Editorial: Up with affirmative action

In deciding to hear two cases involving the University of Michigan's race-conscious admissions policies, the U.S. Supreme Court set the stage this week for what promises to be an historic decision on race in America. The court should cautiously uphold Michigan's policies to promote both equality across races and diversity in the classroom.

Quite simply, to do otherwise would turn back the clock on racial integration and equality in America by returning many of America's top public universities to the same racial make-up they had 30 years ago. It was then that affirmative action policies first began welcoming historically suppressed groups to the same institutions and privileges that whites had enjoyed for centuries.

There is no shortage of data to show that without the continuation of such policies, at least for now, minority groups would be pushed back toward society's fringes. Since a 1996 federal appeals court ruling struck down affirmative action in Texas, black students have come to comprise only 3 percent of the student body at the University of Texas at Austin, a top public university, despite the fact that 12 percent of the state's population is black. The scenario has been similarly tragic at the University of California at Berkeley, and the justices should prevent the same situation from being duplicated at Michigan and other universities.

Moreover, diversity of race itself adds a unique and valuable dynamic to academic communities. Opponents of affirmative action accurately note the importance of other types of diversity-including political, economic and experiential-but for most individuals, race continues to affect how their personalities develop and how they view the world. In the classroom, the dormitory and all the other areas of university life, interacting with people of those different perspectives has become an integral part of higher education. With the lack of practical measures for other types of diversity, race can also act as a useful, if not entirely accurate, proxy for those types.

Of course, the real need for affirmative action arises not out of any discriminatory practices by admissions officers but from the systemic disadvantages that minorities disproportionately must overcome. America's education system, from the earliest pre-school programs through the secondary schools, is arguably as unequal as it was when affirmative action began.

Children with minority backgrounds-especially those who are black-are more likely to be born into poor neighborhoods with higher crime rates, and thus generally have less of a chance of succeeding than their white counterparts. Until such inequalities are erased from American society, some form of affirmative action will be necessary.

Opponents of affirmative action note with some accuracy that to admit or deny admission to an applicant based on race-even as one of many factors-leaves a sour taste in the mouth of anyone seeking eventual race-blind equality of opportunity. Moreover, they argue, the narrow, rigid racial categories that any affirmative action program requires cannot possibly begin to describe one's diversity.

But because an end to affirmative action would almost certainly mean a return to a less diverse, less equal society, as well as a diminished academic environment, the Supreme Court should uphold Michigan's admissions policies.