AS THE doors to Mr. Jefferson's University open to welcome a new class this fall, clouds of race are spoiling what would be an otherwise sunny day. This last year brought the good, the bad and the annoying when it came to racial issues: A slew of new programs, led by the Kaleidoscope Center for Cultural Fluency; a nasty fight over diversity training and black men being asked for their DNA; and that ubiquitous phrase "diversity" peppering every colonnade. While the coming semester seems to augur more of the same, engaging first years in a racial discourse from day one can help break this cyclical wave of discord. There is no better place to start that discussion than with affirmative action.
Perhaps the single greatest argument in favor of affirmative action is that it brings in a wide breadth of perspectives, backgrounds and worldviews. It is, however, hard to defend the program on the grounds of compensating blacks for slavery; not only is that case logically thorny, but a recent New York Times report noted that only about a third of Harvard's black undergraduates were actually descended from American slaves. The rest, by and large, were either immigrants or biracial.
This raises the question -- and it is a question that should be discussed in suites and lounges throughout first-year dorms -- what is the ultimate point of affirmative action? Certainly the axioms have changed since its inception, when open discrimination was rampant. Is the purpose just to get minority faces in the schools? After all, there are plenty of well-off blacks benefiting from such programs while impoverished whites struggle unaided. Or is the goal to level the playing field when most minorities are in worse educational situations than their counterparts? If this is the case, then affirmative action is a Band-Aid trying to cover a gash the size of Alderman Road.
While Access U.Va. has closed the financial gulf blocking lower-income minority applicants from getting a fair shake at admittance, a September 2003 study by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research found that there is an educational gulf far more troublesome and far less discussed. According to the 2000 report, only 51 percent of black students graduated public high school (compared to 72 percent of whites), and a mere 20 percent left "college ready." A "college ready" student is one who has the minimum qualifications necessary for most four-year institutions to consider him or her; the national college readiness rate in 2000 was 32 percent. As the authors of the study note, "The public school system can be thought of as a pipeline
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