I found Melissa’s talk to be very informative, but unfortunately as Eliza said she was a bit scattered. She was very well versed in Amendment 48 but because she was so passionate about it that she got lost in her emotions and in my opinion was not able to present in an organized manor.
Growing up in California I am very aware of how things changed with and without affirmative action. My boyfriend had a teacher when he was in high school that had to be replaced because he was white and they needed to have a certain percent of African American teachers. It was sad because he was considered by the students as one of the best teachers, but because of affirmative action he was moved to another school in San Jose. When I was talking to my mom about Melissa’s talk she brought up another story that I had forgotten about. Our good family friends the Hromadka’s have two sons. Both are very smart. The oldest applied to Michigan State and did not specify his race or color. He got in and when he got there the school was shocked that he was a blond hair, blue eyed boy. They had expected him to be ethnic in some way. Three years later when his brother attempted to get into MS he was declined even though he was 10 times more qualified to attend MS. Even though people are ‘qualified’ to attend certain universities it is still a factor that because of law colleges are required to have a certain percentage of African Americans, Indians, ect.
I found it very interesting that white women have been the ones who have benefited the most from affirmative action. I would never have guessed that. I was not shocked at all about the statistics about the University of California system. Growing up around UCSB you rarely see people who are not white. (There are quite a few Asians but as for African Americans, they are few and far between). The only time that I would have dealt with Affirmative action (before it was illegal) would have been in Elementary school. But it really made no difference at my elementary school. We had one Hispanic girl and that was it. The other 21 kids where as white as snow. I guess growing up in Santa Barbara gave no real chance for affirmative action to take place, because there really were not that many African Americans.
I think that affirmative action is very important. Melissa pointed out that affirmative action just insures the chance for minorities to be remembered. It is not just the African Americans, and Indians that are minorities anymore and I don’t think a lot of people realize that. As a white woman, I don’t see that I have gotten a hand up because of affirmative action but I guess I have never really thought about it either.
1 comment:
Thanks, Ayres, for your post on this issue. I think one of the most difficult challenges of discussing this issue is how to make sense of two different ways of understanding it: the personal and the social. By this, I mean, that personal experience only partially captures the reality of how affirmative action plays out. The broader patterns also need to be reflected on. But as your post suggests, it is often the personal story that tends to frame our sense of injustice.
In many ways, our positions--especially when we inhabit positions of privilege--are the ones that might benefit from reflecting critically on. The problem with privilege is that it tends to perpetuate itself. When I think, as a white man, that I've gained quite a bit in my life just from the accident of my birth, it gives me pause when I think about how others, who have been born into other positions of much less privilege, have probably not encountered as many opportunities. This line of thinking is not at all to dismiss the hard work that we all have done to earn the degrees and status that we all have. I just think it's important for us all to think very critically about our position (or starting point, if you will) in the world and think about what this position has given us.
One last thought: I would be careful to distinguish between quotas and affirmative action programs. As Professor Hart said, quotas have been illegal for a long time, and admissions to academic programs can't require that a certain percentage be of a certain race. But what they can do is consider race and other backgound characteristics as a way to create a diverse student body--an issue that many schools value given the reality of today's workforce.
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