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What Should Obama Do on Affirmative Action?

November 21, 2011, 5:53 pm

President Obama, facing high unemployment and a sluggish economy, may soon encounter a new obstacle in his quest for re-election: the re-emergence of affirmative action in higher education as a political issue. The odds seem increasingly likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up a suit against the University of Texas at Austin, re-introducing the issue of racial preferences that has been largely dormant since the 2003 Supreme Court Grutter decision affirming the use of race in admissions.

The tricky politics of affirmative action for Obama is an important feature of two new books, Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama’s America by Desmond S. King of Oxford and Rogers M. Smith of the University of Pennsylvania (a volume I reviewed this week in The New Republic); and The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency, a trenchant analysis by Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy.

Obama has thus far been able to dodge affirmative action in part because he’s been fortunate that his opponents have not exploited the issue. As Kennedy writes: “For reasons that are unclear, John McCain refused to pull out all of the racial stops at his disposal in his fight with Obama…McCain could have done more to create a problem for Obama by calling attention to their differences over the volatile issue of racial affirmative action,” but McCain “never seriously broached the matter; remarkably, in three nationally televised presidential debates, the issue of affirmative action never surfaced.”

Obama has sent mixed signals on the issue, giving both supporters and opponents reasons to be hopeful. He has, says Kennedy, been “studiously ambiguous,” on affirmative action, giving “fragmentary and elusive” remarks. In a little noticed move, the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief in the lower courts supporting racial affirmative-action policies at the University of Texas; and yet most of Obama’s rhetoric has been color blind, emphasizing his unwillingness to support race-specific programs for blacks, favoring instead class-based policies that will disproportionately benefit people of color. In 2009, for example, he rejected calls for a race-specific program to address black unemployment, saying “I think it is a mistake to start thinking in terms of particular ethnic segments of the United States rather than to think that we are all in this together and we are all going to get out of this together.”

For Obama, the University of Texas case poses enormous dangers. On the one hand, Obama faces a lingering skepticism among some white voters. As King and Smith note, one poll found that more than half of Americans worried that Obama would favor African Americans. And only 32 percent of those who said Obama would favor blacks supported him, while 80 percent of those who said Obama would not favor blacks gave him support.

Of course, Obama could make a strong argument that all students–including whites– benefit when universities are racially diverse, but it’s not clear that this is how Americans will view the issue. In 2009, when the president legitimately criticized a white police sergeant, James Crowley, for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his own home, Obama dropped seven points among whites in a Pew poll. The even starker issue of whether universities should consciously prefer applicants of one race over another is always a difficult political sell; in tough economic times, when Americans feel less generous, the case is all the more difficult.

At the same time, there are large dangers for Obama in opposing affirmative action outright, as Kennedy suggests. While African Americans are as a group the most avid supporters of the president—Kennedy claims Obama is for most black Americans “the most admired person in the cannon of black celebrity and accomplishment,” surpassing even Martin Luther King Jr.—there may be limits to their support. Kennedy believes that affirmative action is a “litmus test” issue for many blacks and that moving away from racial affirmative action would be seen “as betrayal.”

If the Supreme Court takes the Texas case, what should Obama do? On both the merits and the politics, one can make a strong case that the president needs to get ahead of the curve, seize the populist moment in American politics, and come out for a policy of affirmative action that benefits economically disadvantaged students of all races.

Such a move, Kennedy rightly suggests, would engender an outcry from middle and upper-middle class African Americans who now benefit disproportionately from racial preference in college admissions. But in response, Obama could make clear to his most loyal supporters that his hand is being forced. The Roberts court is likely to curtail racial preferences no matter what Obama does, so why not avoid the political hit associated with a full-throated defense of racial preferences and instead begin to make the case for a new kind of affirmative action that can be shaped so as to continue to promote both economic and racial justice?

In response to questions about whether his own daughters deserve affirmative action, Obama has already said that as privileged Americans, they do not; and that poor whites do deserve a leg up. Obama could use the Supreme Court case as an opportunity to lay out precisely the kind of new affirmative-action program he endorses.

Americans would likely support Obama on this shift; polls find that while they oppose racial preferences by 2:1 they support income-based preferences by the same margin. Moreover, the president could further burnish his populist credentials by going on the attack against legacy preferences in college admissions, which 75 percent of Americans oppose. Why, he might ask, is there so much focus on racial preferences and nothing being done about affirmative action for the rich?

If Obama instead comes out in full support of racial preferences, which disproportionately benefit more advantaged students of color, and says nothing about legacy preferences for the wealthy, he will be placed on the political defensive, and will likely lose in the Supreme Court anyway. If the High Court agrees to hear the Texas case, Obama will have to move beyond his strategy of avoidance. He should seize the opportunity to strike a blow for low-income and working-class students of all races.

