The second hypothesis, on high-profile states, was confirmed more strongly than any of the others at the level of descriptive correlation. Raw population levels. The map appears to show that anti-affirmative action activity is particularly common in the deep South and far West. But the correlation of region with this activity is weak.
And actually looking at the map gives one further pause. Activity in the ostensibly libertarian West occurs not in Idaho and Wyoming, but in Washington, Oregon and California. Activity is consistent in the deep South, but does not occur in the Virginias or Arkansas.
The purportedly liberal Northeast is less tolerant of affirmative action than the Midwest. In short, as further analyses show, region is mostly trumped by demographic and state size variables. Concretely, proposals to abolish the public use of affirmative action have surfaced in fifteen of the twenty states that allow for direct initiatives, and eleven of the thirty remaining states.
Thus one might conclude that the initiative process is close to sufficient, but not necessary, to produce anti-affirmative action activity. The fifth hypothesis, to my surprise, does not receive support. Unified Republican control of state governments is either unrelated to or possibly inversely related to anti-affirmative action activity. As with the regional analysis, looking behind the aggregate statistics is highly illuminating.
In , seven of the fifteen states which enjoyed unified Republican control as of saw anti-affirmative action activity in the legislature. In , only five of the ten analogous states did. Clearly there was no relationship between the presence of conservative control of the government and the likelihood of proposing this particular conservative policy change.
On the theory that it might take a longer period of Republican control to build up to anti-affirmative action activity, we examined Republican control in and , and states in which the Party had enjoyed two or three consecutive two-year periods of unified control. Table 2 shows the results of that analysis:. Most of these correlations are minimal; nevertheless, all but one is in the opposite direction from that predicted.
If it had any effect at all, unified Republican control of government made anti-affirmative action activity less likely. Finally, I used these correlational results in a logistic regression model to efficiently predict whether or not a state engaged in anti-affirmative action activity between and As table 3 shows, seven independent variables show a clear bivariate causal link with anti-affirmative action activity. They are presented here in descending order of magnitude and significance: [20].
While any of these variables might reasonably be seen as a cause of anti-affirmative action activity, problems of multicollinearity dictate that only a few can go into a parsimonious predictive model. The three independent variables with the highest bivariate regression coefficients, for example metropolitanization, population size, and gross state product are each correlated with each other at a very high level of around 0.
This is to be expected, since all three are alternative measures of state prominence. It is inefficient, however, to include more than one of them in a predictive model. Perhaps the best way to judge the power of these four predictors is to examine how much they, together, reduce the error that would occur if one made essentially random guesses about whether a state does or does not have activity. In this case, the error is reduced by Put another way, the model correctly predicts the status of 42 out of 50 states, as compared with a likely prediction of only 25 states if one simply tossed a coin.
Explaining the Results: Population Size: The least self-evident of the four factors that remained in the final regression equation is that of state population alternatively, gross state product, which had almost the same statistical impact. I would not have predicted its strong impact compared, say, with the negligible impact of having a unified Republican government.
But in retrospect, several explanations seem plausible. The cases of California, Washington, and Houston — the three locations where the effort to abolish public use of affirmative action is being put to a vote — all demonstrate the centrality of one or a few political entrepreneurs [23] in getting the issue on the ballot. Any state or locality, of course, can produce a skilled political actor with financial resources, time, and a passionate commitment to the issue — but other things being equal, the larger the number of people in a political jurisdiction, the more likely such a person is to emerge.
That factor becomes especially important when coupled with the second of the four key variables, the presence of a direct initiative process in the state or municipality, as in Houston.
Initiatives give political entrepreneurs an institutional framework within which to operate that is more accessible and free-wheeling than is a state legislature; conversely, political entrepreneurship is essential for any issue to make it onto the ballot for a vote by the citizenry.
To the degree that a populous state is also wealthy i. It may also be the case that states with large populations attract political entrepreneurs from outside the state as well as from inside it, for substantive as well as strategic reasons. Since small and large states have roughly similar legislative processes, using roughly similar amounts of scarce resources in a large state will produce a proportionally greater payoff in the substantive sense of ending affirmative action for the most people.
In addition, states with large populations have a large number of votes in the electoral college, and will be reported in highly visible national media. The analysis of state size and wealth helps to explains why anti-affirmative action activity occurs in some states but not others. It does not explain why that activity has so far mostly failed. The second variable in the final regression equation similarly does more to explain where activity occurs than why it fails.
