In the 2016 verdict, the court found that race played only a modest role UT’s “holistic” affirmative action policy. In the first verdict, the court had overturned a lower court’s approval of UT’s race-sensitive admissions policy and called for race-neutral alternatives. The Supreme Court heard the case twice (Fisher I and Fisher II). The Fisher case is seen as a landmark judgment in favor of a “race-conscious, holistic admissions” system that dealt a severe blow to opponents of affirmative action. University of Texas (2013, 2016), the Supreme Court upheld UT’s affirmative action for admissions as one way to achieve campus diversity, but warned universities that all affirmative action policies might not pass constitutional muster, according to the New York Times. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, incidentally the first woman judge of the US Supreme Court, observed that colleges could strive to achieve a “critical mass” of disadvantaged students needed to achieve diversity. Student applicants Gratz and Grutter had contended that this policy discriminated against them because they were white and denied them admissions to the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and the University of Michigan Law School, respectively. Bollinger allowed educational institutions to continue race-based affirmative action while prohibiting quotas. In the United States as in India, affirmative action has faced controversy, but the US Supreme Court decisions in 2003 in the cases (Barbara) Grutter v. However, the question remains whether less privileged institutions have the resources to engage in such close scrutiny of applicant backgrounds to achieve a highly sophisticated diversity model. This was the gist of Harvard College’s race-sensitive, holistic admissions policy. If the admissions committee felt that the applicant’s race would add a new dimension to her class and enrich diversity, this candidate might be selected over another candidate with higher test scores. Justice Powell, writing the principal opinion of the court in the Bakke case, appended a summary of features of the Harvard College program as a model for race-conscious admissions that did not use quotas.Īccording to the appendix, Harvard College, besides, merit and other qualifications of an applicant, considered race among the different aspects of the background of the applicant. However, the court wanted race to be considered in some way in admissions, so that universities could have a diverse student body. Bakke (1978), the court upheld affirmative action but disallowed quotas for minorities. In Regents of the University of California v. Obviously, affirmative action had something to do with it.įor years, applicants rejected by universities have fought court cases against affirmative action, some of which have gone to the US Supreme Court, and earned nationwide attention. In the first decade of the 21st century, the gap between whites and minorities enrolling for college decreased-from 70 percent of whites, 56 percent of African Americans, and 61 percent of Hispanics in 2007 to 69 percent of whites, 65 percent of African Americans, and 63 percent of Hispanics in 2011, according to data from the National Center of Education Statistics. President Lyndon Johnson introduced “equal employment opportunity through a positive, continuing program.” In 1967, affirmative action, which was also inspired by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was extended to protect women employees’ rights. The order also established the organization now known as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Kennedy, who coined the term, issued an executive order in 1961, prohibiting discrimination by government employers on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin. In the US, affirmative action was launched in the early 1960s, and initially covered racial discrimination at the workplace. In the UK, there is no reservation the government encourages underrepresented minorities to increase their participation. The US system seeks to provide justice to groups that faced discrimination historically, by ensuring fair representation for them in education and jobs. “Affirmative action” in the US is conceptually somewhat similar to the reservation system in India, but with a major difference: there are no quotas in the US. Discrimination was legal and masqueraded as state policy. Minorities and women were prohibited from applying to universities or for higher-level jobs in their own country. Hardly 50 years ago, it wasn’t a land of opportunity for even its own people. The US has not always been a “land of opportunity” it is touted to be today.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |