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MMyytthhbbuusstteerrssBecause what most people know about

affirmative action isn’t right, and what’s rightabout affirmative action most people don’t know.

Founded in 1996 as a media-monitoring think-tank and in-formation clearinghouse, the African American PolicyForum works to bridge the gap between scholarly researchand public discourse related to inequality, discriminationand injustice. The AAPF seeks to build bridges between ac-ademic, activist and policy-making sectors in order to ad-vance a more inclusive and robust public discourse on thechallenge of achieving equity within and across diversecommunities.

The Policy Forum is dedicated to advancing and expandingracial justice, gender equality, and the indivisibility of allhuman rights, both in the U.S. and internationally.

www.aapf.org

Produced by the Affirmative Action Research & Policy Consortium. A projectof the African American Policy Forum.

www.aapf.org

Affirmative Action is facing one of its most critical challenges indecades. Although many proponents thought that the latestwave of assaults had been put to rest by the Supreme Court's2003 decision in the Grutter case upholding the University ofMichigan Law School's race-based admissions diversity pro-gram, critics have been undertaking a relentless and largely suc-cessful on the ground assault against these policies ever since.Their boldest challenge is the pending amendment to the Michi-gan State Constitution which seeks to eliminate all affirmativeaction programs in the state, including admissions programs,outreach and training programs, after school programs, andother equal opportunity measures. This pamphlet seeks to setthe record straight. It offers not only the facts about affirmativeaction but also compelling evidence as to why these programsremain central to the quest to promote equal opportunity in theUnited States.

Illustration: Mike McKeogh

The (Un)Equal Opportunity Race

Here in the United States, access to the American Dream isoften framed as a fair race in which the swiftest runners win.On November 7th, Michigan voters have to decide whether af-firmative action programs should play any part in this com-petition. Critics say we should eliminate affirmative actionbecause it gives some runners an unfair head start in an oth-erwise fair race. At the same time, many supporters of affir-mative action say it is essential because some competitorsare disabled and need a head start in order to compete in therace. But what if both of these perspectives miss the pointabout affirmative action?

Although much of the debate is framed in these stark terms,many Michiganders rightly wonder whether there isn't a bet-ter way of thinking about affirmative action. There is. Whatif we begin with the observation that the lanes on the trackused by the runners are fundamentally unequal -- that somelanes are unobstructed while others are virtually impassa-ble? From this perspective, we can see that policies that pro-mote inclusion, like affirmative action are designed toequalize the conditions of a previously unfair race.

The beneficiaries of affirmative action are stigmatized for thevery same reasons that these policies exist in the first place:persistent and sometimes unconscious beliefs that womenand people of color are simply less talented, hardworking andcompetent than their white male counterparts. In this re-gard, affirmative action beneficiaries are easy to stigmatizebecause our culture is already loaded with negative stereo-types about the abilities of women and people of color. Infact, even though affirmative action has been eliminated inCalifornia, students of color there report that they remainisolated and stereotyped, stigmatized not for being affirma-tive action beneficiaries but for being associated with groupswho are viewed as out of place in academic institutions. Ban-ning affirmative action will not end the stigma faced bywomen and people of color. But, promoting affirmative actionwill help us create a society in which the stereotypes and neg-ative beliefs about minorities and women will no longer suffo-cate the aspirations of generations of qualified and capablepeople from marginalized groups in American society.

MYTH: Affirmative action stigma-tizes its beneficiaries.

FACT: The stigma facing women and people of color hasnothing to do with affirmative action and everything to dowith the perpetuation of the same gender and racial

stereotypes that have always been used to excludesuch groups from educational and employ-

ment opportunities.

Contrary to popular belief, Blacks are not the only, or eventhe primary beneficiaries of affirmative action. According tothe United States Labor Department, the primary beneficiar-ies of affirmative action are white women. The Departmentof Labor estimated that 6 million women and 5 million minor-ity workers are in higher occupational classifications todaythan they would have been without the affirmative actionpolicies of the 1960’s and 1970’s. In Michigan, a broad rangeof minority groups have benefited from these policies:

All these groups are threatened by Proposition 2, which willban affirmative action in Michigan. In California, Latinos andBlacks have both been hit hard by the elimination of affirma-tive action in 1996. Both Black and Latino enrollment plum-meted at the two best schools in the University of Californiasystem after the passing of California's Proposition 209, ananti-affirmative action measure.

