2008 Woodie Awards
EDITORIAL: Necessary but not sufficient
Staff Editorial--Michigan Daily (U. Michigan)
Issue date: 10/20/03 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 1
(U-WIRE) ANN ARBOR, Mich. - "As a public university, we ... have an important and distinctive role to provide access to students from all walks of life." -- University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, on the role of affirmative action in academia, following the court's decision.
Last year, as the University prepared to defend the constitutionality of affirmative action in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, civil rights organizations, politicians and representatives of the University framed affirmative action as an indispensable tool to ameliorate the country's long history of racial inequality. A win at the Supreme Court would be a victory on par with the court's landmark 1954 opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, which mandated the desegregation of America's schools. And while affirmative action is a necessary part of the University's admissions process, its merits fall far short of providing "access to students from all walks of life."
As part of the Michigan Colloquium on Race and American Political Development, an ongoing speaker series about race and politics, on Thursday, University of Pennsylvania Prof. Thomas Sugrue, who is best known for writing the definitive history of postwar Detroit, gave a lecture entitled "Jim Crow's Last Stand: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Suburban North." Sugrue discussed racial segregation in the country's northern cities, focusing heavily on the struggle to integrate the quintessential postwar suburban communities known as Levittowns.
In an era in which millions of black Americans found themselves trapped in innercities rife with poverty and blatant racial discrimination, the effort to challenge Levitt's policy of excluding black families from his neighborhoods was largely symbolic. After a screening process intended to ensure that the black family would blend into the white neighborhood well, one or two well-off black families would move in to "desegregate" the Levittown. Largely unaffected by these developments in Levittowns, millions of blacks remained redlined inside their cities, while whites were free to fan out into the suburbs.
Not surprisingly, northern metropolitan areas remain highly segregated along racial lines. Now, as civil-rights organizations focus on increasing the number of blacks attending the nation's colleges, the parallels between this effort and the Levittown effort are difficult to ignore. Affirmative action can be a valuable part of any strategy intended to improve the condition of black Americans, but it helps only a relatively small number of the nation's underrepresented minorities. Framing the entire civil rights agenda around affirmative action ignores other equally important initiatives.
As a University community, we cannot pat ourselves on the back and declare victory merely because the Supreme Court agrees that diversity is a compelling state interest. We must demand bold new policies that will expand opportunity and hope to the millions of Americans whom affirmative action alone cannot reach.
Last year, as the University prepared to defend the constitutionality of affirmative action in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, civil rights organizations, politicians and representatives of the University framed affirmative action as an indispensable tool to ameliorate the country's long history of racial inequality. A win at the Supreme Court would be a victory on par with the court's landmark 1954 opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, which mandated the desegregation of America's schools. And while affirmative action is a necessary part of the University's admissions process, its merits fall far short of providing "access to students from all walks of life."
As part of the Michigan Colloquium on Race and American Political Development, an ongoing speaker series about race and politics, on Thursday, University of Pennsylvania Prof. Thomas Sugrue, who is best known for writing the definitive history of postwar Detroit, gave a lecture entitled "Jim Crow's Last Stand: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Suburban North." Sugrue discussed racial segregation in the country's northern cities, focusing heavily on the struggle to integrate the quintessential postwar suburban communities known as Levittowns.
In an era in which millions of black Americans found themselves trapped in innercities rife with poverty and blatant racial discrimination, the effort to challenge Levitt's policy of excluding black families from his neighborhoods was largely symbolic. After a screening process intended to ensure that the black family would blend into the white neighborhood well, one or two well-off black families would move in to "desegregate" the Levittown. Largely unaffected by these developments in Levittowns, millions of blacks remained redlined inside their cities, while whites were free to fan out into the suburbs.
Not surprisingly, northern metropolitan areas remain highly segregated along racial lines. Now, as civil-rights organizations focus on increasing the number of blacks attending the nation's colleges, the parallels between this effort and the Levittown effort are difficult to ignore. Affirmative action can be a valuable part of any strategy intended to improve the condition of black Americans, but it helps only a relatively small number of the nation's underrepresented minorities. Framing the entire civil rights agenda around affirmative action ignores other equally important initiatives.
As a University community, we cannot pat ourselves on the back and declare victory merely because the Supreme Court agrees that diversity is a compelling state interest. We must demand bold new policies that will expand opportunity and hope to the millions of Americans whom affirmative action alone cannot reach.