Prop 16, a law in favor of ending the ban on affirmative action in California will be on the ballot this upcoming election. While opposers view the highly controversial proposal as discriminatory, Prop 16 is crucial in California’s fight for diversity in the professional realm.
If you’re a minority, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “You need to work twice as hard to get half as far” your entire life. For many of us, it’s no longer a mantra, but a fact of life.
In the past, the policies and practices of affirmative action have caused an uproar from people who believe that it is an unfair advantage utilized by people of color to succeed in their respective careers. But those same people fail to realize that the objective of affirmative action policies is to grant minorities the same financial, educational, and career opportunities that have been historically withheld from people of color for hundreds of years.
Essentially, people seem to be okay with racial discrimination as long as it is not directly affecting themselves.
In a recently published research article written by members of the National Academy of Sciences, the data proved that racial discriminiation in the hiring process has not changed in the last 25 years. It was found that on average white applicants receive 36% more callbacks than African Americans, and 24% more callbacks than Latinos with identical resumes.
A reason for this could be inherent bias; hiring managers may allow stereotypes that they affiliate with minority applicants to affect their likelihood of being chosen for the job. This means that sometimes just the first and last name of the applicant is all the hiring manager considers when searching for new employees. This negatively influences the opportunity for minorities to succeed in their respective careers.
In that same study, researchers found that when they analyzed a small number of elite firms that implemented affirmative action policies, minority applicants were given more opportunities to succeed.
For everyone who has personally experienced such discrimination, this doesn’t really sound like breaking news. So why are there still people who refuse to believe that race plays a huge part in academic and professional achievements? More importantly, what is it about Prop 16’s policies that scares its opposers?
Well, if you want to genuinely understand the premise of affirmative action you must first understand the racist history of our nation.
The idea of the American Dream being attainable for all who call America home is only true for a select few. Historically, minorities have been excluded from this narrative in a number of ways making it much harder to achieve the financial success of their white counterparts. And yes, money plays a huge role in why affirmative action is needed. An early example of the unfair socioeconomic advantages that white families have over minority families is what happened after WWII.
At the end of WWII, when 1.2 million African American soldiers who risked their lives for their country came home, they were denied the GI Bill. This was a bill that was supposed to provide numerous benefits to all WWII veterans such as assisting the soldiers and their families financially with mortgages, college fees, and other expenses.
Of course, the U.S. government found a way to exclude minority families. Even though the GI Bill was legally accessible to minority servicemen, the government utilized tactics such as redlining to indicate exactly where these black and brown families could live.
While white servicemen were afforded the opportunity to take advantage of the GI Bill to buy properties, attend college tuition free, and start businesses, most minority servicemen were turned away.
Research by Ira Katznelson, a historian and professor of political science at Columbia University, found that of the 67,000 mortgages insured by the GI Bill in New York and New Jersey, fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.
Suddenly, the all-white neighborhoods had a reputation for being polished and safe while the black and brown neighborhoods were portrayed as ghetto and violent.
In reality, the only difference between them was the financial status of the homeowners.
Since it was harder for minorities to open their own businesses because the government refused to give them loans, they had to work blue collar jobs that did not pay very well. This in turn, led to the education achievement gap. While most white children attended adequate, well established schools, children who lived in the less desirable parts of town attended free, often underperforming schools.
But what does this have to do with affirmative action?
Well, this educational imbalance has continued into the 21st century.
Unfortunately, for the Black and brown students, academic success is seen as a leading factor in how successful a person will become later in life.
Since minority students are more likely to graduate from low income schools, their opportunities are practically cut in half. Though schools today can no longer legally practice segregation, private schools and institutions have become the presumably more prestigious educational route.
These schools usually cost thousands of dollars in tuition a semester and are often only built in more affluent areas. Minority children are generally stuck attending schools that have a more difficult time securing funds for better teachers, better technology, and better overall resources.