We all know that there are numerous obstacles that litter thetracks of disadvantaged runners: people of color find theirpath blocked by racial discrimination; poverty leads to bro-ken lanes filled with potholes and other dangers; women findtheir lanes filled with impenetrable glass ceilings; and urbanyouth are derailed by the school to prison pipeline. Mean-while, those runners who aren't kept back by race, class orgender discrimination are privileged to run a race whereintheir ability to compete is not impeded by arbitrary barriers.Some runners are even luckier still. They are benefited by ahost of privileges such as family connections, wealth and anarray of other factors that deliver them to the finish lineahead of all the other runners without breaking a sweat.

In defending affirmative action, a much more accurate anddefensible view begins with the recognition that the problemsthat affirmative action addresses are not with damaged run-ners, but with damaged tracks which have lanes that favorsome runners over others. In this light, affirmative action isnothing more than a set of programs developed to remove thenumerous impediments that litter the lanes of those who aredisadvantaged for reasons associated with their racial, gen-der and class backgrounds. This pamphlet will explore arange of the myths that obscure these social conditions.

Although we wish it were otherwise, race and gender stillmatter – both in Michigan and throughout the United States.Michigan ranks among the country’s most segregated states.

• Arab American students receive scholarshipsand admissions consideration at academic institutions.

• Asian-American businesses benefit from "Section 8",which encourages contractors to work with minority-owned businesses.

• Latinas and Latinos benefit from ESL programs andincreased college admission.

• Due to national recruiting and outreach efforts be-tween 1980-2001, which included numerous Michiganacademic institutions, American Indian enrollment ininstitutions of higher education increased by 80 per-cent.

MYTH: Affirmative action is no longerneeded in America; equal opportunity prevails in

America.

FACT: Affirmative action remains vital as a tool to off-set the continuing discriminatory obstacles

faced by women and people of color.

MYTH: Affirmative action only benefits Blacks.

FACT: Affirmative action benefits a broad range of com-munities that continue to face discrimination in this

country, including women, Native Americans, ArabAmericans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and

African Americans.

This pervasive racial segregation is a major factor in the loweducational attainment and high poverty rates within Detroitand other Michigan cities. Not surprisingly, the median in-come for white families in the state is $56,320; for Hispanicfamilies, it is $41,252; and for African American families it isonly $35,536.

Similarly, women, in general, make less money than theirmale counterparts. Nationally, women earn just 76 cents forevery dollar that men earn. And, in Michigan, they earn just67 cents on the dollar. Women of color must face both racialand gender segregation, usually resulting in less opportunityand greater obstacles. For example, African Americanwomen earn only 63 cents per hour for every dollar a whiteman earns (for similar employment) and 66 cents for everydollar earned by white women. Latinas earn only 52 cents toevery dollar earned by their white female counterparts. Col-lege-educated African-American women earn only $800more every year than white men with only a high school de-gree, and $17,727 less than college-educated white men.

While we would alllove to believe thatas a society we havemoved beyond thelegacy of segregationwhich necessitatedthe creation of affir-mative action, wecannot ignore the ev-idence of persistentdiscrimination andstructural inequali-ties in American life.

America still has a long way to go before all the vestiges of racialdiscrimination are eliminated. Despite what colorblind advocatesmay wish to be the case, race still creates a host of economic andsocial burdens shared by people of color across all classes. Theseburdens reflect the extra costs associated with being nonwhiteand are often referred to as the "Black Tax" or the "Brown Tax."These burdens may differ from community to community, how-ever all people of color--even the most privileged--face varying de-grees of racial discrimination in housing, schools, the workplace,and almost everywhere else in the United States. Class of courseremains a significant barrier for many Americans of all races, yetcritics who would suggest that, for instance, poor whites and non-whites face exactly the same problems are minimizing the racialdifferences that characterize their experiences of poverty.

Banning race based affirmative action will not advance equal-ity nor will it lead to a renewed commitment to address the in-terests of poor and working class people of color.

Instead, it will simply eliminate one of the most importanttools designed to address the racial burdens that limit the op-portunities of people of color.

MYTH: Affirmative action should beabout class, not race.

FACT: While class remains an extraordinarily signifi-cant factor in the lives of many Americans, the fact is that

racial bias effects minorities of all backgrounds and can-not be addressed solely through social programs

which focus only on class issues.

Affirmative action programs take many forms -- includingoutreach, recruitment efforts and the use of non-traditionalcriteria for hiring and admissions. But despite the manyforms that affirmative action may take, such programs donot require or permit the use of quotas. Instead they are tai-lored to fit specific instances where race and gender must betaken into account to promote fair and equal access to mi-norities and women.. For example, public contracting isoften done through an “old-boys network” that leaves almostall businesses owned by women and minorities out of the picture.

