Affirmative Action No Longer Needed - i.e. Hillary and Obama!
An argument can now be made that it has been proven by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that America is “NOT” institutionally racist and institutionally sexist.
Not so fast, say supporters of affirmative action. Just because Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and other minorities have reached the top of their professions does not mean that ordinary blacks, Latinos or women are free from day-to-day biases that deny them equal access to top schools or jobs, they say.
As affirmative action’s power has diminished, minority enrollment has fallen at many prominent colleges, said Gary Orfield, an authority on the subject at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“If people get the impression from Obama’s success that the racial problems of this country have been solved, that would be very sad,” Orfield said. “In some ways we have moved backwards” in recent years, he said.
Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said, “Exceptions don’t make the rule.”
“By any measure, Obama and Clinton are clearly exceptional individuals,” he said. “When you really examine the masses of Americans, especially women and people of color, you still find incredible disparities,” which justify the continuation of affirmative action programs.
So …. what the proponents are now saying is the ‘average’ Black, Latino, you fill in the ethnic group, is not smart enough, not exceptional enough to succeed on their own?
Obama, who asks voters neither to support nor oppose him on the basis of his race, has dealt gently with affirmative action. He says his two young daughters have enjoyed great advantages and therefore should not receive special consideration because of their race.
“On the other hand,” he said in an April debate, “if there’s a young white person who has been working hard, struggling, and has overcome great odds, that’s something that should be taken into account” by people such as college admission officers.
“So I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination,” Obama said. “But I think that it can’t be a quota system and it can’t be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is black, or white, or Hispanic, male or female.”
Might Obama’s success undercut affirmative action?
The San Francisco Examiner Article