Simply put, these students are often not given the individual time and attention needed to thrive academically. When these students are not provided the tools to succeed, they will often lose motivation. This can categorically influence matters such as college acceptance rates.
Since university admissions tend to be directly dependent on students’ standardized testing results, white students who have a superior educational background are already at an advantage.
On average, white students are more likely to have parents who went to college than students of color. They are also more likely to be able to afford private tutoring.
Black and Hispanic students generally do not receive as much academic help from their parents and studying for standardized tests can be overwhelming. Many Hispanic students live in households where English is their second language, which can affect their academic resources.
Ivy League schools even take a student’s legacy status into account when they review their application, meaning certain students may be chosen to attend a specific school due to their parents being alumni.
Seven American universities including USC and Harvard reserve a specific percentage of admissions each year strictly for legacies.
People could argue that this is not discrimination because Black students who are children of alumni can also be chosen as a legacy. However, they’d be missing the point.
Due to minorities being denied educational benefits from the GI Bill and other racist and classist policies, it is simply not common for Black and brown students to have parents who graduated from Ivy League universities. This has less to do with blatant racism and more to do with the systemic racism that has plagued our country for hundreds of years.
Educators such as Young Whan Choi, a teacher in Oakland’s school district, also believes that standardized tests tend to use elaborate language and ask questions about exclusive topics that most minority students may not be familiar with. Though Black and Hispanic students are less likely to receive high scores on standardized tests, it does not mean that they do not deserve to be provided higher education.
The problem with essentially ignoring the race and gender of the applicant and only acknowledging their test score is that the people who receive the least amount of resources will continue to be punished.
Students who can afford private school and tutoring will almost always come out on top. And those students are more likely to be white than any other race. This is not to say that white students do not deserve to be recognized for their academic achievements. There are millions of white students who do not attend private schools and do not have access to such luxuries either.
However, the very color of their skin is a privilege in and of itself. Over the entire course of our country’s history, systemic racism has never affected white people the way it affects people of color, and this includes the educational and professional realm.
Minority students and professionals alike have an inherent understanding that no matter how hard they work for their dream, it is entirely possible that their skin color may be a factor in whether or not they get there.
Every single achievement that is listed on our college applications or resumes are left in the hands of a white executive who will determine whether or not they think we deserve to succeed.
If that executive has an inkling of racial bias or negative stereotypes attributed to people of color, our dreams may be discarded. That is why it is so important to implement policies that require higher ups to consider minority applicants.
Affirmative Action would make it so that higher ups would be required to consider race, gender, and socioeconomic status. It is not a case of requiring them to hire minorities regardless of their qualifications. Instead, it challenges executives to consider why an applicant may have scored a little lower or why they may not have as much experience. It is asking them to consider how racial and economic factors may have contributed to their results.
The people who are protesting the implementation of affirmative action based on inequality are finally accepting a harsh reality that we already know to be true: these people know that racial inequality is already happening. They just don’t care because it’s not happening to them. In their minds it is okay for non-people of color to benefit from the privileges that they were given from birth, but once those privileges start to dwindle it becomes a threat.
If you associate equal opportunity with oppression, then you must also acknowledge that you yourself have benefited from racial discrimination that affects millions of Americans every single day.
Supporters of Prop 16 are not asking for a head start. They are simply asking for their white peers and government officials to acknowledge that racial discrimination is prevalent in the academic and professional realm.
The inequitable policies that the United States government has used to historically hinder minorities has made it increasingly difficult to create an even playing field.
Success should not only be reserved for people who fit a certain description or have a certain amount of wealth. Success should only be determined by how hard a person works to achieve their wildest dreams.
America is arguably more divided than ever right now. It is up to the voters of this year’s election and the hundreds of elections to come to understand that institutional racism can be fought. It starts with voting in support of laws like Prop 16 that will benefit the people who are far too often held back due to their race and socioeconomic factors.
