action just want to justify their existence. It’s absurd,” Grothman told me. “Just a bunch of affirmative action bureaucrats looking for a job, advancing their racist agenda.”
Now I am not making an argument for or against affirmative action — what I am doing is making an argument against the growing trend of impulsiveness in our lawmakers’ decisions to codify and moralize a social posture without taking into account the likely consequences.
The U.S. Constitution and the Wisconsin Constitution will never be amended to require affirmative action policies in government hiring or university admissions. Yet a ban on these practices would inhibit the basic First Amendment interest of a university to decide the makeup of its incoming classes and how best to educate its students, as upheld in Grutter.
And certainly, there is almost no chance of Mr. Grothman’s proposal passing through the Democratic-controlled state Senate. But at the same time, there is almost no chance of Mr. Grothman being unseated from his position in the Senate in the next 20-25 years either.
As Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arizona and Nebraska vote on bans of affirmative action this November, let us not forget that eventually, the political winds in Wisconsin will change. When they do, we owe it to ourselves to be ready.
Andy Granias (agranias@badgerherald.com) is a junior majoring in political science and philosophy.
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Affirmative action is institutionalized racism, plain and simple.
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All this is called pretend egalitarianism, which is where people out of one side of their mouth promote equality, (there’s only one race, the human race), while out of the other side they promote discrimination when in their individual interests or their group interests.
A good case in point is the pretend egalitarian Martin Luther King.
King supported the quota system, the systematic and massive discrimination against whites. He supported black leaders and black organizations, all of whom promote racial discrimination when in their ethnic interests.
He was a “friend” of the apartheid state of Israel.
How are white Gentiles so easily conned?
Media conditioning: white Gentiles who discriminate are people who throw Jews into gas chambers or lynch black people because they “are different,” while nonwhites and Jews are just doing what any normal race is expected to do: discriminate when in their ethnic interests.
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It was not a bad piece until you made the whacked out statement that the UW is protected by the first when it comes to deciding the make up of the student body. That is about the dumbest thing I have ever heard, even from a student who doesn’t know any better. Any suggestion that the UW, a state funded institution discriminates in ANY way other than in an academic qualification sense is nuts. One could argue (quite well) that the UW is in violation of various articles if admission is based on anything physical and not academic.
Affirmative Action is bad policy with good intent… that does not make it right.
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Yesterday, when discussing his proposal in relation to the Michigan ban, Mr. Grothman asked me “Do you think to yourself, Andy, when you’re talking to a girl you’re interested in, ‘Hmm, I wonder if she’s a quarter Cuban?’
I can’t decide which is funnier. Grothman thinking that the world is color-blind or Andy talking to a girl.
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Well reasoned and well thought out. I’m glad you didn’t make the same mistake the Cardinal did and bash the idea of affirmative action for nothing but brain-dead liberal justifications. Your legal prowess on this matter and call for the right of institutions to make their own policies was refreshing.
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affirmative action = denying the equal protection of the laws based soley on race
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7:06am can you possibly even try to make a statement without resorting to anti-Semitism? Screw the Palestinians. Israel doesn’t want them, the Arab world doesn’t them and WE don’t want them! If you want Israeli Jews and Palestinians to live together peacefully, then you have to first get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel is tired of trusting them only to be stabbed in the back.
As for affirmative action, yes, it should be eliminated altogether. It is nothing more than discrimination against the majority for the sake of the underqualified.
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“right to affirmative action”
???? WTF you get that ???
There’s no such “right”, at least not in the US Constitution.
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To 7:06AM: What the hell does Israel have to do with affirmative action? Are you some disenfranchised radical Islamist that just can’t shut up or something?
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waah whites in this country are so oppressed. As a white middle-class male myself, I find it difficult to live day by day in a society so turned against us. Maybe affirmative action is racist, but it’s a well-intentioned attempt to correct hundreds of years of racism which is now institutionalized into every other part of society.
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Most of you are making me laugh. In the here an now, yes, maybe affirmative action is discriminatory. The claim, however, that anything near equal treatment will happen without it is ludicrous. In the present, maybe affirmative action has served to hurt the hiring of qualified whites. Has the past not denied qualified people of color? Now the argument comes: “But I had nothing to do with what my ancestors did.” Very true, but can you honestly say that you are not a beneficiary of the system that is in place because of the past? Grow your privileged, entitled asses up and you may actually survive outside of college.
