By Ann Heywood, for the Chippewa Valley Post
An upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling could signal the end of the Civil Rights Era in higher education, according to a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire faculty member who has studied the issue.
David Shih, an associate professor of English at UW-EC, discussed the pending case (Fisher v. The University of Texas at Austin, or Fisher II) in a recent presentation at the Volume One Gallery. The case concerns Abigail Fisher’s complaint that she was denied admission to the University of Texas because of her white race and the University’s affirmative action policy.
One reason why Fisher could win her case, Shih said, is that universities must now defend affirmative action on the basis that diversity is a “compelling interest” in education and society. Until a Supreme Court decision in 1978 (in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke), the rationale for affirmative action (in executive orders and under the Civil Rights Act) had been remediation (making up for past discriminatory practices).
Shih, a Chinese American, told the audience of about 65 people his personal story of scholarship awards, including receiving the Rackham Merit Fellowship for Historically Underrepresented Minorities at the University of Michigan. This eventually led him into his academic career.
In 2008 Shih was the first person to be appointed as an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity Fellow at UW-EC. He said his story suggested important questions in the affirmative action debate.
Shih proposed a working definition of affirmative action as “taking into consideration a person’s social group identities, such as race or gender, when making a decision related to the allocation of resources (e.g. a job, grants, contracts, admission to college, etc.).”
With that, he began a review of what he called the long history of affirmative action for white people in America that has led to today’s pervasive culture of white privilege. In the Colonial Period, Shih said, people from Europe and Africa mixed in a way that was not possible just 50 years later.
In 1660 a Virginia law set a five year limit on bond-servitude for those “of what Christian nation so ever” but established no such limit for black slaves, he said. The Naturalization Act of 1790 permitted only “free white persons” to become U.S citizens. Other racial minorities gained the right to naturalization over many years, the last being the Japanese in 1952, Shih said.
In the meantime other legislation denied land, human rights, and citizenship rights to minority races, he added.
The Homestead Act of 1862 gave 160 acres virtually free to citizens who wanted the land, and the vast majority of these were white people, Shih said. The act remained in force until 1934, and benefitted some 1.5 million white families, he added.
Under this act, 9% of Wisconsin land was given away, including parcels in the Chippewa Valley. In 2000 the estimated number of adult descendants of beneficiaries under the original Homestead Act was around 46 million people – about 25% of the adult population of the United States, Shih said.
Other legislation, including the Social Security Act of 1935 – because it excluded farm workers and domestics – and the GI Bill of Rights (1944) were framed in such a way as to give clear advantages to white people and to disadvantage black Americans, Shih said. Local policies such as redlining neighborhoods and “sundown towns” also kept black Americans at a major economic disadvantage, he said.
Sundown towns – including at least nine in Wisconsin – were communities where black people could work by day but were expected to return to their homes elsewhere by sundown. Shih noted that in 1890, only eight Wisconsin counties had no black residents. By 1930, 16 counties had no black residents and fewer black people lived outside of Milwaukee than in 1890.
Today, the wealth gap has developed so that white people have 10 to 12 times the wealth that blacks have, and white people’s average inheritance is about 10 times bigger, Shih said, and added that the wealth gap has nearly tripled in the past 25 years.
Shih explored the rationales for modern affirmative action policies: remediation and benefits of diversity. He concluded with an explanation of what he called seven myths of affirmative action and the realities that belie them.
Among these myths are: 1) It’s not race; it’s a class problem; 2) Affirmative Action (AA) means that a less qualified person gets the admission letter; 3) AA is just for people of color; and, 4) students of color get more than their fair share of scholarships.
Shih’s presentation was sponsored by the Chippewa Valley Civil Liberties Union (see cvclu.org). More information is available through Shih’s blog (professorshih.blogspot.com), aclu-wi.org, and Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen.
Ann Heywood of Eau Claire is the current president of the ACLU-WI Chippewa Valley Chapter.