Students and faculty gathered at 200 Church Tuesday to hear a variety of perspectives in a panel entitled “Diversity and Affirmative Action: What is the Difference?”
“Wesleyan is called ‘Diversity University,’” said Assistant Professor of Government Melanye Price. “You come here are ask for diversity. If you bill yourself as that, you have to fit the bill.”
The bulk of the panel’s time focused on affirmative action and its role in society. Associate Professor of History, American Studies, and African American Studies Renee Romano put the issue into context by providing a historical survey of affirmative action.
“This public policy, used to aid African Americans, other minorities, and ultimately women, emerges in 1960,” she said. “The term was first coined in 1961 in by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a report. It becomes law in 1964 and outlaws discrimination based on race and gender.”
According to Romano, one sentiment behind the implementation of affirmative action was the idea that the Civil Rights Law was not doing enough. Instead, the thinking went, the government had to do something to help make opportunities a reality for those minorities.
By the 1980s, however, opponents of affirmative action claimed that although the policy was once needed, it was no longer necessary as discrimination and racism had fizzled out.
Romano led listeners in reframing the debate over the policy.
“What if we explored the ways in which the government favored white people?” she asked. “Social Security was explicitly written to exclude blacks. The benefits excluded agricultural and domestic workers, the two main professions for blacks at the time. In the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the same workers were excluded.” She also pointed to the GI Bill, a massive government program that administers aid at the local level. Romano asserted that many people of color are, again, excluded from receiving this assistance.
“We need to understand how the government rewards whites, and creates white privilege,” she said. “It is impossible to criticize affirmative action and not take this into account,”
Price followed by connecting affirmative action to the current situation surrounding the college admissions process. She alluded to the University of Michigan (U-M) case argued in 2003 in which the plaintiff Jennifer Gratz alleged the reason she was not admitted to the school was because too many minority students had taken her place.
“You get a rejection letter and think it’s racism,” Price said. “This has become part of the narrative of why students don’t get into college. They point to minorities, but don’t point to legacies, or donors. In the American psyche this bias has to be overcome.”
Price explained that Gratz was sought out by the Center for Individual Rights, a far-right organization that essentially screens for debates to publicize.
“The problem has been the public’s willingness to accept the actions of an organization like this,” she said. “People identify with Gratz […] Many Americans fail to acknowledge white privilege. They only see one thing African Americans are getting.”
Assistant Professor of English Allan Isaac elaborated on the U-M case and explored the undergraduate admissions process. According to Isaac, U-M receives approximately 40,000 applications each year. The school assigns points to each applicant with the total number being 150. Twenty of those points are given to those coming from underrepresented groups, which raised concern amongst prospective students because they felt this advantage would make for an automatic admittance.
According to Isaac, studies show this is not the case, and all students have an opportunity to be admitted.
“If someone is on the borderline [of being admitted], U. Mich flags the application for unusual circumstances, like social disadvantage, alumni, sports, and race,” he said. “But somehow your race is unusual. All of these things are made equivalent.”
Isaac explained that U-M sets a value for race but wants a holistic view of the entire process. It does not want to talk about the race question.
“This color-blindness is a double step,” he said. “You recognize race, but it makes race unspeakable and racism stops conversation.”
To round out the panel, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Anthropology Kehaulani Kauanui talked about the property of whiteness, an idea developed by scholar Cheryl Harris.
“Property is the right to have a thing but not the thing itself,” Kauanui said. “Harris talks about the origin of property rights.”?She described how non-white European groups coalesced into one main white category and how this racial category evolved into property. Whiteness became an element that citizens valued.
“The primary beneficiaries [of affirmative action] are white women, then men of color, then women of color,” she said. “All three have a different relationship to race and gender. The myth is that women of color are ‘double dipping’ because they count for two categories, but they are not the main beneficiaries at all.”
The panel was organized in conjunction with the Talking Points series sponsored by the Faculty Executive Committee, the WSA, and the Office of Residential Life.
“I thought Talking Points was very successful,” said 200 Church RA LaShawn Springer ’08. “We had a large turnout and I really believe that people walked out of that discussion with a better understanding of the issues surrounding diversity and affirmative action. It certainly made everyone think about the implications of having an institution such as Wesleyan be coined as ‘Diversity University’ and whether or not that holds true.”
Many students appreciated the academic tone of the lecture.
“I thought the panel was very informative and thought-provoking,” said Emma Teitel ’09. “All of the professors who spoke offered a unique expertise on the topic and they really complemented each other well.”
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