April 17, 2008
Affirmative Action Gets Hot-Potato Treatment in Democratic Debate
When the divisive issue of affirmative action in college admissions was raised in last night’s Democratic debate in Philadelphia, Barack Obama took it up and then ended up stuck with it as Hillary Rodham Clinton avoided speaking directly about the race-conscious admissions policies she has strongly supported in the past.
Interestingly, the ABC News moderator who raised the issue was George Stephanopoulos, who, in his former capacity as a top aide to President Bill Clinton, had played a key role in getting that administration to conduct the sweeping review of federal affirmative-action policy that led Mr. Clinton to take a “mend it, don’t end it” stand on the issue.
Turning to Mr. Obama, Mr. Stephanopolous recalled how the Illinois senator had said in May that affluent black people like his own daughters probably should be treated as advantaged in applying to college, while poor white students were deserving of affirmative action. He asked Mr. Obama how specifically he would “recommend changing affirmative action policies so that affluent African Americans are not given advantages, and poor, less affluent whites are?”
The question evokes one of the thorniest problems colleges face in dealing with the affirmative-action issue: Because achievement gaps exist between black and white children throughout the socioeconomic spectrum, even many wealthy black applicants have trouble getting into selective colleges without the help of race-conscious admissions policies, and such institutions have had trouble coming up with class-based alternatives that are as effective in promoting racial diversity.
Senator Obama repeated his previous assertion that colleges probably would be correct in not giving his daughters special consideration, and added that “if there’s a young white person who has been working hard, struggling, and has overcome great odds, that’s something that should be taken into account.” At the same time, he said, “race is still a factor in our society,” and remains something colleges should consider “in the context of looking at the whole situation of the young person.”
“So,” Mr. Obama said, “I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination, but I think that it can’t be a quota system and it can’t be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is black or white or Hispanic, male or female.”
“What we want to do,” he said, “is make sure that people who have been locked out of opportunity are going to be able to walk through those doors of opportunity in the future.”
Asked by Mr. Stephanopolous whether she supported the sort of approach advocated by Mr. Obama, Ms. Clinton said, “Here’s the way I’d prefer to think about it,” and then gave an answer that did not touch on the issue of race-conscious admissions policies. “We’ve got to have affirmative action generally to try to give more opportunities to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds — whoever they are,” she said. She then described such affirmative action as support for early childhood education and universal pre-kindergarten, scrapping the No Child Left Behind law as it is currently operating in favor of other approaches to improving elementary and secondary education, and various steps to make college more affordable, including the expansion of aid programs.
Ms. Clinton has not been as reticent to take up the issue in the past. In a question and answer session with The Chronicle last fall, she said she “will support strong and sensible affirmative action” — but not quotas — and said she was “distressed” by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions striking down the race-conscious student-assignment policies many public school systems use to promote integration.
When the Supreme Court last weighed in on the issue of race-conscious college admissions policies in 2003, in two cases involving the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ms. Clinton was one of a dozen Democratic senators who signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief urging the justices to leave Michigan’s race-conscious policies intact. The brief argued that “an ever-mounting body of empirical and social-science evidence” shows that individual students benefit from admissions policies that promote student diversity — an assertion challenged by many critics of race-conscious admissions policies, who contend that much of the research on their educational benefits is fuzzy, inconclusive, or methodologically flawed.
Peter Schmidt | Posted on Thursday April 17, 2008 | PermalinkComments
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“Merriam-Webster’s laxicographers, further disaffecting careful writers and speakers, assign the meaning reluctant to the definition of reticent. Reticent means disinclined to speak; taciturn; quiet. Reluctant means disinclined to do something; unwilling; loath. Because some people mistakenly use reticent to mean reluctant, dictionaries now maintain reticent does mean reluctant.” (From the Dictionary of Disagreeable English.) I hope the Chronicle will not in the future follow the misled flock and treat reticent and reluctant as synonyms.
— BKD Apr 17, 04:49 PM #
While I think this topic is worthy of discussion, both here and by the candidates, I don’t see what about it became a “hot potato.” I thought both candidates gave sensible answers. That Obama’s was somewhat deeper and more thoughtful is not surprising, for several reasons. And, I think he his position makes a lot of sense. People who are disadvantaged should be given some additional opportunities. People who are already advantaged, need not.
— Joe Erwin Apr 18, 08:13 AM #