Explaining the Results: The Role of Direct Initiatives: We have already seen one reason that the presence of direct initiatives is associated with anti-affirmative action activity — initiatives offer greater scope for the actions of a political entrepreneur. In addition, they make it possible to bypass a legislature in which legislative action is being blocked. That route to success must seem especially appealing to opponents in view of the strong and consistent public opposition mostly among whites, a large majority of the voting public to affirmative action when framed in terms of preferences, reverse discrimination, or quotas.
To understand the next step — why activity is being blocked in the legislature and why even efforts to end affirmative action through the initiative process have, with one exception, failed [24] -- we need to turn to the third and fourth variables which survived in the final regression equation. On the one hand, in states where the proportion of blacks and the rate of increase in the Latino population is high, some whites presumably feel materially or symbolically threatened and their representatives respond by generating activity to oppose affirmative action.
Consider first the perspective of white elites and citizens. The executives attending such a conference had at least two motives, beyond liberal good will, for their newfound enthusiasm for diversity.
The participants in this conference may have been unusual in their newfound enthusiasm for diversity, and therefore affirmative action, but they were not unique. The same proportion claimed that they would still use numerical goals to track fairness in the workplace even if governmental regulations were abolished.
This result demonstrates a dramatic change over a decade; in , a Conference Board survey of human resource executives in major U. Thus opponents of affirmative action have found, to their surprise and disgust, that their apparent allies in the conservative business community either reject or politely distance themselves from political efforts to abolish affirmative action.
No major corporation in the state supports it Holmes b. Although corporations will continue to defend themselves against claims of discrimination, and although it will be a long time —if ever — that corporate leadership resembles the American racial, ethnic, or gender structures, [35] it nevertheless seems safe to predict that most corporations will not actively support measures to abolish affirmative action in the states or in Congress.
Neither will leaders of elite educational institutions. Almost all of the most senior administrators of the University of California system opposed the abolition of affirmative action in admission to publicly-supported higher education for example, Tien forthcoming ; Lassiter Like corporate executives, university administrators have a variety of motivations, including but not only liberal racial convictions, for supporting affirmative action.
Protecting their long-term political and economic interests is one, especially for public universities. But we are committed to maintaining educational opportunities for all citizens. As these comments begin to suggest, elected officials are in the most complicated position, and their stance with regard to measures to abolish affirmative action is fascinatingly complex.
After all, few lawmakers want to antagonize colleagues who feel passionately about an issue or whose constitutuents do so, especially if it is an issue that is less salient to themselves or their own constituents.
White Democratic politicians do not want to alienate the black voters in their state whom they increasingly need for election, so they are reluctant to oppose affirmative action. But they also seek to halt the trend of the past few decades in which white male Democrats are moving into the Republican party, so they are equally reluctant to support affirmative action too strongly. They mostly want the issue to go away. White Republican politicians are eager to woo even a small fraction of the black middle class away from the Democrats.
And they are even more eager, because it is a more likely prospect, to attract newly-middle-class or newly-naturalized Latino voters into the ranks of their party. But their chief constituency in the s is working- and middle-class whites, many of whom oppose strong forms of affirmative action — so they are also reluctant to support it.
Like the Democrats, Republican politicians mostly want the issue to go away. Thus we see several rather distinct behaviors among elected officials, depending on their political calculations as well as their convictions.
One set of Republican politicians follows the lead of Governor Pete Wilson of California — aggressively opposing affirmative action. They are the state legislators sponsoring the activity in the 26 states discussed above. A second and considerably larger set of politicians of both parties seeks simply to avoid the issue. A third, and the most interesting, group cycle among support for, silence about, and opposition to measures to abolish affirmative action. This is the pattern of several nationally prominent Republicans, who must respond to many contending constituencies at once.
Consider the history of Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich on affirmative action:. Representative Gingrich is an unusually colorful speaker, which is why I have quoted him so extensively rather than, say, Senator Robert Dole, who shows the same pattern.
But his eloquence does not hide his waffling. He is not inconsistent in his opinion; at least since the late s he has opposed affirmative action based on race or gender, and supported mild forms of it based on poverty or cultural deprivation.
