Linda Chavez, an acclaimed political columnist and president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, spoke to a sparsely populated Memorial Union Theater Monday to express her distaste for affirmative-action policies at universities across the country.
Chavez said affirmative-action policies were first adopted under the impression that they would be temporary and compensatory. However, a program that was supposed to lend a helping hand has become a permanent crutch for minority groups, Chavez said.
She compared affirmative-action programs to a professional sports team facing discrimination by referees for years on end. Compensation for the team’s losses over the years due to bad referee judgments would be necessary, but continuing to compensate new team members who had not been affected by the referees would be unjustified, she said.
Chavez also said the worst message one can send to a student from a minority group is that he or she is not expected to do as well in school or on standardized tests as members of the majority.
Chavez referenced a study of the admissions processes of highly selective universities conducted by the Center for Equal Opportunity. She said affirmative-action policies often allow African American and Hispanic students a significant admissions advantage at the 57 universities involved in the study.
“It has to do with the quality of what we teach and what we expect,” Chavez said. “Programs that treat people differently by the color of their skin are doing harm.”
If universities eliminated affirmative-action programs altogether, Chavez opined, students not as academically suited for selective universities would fare better if denied admission. Graduation rates from the less challenging schools they would attend would increase for minority groups. Chavez added that a degree from any university is more appealing to employers than just two or three years attending a selective university.
Chavez discussed the June 2003 Supreme Court ruling that caused the University of Michigan to revise its admissions and affirmative-action policies. The court decided that race was taken too much into account in UM’s admission decisions and forced UM to prioritize academic admissions factors over students’ ethnicities.
“It was almost as if they believed race was just a minor plus factor, a kind of thumb on the scale,” Chavez said. “[But] the idea that race can be taken into account a little bit is akin to the idea that someone can be pregnant a little bit …you just are or you are not.”
Chavez also discussed making English the official language in the United States. Immersion is the best way to learn a second language, Chavez said, and hearing one’s native language spoken on a daily basis inhibits his or her ability to learn another language.
Proponents of affirmative-action policies believe the programs are necessary to counter the remnants of discrimination in the United States and allow minority students an equal chance to attend universities.
Critics of Chavez’s position say minorities in the United States have not had enough time to rebound from the damaging effects of discrimination. Data commonly support these viewpoints, associating low test-scores and poor academic performance with minority populations across the country.
Though Chavez’s conservative viewpoint has not necessarily been embraced by lecture audiences in the past, several University of Wisconsin students attending the lecture expressed little disapproval.
“I actually agreed with her on a lot more things than I thought I would,” said University of Wisconsin junior Tia Onsager.
