Editor:

In light of the ongoing Martin Luther King Jr. celebration on campus, attention has been drawn to the case that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear regarding the constitutionality of affirmative action on college campuses. The Bush administration has filed a friend of the court brief in support of the position that Affirmative Action policies, which give minority students an advantage in admissions and scholarship opportunities based on their races, is unconstitutional.

I find several things severely problematic with this position. Most opponents of Affirmative Action cite the evils of so-called “reverse discrimination.” I believe that this concept in and of itself is utterly oxymoronic. The dominant group in any society can not cry “discrimination” just because of the simple fact that they are the dominant group. Even though a white student may not gain acceptance in one institution, his or her chances for acceptance in another school are still the same. A minority student may not have the same options. The very fact that one is white (and in this spirit, male, upper class and heterosexual) confers certain advantages to such an individual that a minority person does not have.

Most people critical of affirmative action policies adopt a “color-blind” orientation, to use a phrase that Evelyn Hu-DeHart used in her recent address at the Union. This color-blind orientation glosses over dynamics of racial inequality that still exist in contemporary American society. By ignoring racial inequalities in society by just saying that “racial discrimination no longer occurs,” we are not solving anything.

Affirmative Action is still necessary when the makeup of power relations between groups in contemporary American society is so starkly unequal.

Patrick Lagua

Senior, Political Science and Gender Studies