His Republican critics have taken scathing note of this behavioral inconsistency, [44] but it is probably the right political strategy and is probably appreciated by most of his less vocal Republican colleagues. The African American middle class is growing, if slowly; middle-class African Americans remain more socially and economically liberal than middle-class whites, but they are more conservative about a variety of social and economic issues than are poorer African Americans Welch and Combs ; Parent and Stekler ; Gregory ; Tate Only 5 percent of African Americans identify as Republicans, but 24 percent call themselves Independents.
Among young black adults aged over a third are Independents. In short, there seem to be good grounds for the often-repeated Republican goal of attracting up to a fifth of the black population, especially those with good jobs and high incomes who are the most likely to vote, into the G.
There is, however, a rub: middle-class African Americans have recently become more racially nationalistic than badly-off African Americans, and they are more concerned about issues of racial inequality and discrimination Hochschild chapters ; Dawson ?
Affirmative action arguably benefits the African American middle class more than it does the poor, so motives of interest reinforce disparate perceptions and motives of ideology. In short, if the Republican party has any hope of attracting more than a tiny fraction of voting black Americans into its ranks, it must avoid association with those who are mostly Republicans seeking to abolish affirmative action.
That is not an easy task. The Republican party faces a slightly different set of issues when it considers Latinos, and here demographic changes are even more central to a good political analysis.
The G. During the s, just under a third of Americans with Mexican ancestry described themselves as conservative and just over a third described themselves as moderates. But Latinos on balance support strong programs of affirmative action — less than do African Americans, but considerably more than do whites and Asians Hochschild and Rogers ; Hughes and Tuch forthcoming; Bobo forthcoming; Los Angeles Times Poll ; Washington Post et al.
And many are wary of perceived Republican party efforts to curtail immigration and punish immigrants through Propositions and in California [47] and elimination of food stamps and Medicaid for most nonnaturalized immigrants in the national reform of welfare.
An unprecedented number of immigrants from Latin America are seeking to become naturalized U. P strategists fear e. Thus the very states in which increasing proportions of Latino would-be students and workers are associated with efforts to abolish affirmative action are the same states in which increasing numbers of new and potential Latino voters are available to either major political party. Whites are currently a disproportionate share of registrants, and an even more disproportionate share of voters [49] — but those disproportions are falling.
Or should they gamble that future margins of victory can come from new, young, potentially conservative Latino voters who are not yet Republicans, and maybe not yet even citizens? If so, they should not oppose affirmative action. The Democratic story needs fewer details because it is more familiar, but the political implications of changing racial demography are almost as complicated for Democrats as for Republicans. African Americans are solidly Democratic, and have provided the margin of victory in several presidential and many congressional and state-level races.
The Democratic party cannot afford to alienate them, especially the best-off and best-educated who are the most likely to vote.
But there are too few African Americans for the party to rely exclusively on them and their proportion of the voting population is declining. So Democratic candidates must attract and retain white voters — who are much less sympathetic to affirmative action. Roughly the same balance of forces obtains in districts where Latinos are a substantial fraction of voters, except that the proportion of voters who are Latino will grow, dramatically in some districts and states. On balance, of course, Democratic politicians and constituencies are more liberal than their Republican counterparts so they are more favorably inclined toward affirmative action, ceteris paribus.
And that is what most frequently occurs. In sum, I see no reason to expect a wave of successful efforts to abolish affirmative action through the electoral system, despite the shared predictions of the advocates whom I quoted at the beginning of this paper.
So far, current laws, regulations, and practices of affirmative action seem reasonably safe. But the story does not end here. I will compound my reckless pronouncement of a number and a date at the same time by making another prediction: strong forms of affirmative action may well be abolished through the judicial system over the next few years. Efforts to abolish affirmative action are, in that sense, analogous to efforts to promote school desegregation in the s and s -- what cannot be won through the electoral process may be attainable, at least for a while, through the courts.
The analogy with school desegregation goes beyond the basic strategy of seeking victory through the courts rather than through elections. They are a small group of ideologically driven, energetic young men mostly , in nonprofit law firms funded by foundations, [51] out to change the United States for the better by requiring its institutions to live up to the Constitution as they understand it. The second firm, the Institute for Justice, is less involved in ongoing litigation but provides strong support for the efforts of CIR.
Its vice-president, Clint Bolick quoted in one of the opening epigrams of this paper , led the successful effort to prevent the appointments of Lani Guinier, and later Bill Lann Lee, as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.
