Affirmative Action under fire from Trump, with a twist

In another of the Trump administration’s diversionary tactics to play to his base, and rile his liberal opponents, he has awakened the sleeping giant of affirmative action, another divisive issue; a close second to that of abortion in the United States, and one sure to gather ire, among its defendants and its opponents. In short, the perfect storm to remove the attention from the increasing circus-like atmosphere at the White House, now under the lion-taming skills of General John F.  Kelly.
 
That unenviable task withstanding, Donald Trump, has extended the politicization of education, promulgated by Betsy DeVos, who, late last month, announced that the Department of Education would be pulling back on race based complaints, and those of sexual assaults on college campuses.
 

Now comes America’s 45th president running the gamut from A to B, in an effort to divide the country and remove the taint of suspicion that he, and his election crew, allegedly colluded with the Russians to influence the 2016 election campaign. But, we’ll let Bob Mueller and his investigative crew work on that.
 

Meanwhile, there has been a shift from the traditional behavior of the Justice Department, according to The New York Times, who reported that “The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating, and suing, universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.”

The document, is “an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”
 

Or, simply put a job announcement asking for resumes, but without, a detailed list of duties or skills, but one that “suggests that the project will be run out of the division’s front office, where the Trump administration’s political appointees work, rather than its Educational Opportunities Section, which is run by career civil servants and normally handles work involving schools and universities.”
 

Even to the casual observer this represents a slippery slope that tilts towards the increased politicization of education, so prevalent in the Trump administration.
 

“The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, “intentional race-based discrimination,” cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minority students to university campuses,” noted the Times.
 

It also supports the growing conservatism that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has shown, towards voting rights, the aftermath of the DOJ investigation into the Chicago Police Department, by the Obama administration, which has received criticism by him, and especially for his withholding of a consent decree to enforce the recommended changes.
 

Praising this move is Roger Clegg, a former official in the Civil Rights division, under President Reagan, who called the news, “welcome” and “long overdue.”
 

“The civil rights laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans are as well,” he said.
 

This has been a charge from the right, for some time, but it’s hard to see this in a white majority country whose only quotas are that they receive preference, which created affirmative action practices to level the playing field for non-whites.
 

The group that has most benefited from affirmative action have been white women, a frequently overlooked fact, that even the storied Time Magazine noted in a piece written by a FOX-TV contributor before the last affirmative action case heard by the Supreme Court.
 

Sally Kohn wrote that “While people of color, individually and as groups, have been helped by affirmative action in the subsequent years, data and studies suggest women — white women in particular — have benefited disproportionately. According to one study, in 1995, 6 million women, the majority of whom were white, had jobs they wouldn’t have otherwise held but for affirmative action.

”In the ensuing days to come, this may be overlooked as both sides load their arms in defense, or attack, of picks, or panning the Trump efforts. One further issue, not to be forgot is that “Another study shows that women made greater gains in employment at companies that do business with the federal government, which are therefore subject to federal affirmative-action requirements, than in other companies — with female employment rising 15.2% at federal contractors but only 2.2% elsewhere. And the women working for federal-contractor companies also held higher positions and were paid better.” 

Kristen Clarke, the president of the liberal Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, criticized the affirmative action project, in an interview, as “misaligned with the division’s longstanding priorities.” She noted that the civil rights division was “created and launched to deal with the unique problem of discrimination faced by our nation’s most oppressed minority groups, performing work that often no one else has the resources or expertise to do.”

The Court has ruled that the benefits that “flow from having a diverse student body can justify using race as one factor among many in a “holistic” evaluation, while rejecting blunt racial quotas or race-based point systems. But what that permits in actual practice by universities — public ones as well as private ones that receive federal funding — is often murky,” noted the Times.
 

Colleges and universities are organic institutions whose growing importance in achieving middle-class, not to mention professional status, cannot be overlooked, in a just society, and removing the goals, even considering “compelling interest” and “holistic” cannot be overlooked. This was clearly seen in the historic Brown V. Board of Education decision.
 

With what often appears to be one thing, and that is often another, is the aforementioned 2016 case, brought by Abigail Fisher, who felt that the University of Texas at Austin discriminated against her, but as was later shown, had just average grades, and wouldn't have made the cut. In a telling revelation, UT was highly selective that year, even more so than Harvard, and while there was a related percentage program that might have admitted her, it did not. Instead, it admitted five that were black or Latino, and forty-two that were white.
 

“Neither Fisher nor Blum mentioned those 42 applicants in interviews. Nor did they acknowledge the 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher's who were also denied entry into the university that year. Also left unsaid is the fact that Fisher turned down a standard UT offer under which she could have gone to the university her sophomore year if she earned a 3.2 GPA at another Texas university school in her freshman year.”
 

These actions, that the Times flushed out, are less about race than appears, noted one author, and more about dismantling efforts to show equality in education, and perversely, to upend the 14th amendment, the equal protection clause so frequently cited, in civil rights cases.
 

The Trump administration, while its intentions have been exposed, may want to be careful, in what could very well be another failure, despite clever use of the front office, rather than the careers division.
 

Vanita Gupta, who ran the civil rights division in the Obama administration’s second term and is now president of the liberal Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights,  remarked,“The fact that the position is in the political front office, and not in the career section that enforces antidiscrimination laws for education, suggests that this person will be carrying out an agenda aimed at undermining diversity in higher education without needing to say it,” she said.