Point/Counterpoint: Affirmative Action Benefits Everyone
Nov. 7, 2007 -- Affirmative action is needed because it facilitates the integration and tolerance of women and minorities in the United States by fostering diversity in educational and professional institutions, ultimately adding to the innovation, growth, and progress of our economy. Not only does it ensure an equal opportunity for social and economic advancement, but benefits everyone through exposure to diverse viewpoints and backgrounds. Affirmative action does not create racial or gender preferences; rather, it merely removes obstacles to fair access faced by women and people of color.
Affirmative action makes sure that educational institutions, workplaces, and other institutions reflect our diverse community. Generally, women and minorities face obstacles in gaining admission to higher educational institutions and workplaces. These obstacles include a gap in standardized test scores, a dearth in the availability of Advanced Placement classes in predominantly minority schools, and lingering class differences and income gaps. Therefore, to ensure a diverse student body, and subsequently a diverse workplace, admissions and employment policies that balance out these obstacles are still sorely necessary.
In the higher education setting, a diverse classroom strengthens the learning experience of all students – a plurality of opinions, life experiences, and ideas add to the classroom and campus dynamic. Furthermore, it prepares a diverse and well trained workforce. This was attested to by the plethora of amicus briefs filed by Fortune 500 companies in support of the University of Michigan in 2003 to the United States Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger. Not only is affirmative action the right thing to do, but it is also the prudent thing to do for the business needs of our increasingly diverse society and global economy.
Further, affirmative action serves as a way to remedy continuing harms imposed on women and minorities by de jure (legal) segregation and institutional racism. Income gaps between white communities and communities of color are still significant, as is the income gap between men and women. Affirmative action is in no small part responsible for the middle class growth in communities of color over the past thirty years, spurned on by access to higher education and the social mobility that comes with it.
Khin Mai Aung is a Staff Attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. This opinion piece is part of a live public policy debate series called Intelligence Squared U.S., which is an initiative of The Rosenkranz Foundation. For more information and to listen to past debates, go to www.iq2US.org.