The Institute has been deeply involved in writing and promoting the bills to abolish affirmative action that have come before Congress several times in the past few years. One of its missions, like the LDF before it, is to train a cohort of young and idealistic attorneys to carry its message and tactics across the nation and into a wide array of issues and venues. The anti-affirmative action law firms follow many of the same tactics as the firms that pursued school desegregation and other traditional civil rights cases.
They carefully choose only cases that they think they have a reasonable chance of winning. They concentrate on cases that are most likely to set new precedents. They work only with plaintiffs who will be attractive to the public. They seek to bring cases only in the courts of sympathetic judges, most commonly those appointed by Presidents Reagan and Bush.
They also use many of the same laws. The basis is U. That law was passed during the era of Reconstruction in order to permit legal action against state officials who used their official position to maintain Jim Crow.
It was revived in the s to be used against Governor George Wallace, Sheriff Bull Connor, and other upholders of the segregationist laws of the South.
Traditional proponents of civil rights laws are deeply distressed at its use in suits seeking to ban affirmative action. A claim against a public actor in his or her personal capacity is a powerful legal tactic, well suited to making university, corporate, or governmental officials think more than twice before vigorously promoting an affirmative action program in the current legal climate.
They have already won an impressive string of victories that have narrowed the scope of affirmative action. The most emblematic such victory is not widely known, but it demonstrates the thesis of this paper as clearly as an author could hope. At about the same time, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals eliminated affirmative action in university admissions in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana through Hopwood v.
At present, most of the judicial action remains at the district and appeals court level. After all, restraint follows a series of decisions suggesting hostility to, or at least suspicion of, policies that differentiate by race e.
Miller v. Johnson XX ; Missouri v. Jenkins XXX. More importantly, a series of decisions by the Supreme Court on affirmative action over the past two decades have narrowed its scope and increased the stringency of the requirements that an actor needs to meet in order to impose an affirmative action plan on its employees or contractors.
The crucial starting point for aa jurisprudence, of course, was Regents of the University of California v. Bakke U. Just what the Bakke ruling held remains controversial, but most actors interpreted it to mean that universities could take race into account along with other factors in admissions decisions. Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education U. Wygant , at n. Three years later, City of Richmond v. Croson U. It held that city and state set-aside provisions must satisfy the high standard of strict scrutiny, rather than the lower standard of intermediate scrutiny.
The next case -- Metro Broadcasting Inc. FCC U. But at least with regard to contracting, the fine distinctions were swept aside in Adarand Constructors Inc. Pena S. The Supreme Court may not abolish aa grounded in clearly proven past discrimination — hence my caution about never giving a number and a date at the same time.
But the CIR and its allies have chosen their cases very shrewdly; if they can get several appeals courts to declare Bakke to be no longer the law of the land in their circuit, as the Hopwood appeals court did, then the Supreme Court will most likely feel compelled to intervene to reconcile the disparities among the circuits.
At that point, a Supreme Court comprised of its current members may set the bar against aa so high that virtually no firm, university, or contract-letting agency can surmount it.
The comparison I am drawing between the era of school desegregation and the era of attacks on affirmative action has not escaped the attention of the chief participants.
The Financial Profile of the Institute for Justice 1 begins:. The Institute for Justice opened its doors in to be that alternative. To put the same question the other way around, must those who decried judicial activism and anti-democratic elitism in the former case do the same in the latter? If so, liberals and conservatives should be equally discomfitted by the strange career of affirmative action. That will be difficult for ideological conservatives, just as acceding to popular resistance to mandatory school desegregation was difficult for ideological liberals.
Alternatively, if one includes defensible decisions by legally chosen judges in fairly conducted trials as part of the legitimate democratic process, then one must accept the possible abolition of affirmative action with a good grace.
That will be difficult for ideological liberals, just as accepting judicial intervention in school systems was difficult for ideological conservatives. But if one interprets democratic values in substantive rather than procedural terms — or rather, if one focuses on the fact that the United States is a liberal democracy rather than a democracy — the normative implications of the strange career of affirmative action are somewhat different.
In this framing, the tension lies between different definitions of liberalism rather than between different ways of putting the concept of democracy into practice. It is liberal because it enhances individual freedom and rights. It is democratic because it produces the policy result that the majority of the public wants. Mandatory school desegregation in this view was neither liberal nor democratic, so moral consistency lies in supporting judge-made law now after having opposed it then.
