2023-06-30 16:00:52
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that considerations of race or ancestry for university admissions are unconstitutional. For far too long, many universities have regarded skin color as a “touchstone” – and not the challenges and skills that an applicant has mastered or acquired, according to the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Washington on Thursday. The so-called “Affirmative Action” has been a public issue for years. But what was it regarding specifically – and what no longer applies?
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What does affirmative action mean?
In general, one speaks of an “Affirmation Action” when universities or other educational institutions, but also, for example, employers, favor applicants from disadvantaged groups. This does not only mean people with dark skin, but also women or people with physical disabilities, for example. In German one also speaks of “positive discrimination” and when the allocation is regulated on a percentage basis, of quotas.
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Die Standford University defines the measure as “positive interventions” designed to increase the presence of women and minorities in areas where they have historically been excluded: in employment, education and culture. In the US, this rule applied to universities that have restricted admission. She referred primarily to black people and people belonging to an ethnic minority.
Why was Affirmative Action introduced?
Affirmative action has been used in the United States since the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-20th century. The idea behind it was to counteract discrimination once morest blacks, for example, who often find it more difficult to study in the USA due to structural obstacles, with targeted support.
The concept of affirmative action was first introduced in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. With Executive Order 10925, he established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency tasked with ensuring that hiring procedures by government clients are free from racial prejudice. It became effective in 1964.
Back then, black people were much more discriminated once morest than they are today. The first black man entered the University of Mississippi in 1962. At the time, the Supreme Court had to force the university to accept 29-year-old James H. Meredith. President Kennedy sent federal troops to campus on his first day of college. Nevertheless, there were protests and riots with two dead and 400 injured.
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Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, explained the basic idea of ”Affirmative Action” in a 1965 speech to black students at Howard University: “We want not just liberty, but equal opportunity, not just equality before the law, but real empowerment, not just equality as law and theory, but as fact and result.” Johnson was referring to the fact that ethnic minorities are disadvantaged not only in the actual admission to university, but also in their entire educational journey.
2020 data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that among 25-year-olds, 15 percent of blacks and 8 percent of whites have not completed high school. Overall, at that age, 35 percent of whites had college degrees, but only 21 percent of blacks.
How was the rule implemented?
Affirmative action was not used as a quota rule in the US. Rather, it might be interpreted and applied differently by universities and colleges. The educational institutions had to adhere to the “Affirmative Action”, but often regulated themselves to what extent they trusted the voluntary information provided by the applicants.
Facilities also had to offer programs that support disadvantaged groups or draw attention to their discrimination. For example, government contracts and funds were only awarded to institutions that contractually committed themselves to complying with the “Affirmative Action”.
Why is the rule being abolished now?
Nine US states had already abolished the “Affirmative Action” for university admissions: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nebraska and Washington. In California, the rule was not reinstated until 2020. Opponents of the rule have always criticized that “positive discrimination” once morest disadvantaged groups only results in “negative discrimination” of the other side.
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Opponents of the “Affirmative Action” had sued once morest the admissions procedures at the elite Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. They argued that college admissions policies were discriminatory. The court, with its conservative majority, is now once more overturning a decision in a decades-old precedent. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that skin color should not be the deciding factor in the approval process – but might certainly be taken into account. The court upheld the verdict in later decisions.
In its reasoning, the court pointed out that universities might continue to take into account how the skin color or descent shaped the lives of the applicants – “whether due to discrimination, inspiration or in some other way”.
The Supreme Court had moved significantly to the right under former Republican President Donald Trump. When the case was heard at the end of last year, there were already indications that the court might consider skin color to be unconstitutional in the approval process.
RND/lhen
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