FollowAfter the recent protests on and around campus in response to the decisions in the Michael Brown case and the state of racism in our nation as a whole, I decided to do some research on how our allegedly progressive university attempts to keep our university a diverse, supportive and safe place.
At first glance, UC Berkeley is the height of diversity, with 4 out of every 10 students being recipients of Pell Grants, a minority as the majority of the student body, and a student body of nearly 13% international students. However, after digging deeper into our statistics, it becomes clear that many groups are heavily underrepresented. Of the Fall 2013 student body, only 3.4% of the student body was African American, which is dismally lower than the United State’s population at 13.1% and California’s population at 6.2%. Additionally, Latino/Hispanic students composed 12.8% of the 2013 Fall student body, which is shockingly lower than the 37.6% of the Californian population. How is it possible that a university, where “diversity is a defining feature” and “a source of strength,” is failing so greatly at providing a representative campus community?
One possible answer is the UC system’s discontinuation of affirmative action, a policy that began in 1998 (for the undergraduate school) due to many scandals involving race quotas, possible prejudice against Asian students, and a high profile Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.
Proponents of the discontinuation of affirmative action claimed that holding different standards for students was inherently unfair to both groups and even caused racial tensions inadvertently. However, what seems more unfair is that in the year following the discontinuation of affirmative action, 56% fewer black students were admitted and 49% fewer Latinos. The UC Regents claimed that they had no way of knowing which students were of which ethnicity, but with the public education system already systematically favoring white, middle-class students, who on average have higher standardized test scores, and attend schools that offer a greater number of higher level courses, it is only natural that their selection process would also favor white students.
Because of this, standards for acceptance were adjusted and admission of minority students has risen, but not as rapidly as the rate at which minority students graduating from high school has.
If this system continues to fail, my question is, why have the UC Regents not yet corrected it? Of course, the system has attempted in many ways to correct its shortcomings through minority programs offered both on campus and in high schools, but at the end of the day, a lifetime of privilege cannot be corrected by offering minority specific housing options. This thought is echoed by Marsha Jaeger, a leader of one of the minority outreach projects, who stated, “I don’t think the country is ready for the demise of affirmative action.”
At the end of the day, the UC system’s attempt to become racially blind is admirable but naïve. Sadly, our nation as a whole may still need affirmative action to lessen the blow that centuries of racism has embedded.
1 Comment
Why should affirmative action be the solution we pursue?
If the problem is an advantage toward white, middle- or upper-class persons, why not tackle those privileges?
What were the demographics of the applicant pool? What do the attending, admitted, and applicant pool differences signify?
Why is the solution to a problem rooted in discrimination (labelling and drawing differences between two or more groups) to respond by aiding one group over another? Is the solution to a system of cultural differences and discriminations between racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups to simply say “this group needs more help”? Has affirmative action, over time, aided in the national or state-scale “rise” of underprivileged group?
In other words: Does affirmative action work to address the problems we face at the fundamental level, or are we taking ibuprofen for a broken bone? Are we addressing causes or symptoms?