Support affirmative action in schools.

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Happy Thursday! As promised, here's an overview of affirmative action, particularly how it's unfolding in higher education right now. This was a conversation requested after last week's newsletter on tokenizing people of color. I hope it encourages us to look at key issues with a nuanced lens and hold conflicting truths. In this case, we can acknowledge the flaws of affirmative action programs while working to improve it.

How has affirmative action impacted you? Respond to this email with your stories. And get your questions ready for Saturday, where we dive deeper on the key topics from this week with community insights and feedback.

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Follow conversations on affirmative action and how they impact your alma mater and/or schools in your community.
Ensure affirmative action initiatives at your company or organization are equitable for all marginalized groups.

If you're based in CA:
Vote to repeal Proposition 209, a state constitutional amendment from 1996 that banned any consideration of race or ethnicity in admissions decisions at the University of California, the California State University and other public entities.

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By Jami Nakamura Lin

Last week, the U.S. Justice Dept. accused Yale of discriminating against white and Asian American students in its application process (NYTimes). The case argues that Asian American and white applicants have 10–25% of the chance of being admitted as African Americans with similar applications, and accuses Yale of “unlawfully dividing Americans into racial and ethnic blocs” (Washington Post). Harvard won in a similar case last year, but the case was appealed with support of the Trump administration in early 2020 (Inside Higher Ed). Both Ivy League schools “categorically denies” these claims, each asserting their commitment to fair and equitable acceptance policies (Washington Post). Regardless, the challenges against both universities, in the midst of conversations of race and equity, have placed the strengths and peril of affirmative action in the spotlight.

The idea behind affirmative action is simple: create rules and regulations that require organizations to proactively pursue equitable practices re: hiring, acceptance rates, etc. This means excluding race, ethnicity, and gender from the selection process and choosing the best candidate, regardless of identity. But it also means including race, ethnicity, and gender in the selection process to ensure a diverse and equitable community. This creates a paradox – how do we equitably prevent racial discrimination without reinforcing it at the same time? This matches public perception; a Gallup poll shows that most Americans both support affirmative action programs for racial minorities, and oppose hiring decisions that take racial backgrounds into consideration (Gallup).

Before we dive into the nuances, let’s explore why affirmative action is relevant to education. In America, communities of color have had significantly less educational opportunities than their white peers, based on a wide range of factors that perpetuate systemic oppression. From inequitable public school funding to redlining, the school-to-prison pipeline to lack of representation in staff and administration, students of color face challenges for equitable educational opportunities (Brookings for a quick overview, and visit our archives for newsletters related to education). Because of these factors, it’s no surprise that 65 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, students are increasingly attending racially segregated schools (Vox).

Besides, access to quality higher education in the U.S. has been reserved for the wealthy and privileged, made evident by the college-admissions cheating and bribery scandal that made news last year – right around the same time as the Harvard case (The Atlantic). Even without fraud, these families have more opportunities to secure a spot for their children at prestigious universities (examples at The Atlantic). Affirmative action at universities is designed to weigh these systemic disparities against applications for marginalized groups, create a more equal playing field, and create more accountability for inclusivity. Studies show that marginalized communities that have benefited from affirmative action are more likely to graduate college, earn professional degrees, and have higher incomes than peers who haven’t, which fosters necessary social mobility for disadvantaged populations (Harvard).

Critics against affirmative action in schools argue that it takes away spaces from white students that deserve the spaces as much, or more so, than marginalized groups. Ironically, the group of people that have benefited most from affirmative action has historically been white women. When affirmative action was institutionalized in 1961 by President Kennedy, it focused on “race” and “color,” a direct response to the growing civil rights movement of the era (Vox). The term is designed to encourage companies and institutions to “do something,” and was coined by an African-American lawyer named Hobart Taylor, Jr. (New Yorker). Pressure from the Women’s Movement in the late 1960s encouraged President Johnson to amend the order to include gender. After two decades of affirmative action in the private sector, the California Senate Government Organization Committee found that white women held a majority of managerial jobs (57,250) compared with African Americans (10,500), Latinos (19,000), and Asian Americans (24,600) (Vox). Despite this, most white women are in opposition to affirmative action, and most cases brought against affirmative action initiatives are led by white women (Vox).