To address this problem, many affirmative action policies re-quire more established businesses and prime contractors tonotify women and minority-owned businesses about potentialcontracts so that they can have the opportunity to place bidsin the competition to determine who will get these contracts.In this way, affirmative action creates a more open and gen-uinely egalitarian process. Yet despite the fact that suchbasic notification programs violate none of the prohibitionsagainst quotas, programs like them have been rendered un-constitutional in states that have passed anti-affirmative ac-tion initiatives. Moreover, the mischaracterization ofaffirmative action, in general, as quotas has resulted in a banor at least a challenge to hundreds of programs, includingafter-school and mentorship programs, training and appren-ticeship opportunities, targeted outreach programs, and evengender-targeted health care screening programs.

Affirmative action serves to offset continuing forms of dis-crimination . Although Americans often think of our societyas a meritocracy (that is a system in which one's status is de-termined by a fair competition), race and gender still play alarge role in who gets into colleges and universities, and whogets the best jobs.

For example, study after study demonstrates that racialstereotyping serves to lock people of color out of jobs they arequalified for.

MYTH: Affirmative action is reverse discrimination.

FACT: Affirmative action removes removes barriers thatunfairly exclude women and people of color. In so doing, it

promotes equal opportunity for its beneficiaries.

MYTH: Affirmative action programs are quota programs.

FACT: Rigid quotas have been unconstitutional fordecades. Affirmative action programs today are

designed to promote diversity and to remedy specific forms of unfair competition.

• Researchers in New York and Chicagohave found that when two applicants withidentical qualifications apply for the same jobapplicants with black-sounding names arecalled back for interviews only half as often asapplicants with white-sounding names withsimilar qualifications.

• A study in New York recently discoveredthat, when interviewing for jobs, whites withprison records for the possession of cocainewere more likely to get called back for secondinterviews than were blacks with no prisonrecords at all.

Numerous studies also indicatethat when people of color apply tocollege they are subject to racialdiscrimination built into the se-lection process. For instance, col-leges and universities take intoaccount an applicant’s standard-ized test scores, and whether ornot the high school the studentattended was an elite school. Yetstudies have proven that theScholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) isbiased towards wealthy, white males, and that people of colorare far less likely to have access to well-funded, elite highschools than their white counterparts. Colleges and universi-ties realize that judging a candidate based only on such crite-ria is discriminatory. Indeed, this accounts for why theyhave developed affirmative action programs.• Standardized tests fail to measure human capacity inany field. In this respect, it is not surprising that Dr. Mar-tin Luther King, Jr., one of the most brilliant orators inthe Twentieth Century, scored very low on the verbal sec-tion of the SATs.

Many of the hardest workers in America are the least pros-perous. Are our friends and family members who earn smallsalaries as laborers and service workers to be condemned asslackers because the wealth they have accumulated fails toreflect the long hours they have worked? Single mothersstruggling to hold down two minimum-wage jobs workharder, for less, than most folks. Moreover, throughout ourhistory, non-whites have been shut out of the most presti-gious and the highest-paying jobs. Indeed, Asian Americans,Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans were all formallybarred from many basic opportunities in the first half of theTwentieth Century at precisely the same time that the U.S.government assisted large numbers of white families as theymoved up the social ladder and became middle-class mem-bers of society.

Up until the 1970s, many government programs served toenrich whites while shutting Blacks and other people of colorout. For example, the Federal Housing Authority gave loansto white families, allowing them to buy their first homeswhile denying these loans to almost all Black families.

In this respect, from America’s founding moments, our gov-ernment has been in the business of providing wealth towhites, while simultaneously excluding or even stealing thatwealth from other groups. The consequences of these govern-ment policies –many of which were still in place until a shorttime ago – continue to be felt today.

The additional wealth accumulated by whites leads to en-hanced opportunities, greater fiscal stability, and a broaderset of economic and other opportunities. It represents amarked advantage. Black families with high incomes have ac-cumulated only about 10 percent of the wealth accrued bytheir white counterparts. So, without question, since thestate has played a major role in disproportionately enrichingwhites, it should now work to level the playing field throughthe creation of policies like affirmative action, that serve todismantle practices that unfairly advantage the privilegedmembers of society.

MYTH: Individual effortand hard work determines who becomes

prosperous and wealthy in the United States.Given this reality, it is unfair to say that racial dispari-

ties with respect to wealth were created by our govern-ment. Thus, government should stay out of the business of

trying to eliminate these disparities through the creation of af-firmative action programs.

FACT: Common sense and common experiences teach us thathard work and wealth do not necessarily go hand and hand.Moreover, government policies have enriched some Ameri-

cans at the expense of others. As a result, the benefici-aries of affirmative action find themselves at a

serious disadvantage when they competefor resources and opportunities in

the United States.