However, if one uses the post-New Deal understanding of liberalism — with its focus on respect for diversity as a component of public action, rights conceived as publicly-guaranteed opportunities to attain success, greater trust in governmental than in market forces — then one is in the symmetically opposite position of consistently celebrating the school desegregation judges and decrying the anti-affirmative action judges.
It is also bolstered by the belief that strong programs of affirmative action foster rather than inhibit freedom and rights for all Americans, as in the first two comments with which this paper began. Thus in this view using the courts to abolish affirmative action is neither liberal nor democratic. It is illiberal because it denies rights and opportunities to those whose rights have been denied and whose opportunities are illusory.
It is undemocratic because most Americans really do not endorse such a denial. Mandatory school desegregation, in contrast, did support deep understandings of liberalism and democracy Hochschild , so moral consistency lies in decrying judge-made law now after having endorsed it then. We are back where we started — with two sets of views that start from shared deep procedural and substantive values, but that interpret those values in ways that are made to be incommensurate. Neither extreme is the only possible way to interpret those values, and probably most Americans do not so interpret them.
I predict that the opponents of affirmative action will come closer to prevailing over the next decade or so than will the proponents, because they have learned an effective legal strategy from their old adversaries and can use it in the courts of a new generation of judges. Whether abolition of affirmative action will prevail in the long run, as mandatory school desegregation mostly did not, is a question on which even I will not venture a prediction.
Whether one can be pleased with the abolition of affirmative action through judicial decisions in a morally consistent manner is not a matter for prediction, and here too I will refrain from further comment.
Black Issues in Higher Education. February Florida Times-Union , March A Aguilar, Louis. Albritton, Robert and Willie Fowler. Amar, Akhil and Neal Katyal. Association of American Universities. April A Berry, Frances and William Berry. Biskupic, Joan. Bobo, Lawrence.
Bolick, Clint. Comments at news conference, Institute for Justice, February 2. Bositis, David. Bowen, William and Derek Bok. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Branigan, William. Broder, David and Robert Barnes. Cain, Bruce and Karin MacDonald. Caldwell, Christopher. Calhoun-Brown, Allison. Center for Individual Rights. Chavez, Ken. The Conference Board Research Bulletin, no. Davidson, Robert and Ernest Lewis.
Diaz, Idris. December Doig, Jameson and Erwin Hargrove. Leadership and Innovation: Entrepreneurs in Government. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
The Public Perspective, v. Chattanooga Free Press. February A4. Fletcher, Michael. Gregory, Steven. Hallow, Ralph. Hart, Margaret. Managing Diversity for Sustained Competitiveness. New York: The Conference Board. Hays, Scott. Hero, Rodney. New York: Oxford University Press. Hochschild, Jennifer. Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation. Hochschild, Jennifer and Reuel Rogers. Holmes, Steven. Supreme Court let the ruling stand, and soon after, all public universities in Texas switched to race-blind admissions.
The ruling also affected affirmative action admissions in Louisiana and Mississippi. Two cases against the University of Michigan were heard in conjunction by the Supreme Court: Gratz v. Bollinger against the university's undergraduate admissions, and Grutter v. Bollinger against the University of Michigan Law School. Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter were both white students who had been rejected from the University of Michigan, Gratz from the undergraduate program and Grutter from the law school.
Lee Bollinger, president of university at the time, served as the defendant, arguing that the programs served the legitimate purpose of campus diversity.
The court struck down the "mechanical" points system of the undergraduate school , which awarded 20 extra points—one-fifth of the total needed for admission—to applicants of a minority race, ruling that the system was not "narrowly tailored" and violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
However, the court upheld the policy of the law school , stating that the consideration of race in its admissions was "highly individualized" and consistent with the ruling in Bakke. The Grutter decision invalidated the finding of the 5th U. Court of Appeals in Hopwood. Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson , two cases that were heard in conjunction, challenged for the first time the consideration of race in public school assignments.
When demand for a particular school exceeded available space, the students' race was considered along with other factors to determine enrollment. Lower courts had applied the precedents set in Grutter and Gratz to determine if the schools' systems served a "compelling government interest" and were "narrowly tailored" to achieve that interest.
