Race, the Affirmative Action Debate, Education, and Past Court Cases

This chapter provides insights into the state of racial inequality in the US today, with a particular eye on income, wealth, jobs, and education disparities. Do these factors continue to be predicted by race? If they do not, then there really is no need to consider race when making policy at the national and state levels or in higher education. The discussions over affirmative action and how it should be implemented would be moot. This chapter also provides an examination of the impact of education in general and in particular for minorities. We look at how the elimination of affirmative action at the state level has affected enrollment of minorities in higher education. We then provide a look at the history of affirmative action related to higher education in the courts. As such, we offer a detailed synopsis of past court cases that have set the stage for how affirmative action is viewed and used in higher education today. In this light, we discuss the ever-present and surprisingly controversial notion of diversity and how it shapes the affirmative action landscape. We end the chapter by discussing our methodological and analytical strategies for the remaining portion of the book.