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“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” M. L. King
Affirmative action grants preference based on ethnicity - “the color of their skin”. Like segregation, Jim Crow laws, and riding the back of the bus, it is just as surely racism.
I couldn’t agree with you more Dr. King - It’s got to go! If Rosa Parks wouldn’t abide it any longer, why should anyone else? A constitutional amendment will guarantee that it is commited to the towering ash heaps of failed progressive politics.
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Affirmative Action does little more than promote racism.
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Why is it everytime Affirmative Action gets brought up, race gets involved? I think talking about Affirmative Action is racist.
Perhaps we should PC this discussion by calling it Affirmative Action-Americans.
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“Has the past not denied qualified people of color?”
So the present should give special advantages to unqualified people of color?
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I find it interesting that Andy believes race and gender to be as important as extra-curricular activities in the admissions process, and that if we got rid of Affirmative Action quotas, we’d also have to start basing admissions solely on academics. Here’s where he’s wrong: you are born with your race and gender. Extra-curriculars are a result of determination, involvement, and ability, all of which should be valued above race in the college admissions process.
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To 3:39,
Certainly race and gender you are born with, but that is not the job of the university to determine. The university is to judge an individual for what he or she has, not how they got there.
Would they ask a student how many hours he studied for his SAT if he had good scores?
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I’m 3:39, it doesn’t matter how many hours they studied for their SAT, all that matters is the score they got. SAT scores are part of their academic credentials, which are one of the things admissions should take into account. Race and gender are not.
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Except you’re SAT scores and extracurriculars reflect what you’ll bring to the university as a student. Your race and gender only allow you to bring the ability to reflect different wavelengths of light and a penis or lack thereof. Not exactly important contributions to the university.
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Facts are Facts. Affirmative Action in its current incarnation is flawed. However, the goals of Affirmative Action are not.
Under qualified people never get a “seat” in a university over qualified people. The fact is, and history bears this out, that the education system in the United States is setup to create a permanent underclass.
This underclass is disproportionably made of people of color because the ruling racist and sexist class of people created a system of discrimination that created a legacy of poverty.
Admissions standards were not even introduced into University Admissions until after Brown vs. Board of Ed. This is because the racist and sexist ruling class recognized that if the schools were actually equal then people of color and women would then have access to education, and therefore wealth, and ostensibly, power.
Admission standards were put into place, and each time even one person of color met that standard, the standard changed. Or other types of affirmative action were introduced, like legacy admission consideration (that is the practice of admitting a student based on a parent previous attending the institution).
The most interesting thing about this entire debate about Affirmative Action is the idea that college admissions were ever solely based on test scores and that test scores themselves are the sole standard. Anyone admitted to a top university 25 years ago had a top standardized test score lower than anyone admitted today.
The irony of all of this is the young white men and women that are against Affirmative Action. Facts demonstrate that Affirmative Action benefited white women the most. White women experienced the greatest educational and economic gains under any affirmative action program. Therefore white families benefited. Most of these white women eventually married and raised children. Everyone knows that parents with bachelor’s degrees create high test scoring children.
Were it not for Affirmative Action white young men and women would not enjoy the privilege they take for granted. Indeed were it not for Affirmative Action many white families would not enjoy their current standard of living
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What is it that White Americans are afraid of when the topic of Affirmative Action is brought up? That they won’t continue to make up 97% of the Board of Directors of the largest US corporations? That they will not have the highest per capita income of any one in the country? That their business transactions (good ‘ol boy network) would be infringed upon? Are they so concerned that their lower income brethren would have to compete with a person of color for a job, contract award, or admission to higher education? Affirmative Action is trying to right a wrong and provide more parity to the aforementioned items. Face it…White America still controls this control, White America only gives out to have what they don’t want , or don’t need anymore. Affirmative Action is only trying to get the crumbs that are left on the table.
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Maybe ‘White America’ is afraid of allowing a system in which people are successful based on the merits of their work rather than some accident of their birth to be undermined.
By the way, the term ‘White America’ is racist when you use it that way. It’s implying a negative thing about a group of people based solely upon their race.
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What, like the merit you received and benefited from based on years of slavery?