They found that the policies were lawful and consistent with previous interpretations of the law by the Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the decision in Grutter v.
Bollinger did not apply to high schools and that the programs were not narrowly tailored. The court found that both districts' plans were "actually targeted toward demographic goals and not toward any demonstrable educational benefit from racial diversity. In the city of New Haven, Connecticut administered civil service exams to firefighters in order to make selections for promotion to lieutenant and captain.
A disproportionate number of white candidates, compared to minority candidates, earned high enough scores on the test to qualify for promotion. The city chose to discard the results of the test for fear of being liable under the disparate impact clause of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of In Ricci v. The Supreme Court found in favor of the firefighters, writing that the city had intentionally discriminated against the firefighters who had passed the test without providing a "strong basis in evidence" that the discrimination was necessary to avoid disparate impact.
However, the court avoided commenting on the discrepancy between the disparate impact provision of Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
After the Hopwood decision, the University of Texas UT adopted a policy of automatically admitting high school students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their class.
It later revised this policy to allow the consideration of race for those who were not automatically admitted. After Abigail N. Fisher, a white female, was denied admission to UT-Austin, she challenged the university's consideration of race as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment in Fisher v. University of Texas. In its ruling, the Supreme Court found faults in the decision by the 5th U. Court of Appeals. The court stated that affirmative actions cases should be reviewed under the Fourteenth Amendment according to "a standard of strict scrutiny," which the 5th U.
Court of Appeals did not do. The opinion went on to say that universities must be able to show that "available, workable race-neutral alternatives do not suffice. Court of Appeals for further review, where UT-Austin's admissions policy was ultimately upheld. However, the ruling placed the burden on universities to prove that racial diversity could not be achieved via any other method when they utilize racial preferences. Public opinion polls on affirmative action have yielded mixed results over the past few years.
Results found by researchers seem to depend largely on how the question is worded. In particular, support drops considerably when the word "preferences" is included in the question. Supporters of affirmative action are more likely to do so to increase diversity rather than compensate for past injustice. Opinions also change when the question refers to college admissions specifically, and support and opposition are somewhat divided on racial lines, with black Americans being far more likely to favor affirmative action.
According to Gallup: [21] [22]. One of the clearest examples of affirmative action in practice is colleges' taking into account a person's racial or ethnic background when deciding which applicants will be admitted. Americans seem reluctant to endorse such a practice, and even blacks, who have historically been helped by such programs, are divided on the matter. However, in a poll by Pew Research Center found that 82 percent of Americans reported feeling completely unaffected by affirmative action.
A previous study by Pew Research Center in had found a similar result, with only 16 percent reporting having been affected; 11 percent said they'd been hurt by affirmative action, and only 4 percent felt they had been helped.
The table below lists the results of several polls taken on affirmative action over the past 15 years.
Common reasons stated for supporting affirmative action include the following: [1] [24]. Common arguments stated against affirmative action include the following: [24].
Supporters of affirmative action in college admissions have voiced concern over projected drops in minority college enrollment in the event of bans on racial preferences. Studies have shown that affirmative action bans do not affect minority college enrollment in a state overall, although they do seem to lower minority enrollment at the most selective institutions.
It is important to note here that most colleges in the United States are not very selective ; colleges considered very selective make up about one-fifth to one-fourth of all four-year colleges in the country. The New York Times published data in on minority enrollment at selective universities in states that had enacted bans on racial preferences. The newspaper looked at data from the National Center for Education Statistics and concluded that it showed a trend of lower minority enrollment at selective institutions after bans on racial preferences went into effect.
The following charts show black and Hispanic college enrollment as percentages in select years from to in states with bans on racial preferences using data reported by The New York Times. California banned racial preferences in , Texas banned them in , Florida banned them in , and Washington banned them in Looking at similar data, a study from The Century Foundation examined minority enrollment at 11 flagship universities that had ended the use of racial preferences in university admissions:.
The study, released in , focused on the percentage of black and Hispanic students at each institution before and after the ban on racial preferences. The analysis found that seven of these institutions managed to either reach or exceed minority enrollment levels present the year before the ban on racial preferences. The other two universities, University of Michigan and University of New Hampshire, admitted the same percentage or higher of Hispanic students, but not black students. Studies have shown that while black students are more likely to enroll in college than white students with similar credentials, they are less likely to graduate.