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whitakal

Racial preferences cannot stand the light of day. They require shadows and secrecy to survive. In the face of a likely housecleaning by the Roberts Court, Kahlenberg recommends that the President throw a new blanket of obscurity over the unseemly practice: promote economic preferences that can then be “shaped” to achieve racial ends. I hope that the President ignores such false counsel and continues to take the high road with race. It has the additional advantages of being popular and right.

Keith Whitaker, http://www.wisecounselresearch.org
whadams11

In respect to the article, Mr. Kahlenberg had made this a racial issue between blacks and whites proclaiming the only African Americans gained from this act passed by LBJ. Kahlenberg is not telling the entire story of who has and know benefitting. For example, women have benefited more from affirmative action than any other group. Moreover, Hispanics have surpassed African Americans as the largest minority enrolled into United States colleges and universites. For him to make this a race issue between black and whites is being disingenuous. I hope in a future article he will point out other bodies that have gained success because of affirmative action.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TFMERYKH3SRYNKNMA25FJJAZVU Tj Punk

There are more woman than men admitted into colleges and universities, woman does not need affirmative action. To have the same chances of gaining admission as a black student with an SAT score of 1100, an Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have a 1230, a white student a 1410, and an Asian student a 1550
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001409960504 Joe Smith

Switching to socioeconomic-based affirmative action will do nothing to ensure that blacks make up a sizable portion of student bodies at elite schools. This is because income has little to do with the racial achievement gap. (Poor black students, for instance, score far lower on achievement tests than poor whites and Asians — even rich blacks score lower than poor whites and Asians.)

No matter how you look at it, blacks don’t deserve an admissions boost when they apply to Harvard and Yale. They appear to be either innately less intelligent or preternaturally unmotivated — or both. Give spots at elite schools to elite students, regardless of race and background.
humura

There is an unreality about this article. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was meant for hiring, promotion, admission to university, etc. all based on merit. Sen. Hubert Humphrey declared in the debate prior to passage that hiring to fill quotas or to achieve a racial balance would be illegal under CR law. However, personnel is policy, and soon the EEOC required preferences and racial preferences and quotas (using euphemisms like goal and timetables). Liberals became so brazen that Mary F. Berry, then on the CR Commission, announced that the CR laws did not apply to whites. So much for equal opportunity for all.
Now Obama’s Dept. of Justice does not believe that the Voting Rights Act applies to white people. Whistleblower J. Christian Adams exposes the ideology that now pervades the Obama-Holder Justice Dept. in his new book, INJUSTICE. Even under Bush, some Leftist DoJers opposed taking to court a Black Democrat in Mississippi who violated the Voting Rights Act with various types of fraud. And the same crowd became more determined with Obama’s victory in 2008. They demanded the DoJ lose the case against the New Black Panther Party and one of its operatives who flagrantly sought to intimidate voters in Philadelphia with their Party uniforms, the batons, and threats. Most charges were dropped because Obama’s crew was not interested in defending the right to vote of white people. Just as the CR law of equal opportunity became the race preference law, now the Voting Rights law will be the “right of minorities to vote” law and not apply if whites are intimidated.
How does Kahlenberg expect Obama to abandon race preferences in university admission? Remember, Obama has marched with leaders of the New Black Panther Party – some of whom call for the killing of the white race. Obama’s campaign rhetoric may have been race neutral, but his appointments and his policies have been consistently anti-white. And any kind of affirmative action, enforced by the present crew in place, would continue to be just as anti-white as it is now.——Hugh Murray
supersense

Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.

The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.

Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.

What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?

How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?

And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?

But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.

Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
11246

Once again, Mr. Kahlenberg is transfixed on the subject of equal opportunity programs for
racial minorities. He risks being labeled a “Johnny One-Note” as he
takes any opportunity to argue that race-based affirmative action is somehow
problematic and should be replaced by class-based affirmative action. He never
accepts the fact that the two are not mutually-exclusive; that there is no zero
sum game afoot, and that colleges and universities can and have assisted both
groups to gain access to the Academy. The University of Michigan’s
undergraduate school used both socio-economic status and race among other
factors that benefited white students (including living in the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan) as criteria for admission. Kahlenberg reflects a “Thus far
and no farther” mentality (to quote the Bible and the late Professor Derrick Bell) that is the stuff of psychology; that the few years post-Bakke are at an end and there should be no more efforts to assist a group that suffered slavery, Jim Crow and segregation, and the effects thereof.

Why the obsession with efforts to promote access to minority students who have
more of a legal claim to equal opportunity programs than others, and why the
specious use of President Obama’s children, who reflect, as an income group, a
tiny minority of African Americans in the USA?

Ironically, from a gender standpoint, there are more colleges and universities in which
women are the majority, and colleges are using a quiet form of affirmative
action to “balance” the genders in their student classes. If affirmative action
is ended, it is white men who may suffer the most. It is also interesting that
the Gratz v. Bollinger, Grutter and Fisher plaintiffs are all
white females, while they constitute the majority at an increasing number of
colleges and universities. Indeed, white women have been the primary
beneficiaries of affirmative action in education and employment.