But the particular case against Yale was initiated by an Asian American advocacy group, which raises another critical lens to the issue. Affirmative action is intended to support people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds. However, there are concerns about how Asian Americans are treated based on the “model minority myth,” a stereotype suggesting that all Asian Americans are smart, hard-working, and likely to be successful (Wiley). Thus, schools may cap the number of Asian American recipients to make way for other marginalized groups. This is called “racial balancing,” and harms everyone, including Asian Americans. It reinforces the stereotype and treats Asian Americans as a homogenous group (American Progress). Data shows that college attendance rates vary drastically among Asian ethnicities, so it’s crucial to hold affirmative action programs accountable for how they can fuel these disparities (American Progress). When it comes to the Yale case, 20% of Yale’s undergraduates are of Asian descent, 14% are Hispanic or Latino, 8% are Black, and 7% are multiracial (Washington Post).

Affirmative action can also fall flat if students aren't adequately seen, heard, and supported once they arrive on campus. Students can find themselves propped up as tokens for colleges and universities to look more diverse than they really are (Anti-Racism Daily). And students at colleges across the country have taken to social media to share sobering accounts of racism and discrimination they've faced from teachers, administration, and peers (Vox). If we don't find a more equitable way to implement affirmative action practices and policies, we can continue to uphold the same systems of oppression within higher education.

Some people have argued shifting affirmative action from looking at race towards analyzing class, which would support economically disadvantaged individuals across race and gender divides (The Atlantic). Others suggest that we need to shift the outcomes away from this “quota” mentality to “outcomes” for systemically marginalized groups: less diversity, more reparations (The Atlantic). Whatever the case, it’s clear we need a more equitable solution. Part of that needs to be investing in solving the systemic inequities that have created this issue.

But another necessary component of this work is protecting the right to implement affirmative action policies altogether. The Trump administration rescinded Obama-era guidance documents encouraging affirmative action at colleges and universities back in 2018, which signaled potential lawsuits to come (NPR). The decisions at Yale and Harvard could signal more comprehensive efforts to dismantle affirmative action as a whole. Like many responses to social injustice, affirmative action is not perfect. But the concept can’t be discarded based on its application – we need to do better, and continue to advocate for equitable opportunities for all.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

U.S. Justice Dept. accused Yale of discriminating against white and Asian American students in its application process
Affirmative action has been proven to increase opportunities for marginalized communities, but also contribute to the "model minority myth" and view Asian Americans as a homogeneous group
Dismantling affirmative action can reduce collective accountability for inclusivity for marginlized communities

RELATED ISSUES

7/16/2020 | Respect AAVE.

7/15/2020 | End racial bias in school discipline.

7/8/2020 | Investigate school district funding disparities.

7/2/2020 | Remove police from our public schools.

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Nicole Cardoza 8/13/20 Nicole Cardoza 8/13/20

Don't tokenize people of color.

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Happy Thursday,

And thank you for all the kind birthday wishes! Today's newsletter was inspired by the recent news at Bon Appétit, but also the nomination of Kamala Harris as vice-presidential candidate. We're watching the aftermath of the protests unfold as we march towards an election where racism will be centerstage. The next three months may be the most critical for dismantling white supremacy, and I'm glad we're committed to making an impact.

We have some new faces here 👋🏾 explore our website to learn more about this project, explore the archives for all 70 issues published since launch, and enroll your office or classroom with our corporate plans.

As always, your donations are greatly appreciated. You can give on our website, PayPal, Venmo (@nicoleacardoza), or by subscribing for $5/mo on our Patreon. Thank you for everyone that makes this newsletter possible.

Nicole

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Reflect on the following questions:

What's an example of tokenization you've seen in your own community?
How may you have you tokenized someone in the past?
What may tokenization look like at your office? Your school?

GET EDUCATED

By Nicole Cardoza

Bon Appétit magazine is experiencing an exodus of talent and staff in their video department, Test Kitchen, after accusations of tokenizing people of color. The controversy started in June when a photo of editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport in brownface surfaced online, leading to his resignation. This event sparked more extensive conversations on pay gaps between white workers and people of color at the organization, which the magazine pledged to address (NYTimes). Yet two months later, it looks like their efforts fell short. Three people of color (half of the non-white Test Kitchen staff) stepped down, and three others resigned in solidarity (NYPost). Many remaining staffers refused to appear in Test Kitchen videos until colleagues were paid fairly, and the organization has put the project on pause until September (NYPost).

To fully understand the controversy, we need to understand how tokenization works. Tokenizing is when individuals, companies, the media, and other platforms center a non-white person in a position of power to deflect calls of racism or discrimination. This is similar to “playing the friend card,” a concept we discussed in a newsletter last week. But tokenization is more commonly seen in public figures – like leaders, influencers, executives, lead characters in movies and books, etc. Tokenization is a sinister form of racism because, despite the fact that the individual is represented in a specific space, the system is usually failing them. It provides an illusion of change that’s not yet realized. These scenarios are especially easy to do in cases like Bon Appétit, where placing people of color on video visually depicts inclusivity that’s not fully realized behind the scenes.