Lower graduation rates can also be seen for other underrepresented minorities such as Hispanics and American Indians. Minorities that do graduate have been found more likely to finish at the bottom of their class.
Thomas J. Espenshade, co-author of No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal , looked at data from eight elite institutions and found that 50 percent of black students and "one-third of Hispanic students graduated in the bottom 20 percent of their class. This gap in performance at institutions of higher learning has puzzled and concerned scholars and policymakers for decades. One theory that attempts to explain it is the "mismatch effect.
It has been shown through studying the SAT scores of students at selective universities that a preference can act as a to point adjustment to the student's SAT score, granting admission to a minority student with much lower SAT scores than other admitted students. The theory contends that these minorities would have a higher chance of success at an institution where their credentials more closely matched those of the majority on campus.
Since the development of the theory, numerous studies have been performed to attempt to prove or disprove the mismatch effect. It is unclear what effects mismatch would have, if any, on minority success later in life.
Such studies have found that mismatch can have an unintended negative effect on the college experience of minorities, from influencing area of study to fostering racial stereotypes on campus.
In a study, Sander found that mismatch doubled the rate of minority bar exam failures, and other researchers have found that mismatch is responsible for the low number of minorities pursuing STEM majors , as well as choosing to become professors.
The researchers found that better matching of qualifications to university accounted for 18 percent of that increase, and investing more resources into remedial efforts caused anywhere from 23 percent to 64 percent of the increase. Chingos found that "students were most likely to graduate by attending the most selective institution that would admit them" and that graduation rates actually decrease when students attend schools that are not challenging enough. In a separate article, Chingos criticized the NBER paper for ignoring graduation trends in the several years prior to California's affirmative action ban and found that graduation rates of minorities were already rising.
He went on to say: [38]. None of these alternative analyses of the effect of Prop should be taken too seriously, because it is difficult to accurately estimate a pre-policy trend from only two data points. But this analysis shows how misleading it is in this case to only examine the to change, while ignoring the prior trend. Using a different method, Chingos also showed that as a general trend, even underqualified minorities are more likely to graduate from a more selective university, although results for each institution vary.
As of February , the use of racial preferences has been banned in eight states, colored in teal below. Colorado is the first and only state so far where a ballot initiative to ban racial preferences was rejected by voters. In addition, Texas had a ban in place from to via the lower court's ruling in Hopwood vs. This ruling was invalidated by the Supreme Court ruling in Grutter v. See the summary of major court cases for more information.
A measure banning racial preferences was on the ballot in Arizona on November 2, Known as the Arizona Civil Rights Amendment , the measure was referred to the ballot by the state legislature as an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting the consideration of race in public employment, education and government contracting. It was approved by Arizona voters by This was followed in by a voter-approved ballot measure, Proposition , to eliminate racial preferences at all public institutions statewide.
Due to legal challenges, the measure did not go into effect until As a substitute for racial preferences, in the University of California system adopted a policy to automatically admit high school students who graduate in the top 4 percent of their class. In the policy was expanded to the top 9 percent of high school graduates.
The policy guarantees admission into one school, although not necessarily the student's school of choice. A ballot measure to prohibit racial preferences in Colorado , the Colorado Discrimination and Preferential Treatment by Governments initiative, was narrowly defeated by voters in Had it been approved, the measure would have added a section to the state constitution barring consideration of race in public employment, education and contracting. Colorado was the first and only state where a ballot initiative to ban racial preferences was rejected by voters.
In , Florida Governor Jeb Bush R issued an Executive Order prohibiting the consideration of race in public employment, education and contracting. To replace racial preferences, the order created the admissions policy known as Talented Twenty, which guarantees high school students admission into a state college if they graduate in the top 20 percent of their class.
Under the order, funding for need-based financial aid also increased. Florida is the only state to have banned racial preferences by Executive Order. In Michigan voters approved the Michigan Civil Rights Amendment , a state constitutional amendment prohibiting racial preferences in public employment, education and contracting. The measure was overturned by the U.
Supreme Court , which ruled that voters have the right to ban affirmative action policies in the public sector. Nebraska 's Civil Rights Initiative was passed by voters in , adding a section to the state's constitution barring the consideration of race in public employment, education and contracting.
The ballot initiative faced a legal challenge on the legitimacy of its signatures, but the Lancaster Circuit Court found that there was no evidence of fraud.
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