I suggest that Mr. Kahlenberg find another issue for his considerable talents as a
writer, lest he be viewed ultimately as another misguided tool of the right
wing.

Shirley J. Wilcher
Executive Director
American Association for
Affirmative Action
http://www.affirmativeaction.og
pianiste

All the good and noble causes Ms. Wilcher can piously cite–that AA happens to benefit some non-minority poor students, that women have benefitted from it, that even white men might benefit from it, that Jim Crow is not absolutely dead anywhere and everywhere in this country, etc.–do not, and cannot, obviate that fact that racial preferences (i.e., a student’s minority race) are patently unconstitutional.

Proponents of AA (including those on some courts) twist themselves into pretzels of expedient and tendentious reasoning to justify giving college admission applicants of certain races preferences (extra points, so to speak) based solely on their races.

College admissions are a zero-sum procedure. Colleges don’t expand their freshman classes to accommodate AA minorities; they just cut back on the number of whites and Asians–yes Asians, a minority.
11246

Assuming you are correct that college admissions is a zero-sum game (although college classes have expanded and retracted according to the needs of the institution), please remember that for more than four hundred years (Harvard’s founding in 1636), private and later public colleges did use a form of racial and gender preferences — for whites, especially males. It is they who have benefited from race-consciousness and took the seats of others who might have been qualified and admitted but were never given an opportunity to compete. Women were only admitted to the Ivy League in the 1960s and 70s. So, attempts to use diversity as one of many criteria simply balance the scales and neutralize the preferences that some have enjoyed for centuries.

Skin color is never the issue alone: it is culture, an experience of overcoming barriers in spite of the disadvantages imposed by race and legal/practiced discrimination that causes economic and educational disadvantage. The Academy has never used a pure meritocracy. Meritocracy is in the eyes of the beholder: the one who manages to get admitted.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Soren-Kay/100001270456452 Soren Kay

“Why the obsession with efforts to promote access to minority students who have
more of a legal claim to equal opportunity programs than others”

Why should we not be obsessed with this? Why should the poor children of illegal immigrant Mexicans get a better shot than the poor children of whites? It’s absolutely absurd, and it happens a lot… like at the University of Texas at Austin. I ran the calculation a few months ago and IIRC U of T is displacing 400 whites and asians for Hispanics with their affirmative action policy.

“why the specious use of President Obama’s children, who reflect, as an income group, a
tiny minority of African Americans in the USA?”

Why was Obama, who attended elite private schools in Hawaii and who was more likely the descendent of slave owners and not slaves, able to benefit from affirmative action? Why did Obama work to take away the vouchers that allowed poor blacks to attend the same school his children went to?
botti

***He should seize the opportunity to strike a blow for low-income and working-class students of all races.***

No, this still punishes people for group membership rather than treating them as individuals. Affirmative action is unjust and should be completely abolished.
pianiste

1. The sins of the past don’t justify mirror-image sins in the present. Harvard’s discrimination against minorities in the past don’t justify instituting preferences for minorities in the present.

2. “Skin color is never the issue alone.” No, but it is a discrete issue, i.e., applicants are given a boost toward admission on the basis of skin color. In close calls, it’s a tie-breaker, which is not right.

3. In a given year’s freshman class, college admissions are a zero-sum game. No college expands that year’s freshman class to admit more minorities; with AA, they cut back on the number of white and Asians (that nettlesome minority), in order to accommodate other minorities.

4. No, admission to college is not a perfect meritocracy, or even a particular strict one. But colleges should try to make it so. To do otherwise, to say in effect, “Well our admissions procedure can never be a strict meritocracy, so why don’t we admit whomever we want on whatever grounds we feel like.”

The proponents of AA always end up saying: Lots of other people practiced discrimination so we can do it, too; we try to hide racial preference by saying it’s just one small consideration among many; look, and no admissions system is perfect, so why not have racial preferences. These are not very good ethical arguments.
maxsnafu

“…the president needs to…come out for a policy of affirmative action that benefits economically disadvantaged students of all races.” More government mandated discrimination? You’re wedded to the notion that somebody’s gotta get screwed.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BSKKXHJN5ZUKQWBKXLFQJCGDOY Mike

Who the hell are you , Shirley, to determine who gets in and who doesn’t ? Who died and left you and other left-wing black racists the boss ?

You people need a good swift boot up your uppity asses, just like Jesse Helms adminsitred to the pro-Quota, pro-negative action Harvey Gant.

This right-wing American is not going to be discriminated against because left-wing blacks blew up the black family and turned formerly prosperous neighborhoods into ghetto swamps.

You voted for Charlie Rangel, John Conyers, and Maxine Waters — deal with it. I ‘aint paying for your liberal failures.