My last column on affirmative action received a significant amount of backlash. Among the critics were Will Charnley and John Reynolds of FACES. They have asked to write a rebuttal explaining why affirmative action is necessary, rather than discriminatory. Here is their response to my original piece:
In a perfect world everyone would be equal. In a perfect world, colleges, banks, businesses, law firms, and government offices wouldn't discriminate against people based on race, class, sexual orientation, or gender. In a perfect world Tyler Hughes would be right, and affirmative action would be unnecessary. Unfortunately, race matters and we are often unable to see the debilitating force of racism in our lives.
Affirmative action was crafted to recognize these realities, not perpetuate them. Between 1981 and 2001, the number of degrees earned by Native Americans rose by 151.9 percent mostly due to the effectiveness of affirmative action policies. In "It's time to be equal," Hughes challenges not whether these policies succeed but whether they cause unqualified applicants to be accepted into positions because of their race. This practice, Hughes suggests, both discriminates against deserving white students and degrades students of color. The issue with this challenge to affirmative action is that it misunderstands both how affirmative action works and the realities that necessitate its presence.
Affirmative action is not a quota system. Affirmative action does not encourage the acceptance of unqualified candidates. Affirmative action is merely a requirement that ensures the acknowledgment of obstacles presented by racism, sexism, and classism in American society. It is important to recognize that white people have many "affirmative action" policies, including legacy admissions, access to historically white and segregated social networks, and years of accumulated wealth denied to communities of color by the government's "red-lining" mortgage practices and legalized segregation. These policies benefitting whites rarely arise in conversations surrounding affirmative action, although they are inextricably linked.
After establishing what affirmative action is and more importantly, what affirmative action is not, the discussion of why such policies are necessary remains. Currently, white males are responsible for 48 percent of the college-educated workforce; however, they hold more than 80 percent of the most powerful jobs in the U.S. including positions in corporations, law firms, universities, government, and news media. This statistic is staggering alone, but let's examine what this means. When we as white men walk into a job interview, there is over an 80 percent chance that interviewer will be both our gender and race. The fact that our race and gender will not present a boundary between us, and that the vast majority of people holding power in society share those characteristics, is an unrequested and unearned privilege.
These privileges granted solely due to our white skin are not subjective observations, but clearly observed economic realities of American society. In 2001, the average wage for white males with a four-year college degree was $55,307. With the same educational background, white women earned $40,192, black women received $36,253, and Hispanic women collected $34,060. To conceptualize this, the $21,247 difference between the average earnings of white men and Hispanic women could cover a semesters worth of Boston College's tuition. To further this point, for every dollar earned by a white male in this country, women earn 74 cents, African American women earn 63 cents, and Latina women earn 57 cents.
The purpose of establishing these statistics is to not to cause privileged students to feel guilty but to provide students with an opportunity to examine the role race plays in their own lives. While the presence of racism in our society causes more harm to some, it damages us all. For this reason, it is imperative that all students, not only students of color, partake in these examinations of race in their world.
Will Charnley, LSOE '11, and John Reynolds, A&S '10, are members of FACES.
Tyler Hughes is a staff columnist for The Heights. He welcomes comments at thughes@bcheights.com.
Be the first to comment on this article!