By Laurel Manlow and Caroline Merck -

Proponents of affirmative action tout racial preferences as a conciliatory gesture for past evils committed against minority groups as well as a progressive measure to hasten equality. Some find the idea of ending discrimination with discrimination in the form of affirmative action utterly counterintuitive. Clearly, the benefits diversity brings to higher education more than compensate for any unfair aspects of this necessary measure. Affirmative action is intended to account for the lack of cultural capital that serves as an obstacle especially for members of minority groups. Education is an investment that lies further out of reach for certain groups not only for historical reasons but because of very relevant contemporary social and economic inequalities.  Ideally, rather than race, socioeconomic class would be the deciding factor for inequities in intellectual and cultural resources that span across races.

Affirmative action is a policy that seeks to correct injustices of the past by facilitating greater racial integration and opportunity in the present. This practice is effectively “fast forwarding” academic settings to a reality that may have taken longer to achieve in its absence.

Diversity is a desirable and necessary part of modern education. The educational benefits that come from a diverse student body alone give good reason for affirmative action. What would Boston College look like if Admissions only awarded acceptances to the dominant group in the United States with the financial resources to hire private tutors and afford an education, which annually costs more than the average family-of-four’s total household income? BC’s population would be a homogenous one.

Does equality necessarily mean color-blindness, a complete and purposeful ignorance of racial factors? Critics of affirmative action argue that it does. We have to recognize that we do not live in a classless, race-less society. In the debate over affirmative action, we have to consider whether equality, best enacted, is a passive mindset or an active force. In light of inequalities of both the recent past and the present, affirmative action is a justified step towards equality. In a situation of true equality, affirmative action would, no doubt, be a clearly unnecessary and unfair policy. The acknowledgment that our society has a history of past discrimination and continues to be very flawed fuels this conflict over policy. Economic and social inequalities exist and require an active solution.

Affirmative action exists as a small injustice—but one of the many and certainly not the worst in American history. Yet, this reversed injustice most definitely acts in favor of the general spirit of social equality. It is a necessary compromise of the absolute “objectivity” some demand. It works for the general benefit of society by placing a long under-represented group in positions of respect and promise. Justice O’Connor, in her Grutter v. Bollinger opinion, expresses the Court’s hope that race-sensitive admissions policies will end in the near future stating, “race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time…the Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” Through the enactment of policies like affirmative action, we seek to make them unnecessary–as they should be.