A look at the history behind affirmative action

A look at the history behind affirmative action

Policy’s brief past filled with court challenges, debates

By Nancy Hsu

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

As opponents of affirmative action claim the policy
discriminates, proponents claim it opens windows of opportunity to
those long denied a foothold in American society. Thirty years
after its creation, the argument has come full circle with people
again crying out for change.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the culmination of the mass
movement for equal rights. The act bars employers from
discrimination in hiring on the basis of race, color, religion, sex
or national origin.

Before Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of racial equality and
Malcolm X’s outcry for Black Power, came the bus boycotts in
Montgomery, Ala., Brown vs. Board of Education, which pried open
classroom doors for minorities, and the formation of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Today, as debate rages, history forces us to question if
anything has changed.

"Nothing has changed," said Jeff Cooper, the Academic
Advancement Program’s assistant director. "The issues are the same.
There are no quotas. It must be made clear that students have
earned the right to be here."

In 1960, 4.4 percent of all doctors in the United States were
African American. Based on a survey in the L.A. Times, 3.7 percent
of all doctors in 1993 are African American. In 1960, 4.4 percent
of college teachers were African American and today it’s 4.8
percent.

Great gains, however, have been made by women.

A recent survey conducted by the Glass Ceiling Commission, a
20-member panel appointed by former President George Bush, found
that in 1982, 4 percent of corporate executive vice presidents were
women. By 1992, the figure more than doubled to 9 percent.

In the same period, the percentage of senior vice presidents
grew from 13 to 23 percent. African Americans at the vice president
level or above accounted for 1 percent in 1982 and 2.3 percent in
1992. Latinos accounted for 1.3 percent and then 2 percent.

The roots of affirmative action stretch back to the 1930s. Every
president, either Democrat or Republican, has supported affirmative
action. In 1941, Franklin Roosevelt had ordered defense contractors
to stop discriminating.

On Sept. 24, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive
Order 11246, requiring all federal contractors to "take affirmative
action to ensure that applicants are employed … without regard to
their race, creed, color or national origin."

Later in 1967, Executive Order 11375 expanded the policy to
include women.

For Cooper, there was so much going on that affirmative action
seemed insignificant at the time.

"The big issue then was the Vietnam War," Cooper said. "That was
the foremost issue then. I may have read about (affirmative action)
then, but it didn’t stick out in my mind."

It wasn’t until he applied for his current job in 1978 that he
personally felt the policy’s effects.

"I was turned away," Cooper said. "It was pretty clear to me it
was because I was a white male, but I never saw affirmative action
as keeping people out or creating victims. Somebody who was a
person of color got the job because they were more qualified."

Colleges and universities began feeling the effects of
affirmative action in 1972 with the Equal Employment Act. The act
recognized that educational opportunities are as significant as
those of employment. Up until then, institutions of higher learning
were not required to use ethnicity as a factor in admissions.

"There were hardly any colored students when I was here," said
Cooper, who also graduated in 1965 with a bachelors degree in Near
Eastern languages and cultures.

"At that point, UCLA was a different college," he said. "The
staff at the financial aid office was as racist as they can be.
Whenever a black person came in and talked about problems at home,
they just thought they were (lying), that they were just trying to
get more money."

Since then, the policy created to promote a broad representation
in employment and admissions has been challenged before the Supreme
Court.

In 1973 and again in 1974, Alan Bakke, a 38-year-old white
engineer, was denied admission to UC Davis’ medical school. UC
Davis had set aside 16 of its 100 medical school openings for
minorities on the grounds that it made up for past
discrimination.

Bakke later learned that his grades and test scores were higher
than several minorities who were admitted. Bakke argued that he had
been unfairly denied admission because of his race and took his
case to the Supreme Court.

In Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, the
Supreme Court issued a two-part decision. In the first part, five
of the justices ruled against the medical school’s special
admittance program and it’s strict quota policy. The court ordered
the school to admit Bakke.

In the second, Justice Lewis Powell stated that schools could
consider race or ethnic background as a factor in determining
admissions.

UCLA students flooded the Daily Bruin editorial pages with
letters, denouncing quota systems and the oppression of white
men.

"They all thought Bakke was getting a raw deal," said Cooper,
who also wrote a letter to the editor accusing students of
harboring "racist attitudes, insensitivity and ignorance. "That the
non-whites were beating him out. It just upset me."

The Bakke case was not the last challenge to haunt affirmative
action supporters.

The Supreme Court held in United Steelworkers of America vs.
Weber (1979) that employers and unions could conduct voluntary
training programs for minorities even if qualified whites were
excluded, provided that the programs were only temporary.

In Fulliove vs. Klutznick (1980), the court found white
businessmen’s rights were not violated by a federal law requiring
10 percent of public works funds be allotted to qualified minority
contractors.

"There was so much going on (in the 1960s)," Cooper said. "You
not only had the civil rights movement, but the beginnings of the
Chicano movement. It’s pretty obvious (the government) saw they
needed to take some kind of action to deal with this explosive
situation."