Affirmative action panel at USC takes on Ward Connerly and the Michigan case

By Noah Barron

When Jennifer Gratz was introduced Tuesday as a panelist at a USC forum about affirmative action, several people in the audience hissed. Gratz, who is white, sued the University of Michigan in 2003 for rejecting her and another student’s applications on the basis of race.

The Supreme Court, in a two-part decision later that year, ruled 6-3 that the Michigan preferential policies failed to meet the required standards of working solely to promote diversity. But, on a 5-4 vote, the court affirmed the right of Michigan’s School of Law to use race-conscious admissions policies to promote diversity, though Justice O’Connor wrote that she hoped such policies would no longer be needed in 25 years.

Gratz’s lawsuit galvanized groups committed to dismantling preferential admissions policies at public universities based on race.

The forum, organized by USC’s Institute of Justice and Journalism, was entitled “Affirmative Action: Dead or Alive?”—referring to recent victories scored by the anti-affirmative action lobby in courts and elections nationwide.

“I don’t consider myself a victim,” Gratz told about 30 students, professors and community members. “A lot has been said about my beliefs—that I believe I’m entitled to go to the University of Michigan—no, I believe I’m entitled to be judged on by merits and the content of my character, not on race or gender.”

Other panel members did not see it that way. Darnell Hunt, director of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, said the removal of race-based admissions policies has changed the face of college campuses. “People of color are being turned away in disproportionate numbers at UCLA.” Hunt said that under the new admissions standards, the incoming 2007 undergraduate class at UCLA would have 92 African-American freshmen, about 2 percent of the overall population.

Ward Connerly, who is black, is perhaps the most famous face of the anti-affirmative action movement. He worked with Gratz to push Michigan voters to approve Proposal 2 in 2006, which removed affirmative action from public Michigan universities. Connerly also sponsored California’s Proposition 209 in 1996 which ended affirmative action in the UC system.

Connerly, in an interview before the discussion, said, “You almost have to be a total racist to believe black people cannot succeed without the gift of affirmative action.”
The pro-affirmative action panelists, Hunt and Latina attorney Andrea Guerrero, articulated a fundamental belief that race, more than economic or class boundaries, defines the achievement gap in American college applicants. As a result, Hunt argued, affirmative action will still be necessary to level the field for years to come.

Gratz and Connerly pointed more to class disparity as a cause for gaps between white and Asian college applicants and black and Latino ones. Connerly, a former member of the University of California’s Board of Regents, called for an overhaul of UC’s admissions policies to encompass a more “holistic” view of the socio-economic challenges faced by students.

This disagreement over what role race plays in the achievement gap was the fundamental point of contention between the two sides.  The forum’s moderator, Newsweek contributing editor Ellis Cose, who wrote “Killing Affirmative Action: Would Ending It Really Result in a Better, More Perfect Union?” said, “The reality of America is that to be poor and white is not the same as to be poor and black.”   

In his opening remarks, Cose quoted President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 speech in which he said “You do not take a person, who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

Connerly countered by saying that President John F. Kennedy’s intention in creating race-based programs was simply to remove prejudice in schools and workplaces, not to give extra preference.

The audience generally remained silent, though murmurs of agreement or disagreement were audible during certain statements from panel members, including when Gratz agreed that the removal of affirmative action was a necessary step, despite the resulting shortage of minority doctors serving minority communities.

At one point, the topic of top universities creating a small intellectual elite among racial minorities came up, and Connerly suggested that African Americans need not attend those universities to succeed. He said he had received his degree from Sacramento State and it hadn’t prevent him from achieving. Some in the audience nodded, while others shook their heads.

Gratz said, “It makes me wonder if we should have elite universities at all.”

Cose responded: “If you get rid of Harvard, Yale, Stanford Law School, then you just got rid of the Supreme Court.”  If minorities don’t have access to the schools that feed into institutions of power, he said, decision making will stay in the hands of whites.

Among the audience members who hissed Gratz at the outset was Adam Lerman, an outspoken critic of the dismantling of affirmative action policies in California and Michigan. Lerman, who is a member of the group By Any Means Necessary, said, “The real world is unequal and a society is required to do something to offset that inequality.”

Noah Barron is a USC Annenberg graduate journalism student. He welcomes your feedback via email at noah.barron@usc.edu or at his website, www.noahbarron.com.