A more general example of this is the “Black people in horror movies” trope. Often, the token Black person in a horror film was the most likely to die (TV Tropes). This came from early attempts to diversify movies by adding in a character of color, one who often wasn’t provided with character development and was easy to kill off. So despite what the film looked like, not everyone had the best chance of survival from the start.

The term was popularized in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and explained succinctly by Malcolm X in an interview with Louis Lomax, an African American journalist, in 1963:max

LOMAX: But we have made some gains…

MALCOLM X: What gains? All you have gotten is tokenism–one or two Negroes in a job or at a lunch counter so the rest of you will be quiet. It took the United States Army to get one Negro into the University of Mississippi; it took troops to get a few Negroes in the white schools at Little Rock and another dozen places in the South. It has been nine years since the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated schools, yet less than ten per cent of the Negro students in the South are in integrated schools. That isn’t integration, that’s tokenism!

(via Teaching American History)

Tokenization is often a way for companies and other organizations to deflect blame or resentment. After criticism for racist hiring practices, companies may be quick to hire a DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) leader at the company to show progress. But that role alone may not be sufficient enough for change. According to the careers site Glassdoor, jobs related to diversity fell 60% between early March and early June due to coronavirus (Washington Post). Budget cuts often affect human resources departments, considering a decrease in staffing and hiring more directly impacts their workload. But, as sources argue in the article, these roles are actually incredibly important for navigating a pandemic disproportionately affecting people of color. But opportunities for these same roles spiked immediately after the protests, demonstrating a renewed urgency in the work – or at least, an urgency to look like the work is happening.

"
Companies use DEI programs for PR strategy and then slash them like they’re deadweight. Yes, some companies are facing difficult financial decisions, but *there could not be a worse time* to reduce the function that ensures your marginalized employees feel seen and heard.

Alex Lahmeyer, former Thumbtack diversity and inclusion lead, for Washington Post

And as we saw with the Bon Appétit example, oftentimes tokenized individuals are elevated as equals, but not treated as such. It’s more insidious to pretend an organization has equitable hiring practices by tokenizing people than not having them at all.

We can also further tokenize people with our words and actions. Consider how people will use the fact that “we had a Black president” as a deflection for racism persisting in America. When we do this, we bypass the harm that marginalized communities experience (more about bypassing in a previous newsletter). We can do this in more damaging ways, too. During his first presidential campaign, Joe Biden referred to Barack Obama, who was a senator at the time, as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” (BuzzFeed). That comment implies that African American men generally are not bright, clean, or nice-looking, which isn’t just incredibly inaccurate. It reinforces the opposite of that statement in people’s minds. And, it takes away from the inherent strengths and talents of Obama himself.

Tokenization is exacerbated when the individual has additional marginalized identities. People that identify as both non-white and LGBTQ+, for example, can be tokenized because of one identity, the other or both. Consider the harmful racist rhetoric that Kamala Harris, whose appointment as a Black, Indian, and female vice-presidential candidate has received in the past 48 hours.

As someone who’s personally been tokenized, I can speak to the burden it imposes on people in that position. I know how it feels to be propped up as an example, even when I know I’m being treated differently than my peers. It can place people of color in an uncomfortable position, perhaps finally in a role they’ve desired and pursuing something they care deeply about, but unsure if their presence is making things better or worse. I know I’ve stayed in roles hoping that I can make a difference, but realizing that I still don’t have the organizational power to create change. Tokenization often forces people’s hands, which is one of many ways white supremacy oppresses people of color.

Instead of tokenizing people, we should first focus on truly celebrating their accomplishments themselves, regardless of how they look in a world of systemic oppression. And we also must ensure that the spaces these people occupy genuinely support them. For example, instead of using the nomination of Kamala Harris for vice president as a deflection, we must acknowledge the challenges that people of color and women have faced historically to gain political leadership – you can read some history on the progress of Black leaders on Pew Research.

And when we see an example of tokenizing happening in front of us, it’s our responsibility to keep listening and learning. Ask more questions at your workplace, do research on companies on their hiring practices, and see if companies making new hires have committed beyond the press release. And if you have power and privilege, you can stand with other people of color taking a stand. Also, we don’t have to wait for an act of tokenization to start this work.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Bon Appétit Magazine is experiencing a talent exodus after paying people of color less than white video talent
Tokenization is when people of color are hired or elevated to deflect accusations of racism or discrimination
Oftentimes tokenization provides the perception of change still yet realized
We must look beyond the person and hold systems accountable