1
Meir Weinberg
Professor Dominique Zino
English 110
October 12, 2010
Affirmative Action Debate
CHARLES GIBSON: Good Evening. I’m Charles Gibson, former host of ABC’s World News Tonight, one of the premier television news magazines in the United States. It is my honor to welcome the audience here to LincolnCenter in New York City as well as those watching the debate from home on this November 4, 2009, the one year anniversary of President Obama’s election,and hope you enjoy and gain from the debate. The topic that will be discussed tonight is Affirmative Action, focusing primarily on the issue of minorities in education. I am absolutely delighted that these very prominent debaters opened up space in their very busy schedules to debate this important issue. The purpose of tonight’s debate is solely recreational and educational and I would just like to remind everyone that no policy changes will be directly linked to this debate.
On the Republican podium we have Roger Clegg. Mr. Clegg served as Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush Sr. Administrations. He is a graduate of RiceUniversity as well as YaleUniversityLawSchool. As Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Clegg held the second highest positions in the both the Civil Rights and the Environment and Natural Resource Divisions. He is currently the President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity3.
On the Democratic side we havethe Honorable Sonya Sotomayor. Judge Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from PrincetonUniversity and received her Juris Doctorate from YaleUniversityLawSchool. Her honor also served as the Judge of the District Court for the Southern District of New York as well as a judge in the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She is currently an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court6.
The format for tonight’s debate is as follows:
I will ask three questions to each speaker and they will be given two minutes to respond to the question. As the two minutes begin to run out, the speakers will be signaled with a light on the top of their podiums. I discussed the order of the debate with the participants, and both agreed to allow Judge Sotomayor to begin the debate.
The first question is:
What is your position on the current state of Affirmative Action in the United States?
SONYA SOTOMAYOR: Good Evening Charlie. I would just like to thank you, LincolnCenter, and the people of New York for hosting this debate. I am certain that this will be a very educational experience and I am excited to debate with someone with the experience of Mr. Clegg.
Affirmative Action is a policy that ensures the rights of minorities in this country. As much as people try to deny it, the fact is that many people do have racial prejudices, and minorities are treated unfairly and unequally. Some of you may remember the case of the New Haven Firefighters. The firefighters were given a test for promotions, but the way that the test was designed gave a bias against minorities. When the results of the test were returned, only two Hispanics and no blacks scored high enough to receive promotions. I voted in favor of the firefighters, because an unbiased test would not have only 3.8 percent of those who passed being minorities. Again, out of nineteen firefighters who passed, seventeen were white7.
It is unjust for a test to be geared toward one race’s success while minorities suffer and lose out on the ability to receive well deserved promotions because of their color or nationality. America is a melting pot of cultures and it is an absolute injustice that the pot has not been stirred and the minorities are still stuck at the bottom.
CHARLES GIBSON: Thank you Judge Sotomayor. Mr. Clegg, your response.
ROGER CLEGG: Thank you Charlie. I want to thank her Honor Sotomayor for agreeing to debate this issue with me, and as many of you may know it is an issue that I am very involved with daily.
Affirmative Action is a policy that was adopted by President Johnson in 1965 to combat discrimination. I want to remind everyone what was going on at that time in the United States. The Civil Rights movement was in full swing and discrimination was still rampant. At that time there was a need for what President Kennedy had called “affirmative action”, because the reality was that regardless of merit, minorities were not being admitted into institutions of higher learning solely because they were not white9.
Fortunately, that is not the world that we live in today. College admissions boardswork to admit students based on merit, yet there is still a push to admit a quota of minority students, which consequently pushes more qualified students out of the door. England has adopted a policy similar to affirmative action called positive discrimination. The reality with affirmative action is just that—while trying to equal the playing field for minorities, they are discriminated for, which is then an injustice toward those slighted because they are not minorities and it devaluates the academic achievements of minorities.
If we ever want to have true equality in this country, then affirmative action must be abolished.
CHARLES GIBSON: Thank you for those strong words, Mr. Clegg. Moving on to the next question, which will be answered first by Ms. Sotomayor:
Do you think that affirmative action is a social or a political policy?
SONYA SOTOMAYOR: I think that it’s a political reaction to a social problem, Charlie. The politicians in Washington and the state capitals saw that if the trend of discrimination in the college acceptance offices did not end, then society would end up with a bunch of educated whites and uneducated minorities. Throughout my career on the bench I’ve consistently voted to ensure equality for people of all colors, races, religions, sexual orientations and creeds. I would like to correct a misconception that some of you may have. I am only pro affirmative action because of the need for it. I wish there wasn’t a need and that people have the same rights and advantages regardless of whether they are white, black, yellow, or red.
Although some people believe that affirmative action is a racist agenda in its own nature, the reality is not so. Yes, minorities do get benefits, but look at the facts. There are certain situations where consciously or not, minorities are given a difficult time. This is just telling the minorities that someone does care about them and wants them to succeed. I’ve said it many times before, and I’ll say it again. I was accepted to college with the help of affirmative action. That is not to say that my credentials lacked merit, rather it is saying that I was given a chance and as a result I sit on the High Court of this great nation.
The need for affirmative action is a political answer to a social problem.
CHARLES GIBSON: Mr. Clegg?
ROGER CLEGG: I think that affirmative action is strictly political. The politicians in Washington are committing a crime against people of all races. I think that if you would ask President Obama, he would agree with me, off the record of course—he did in fact want to be accepted at HarvardUniversity based on academic merit, not based on the fact that he is African American, so he omitted the “race” section on his application. If a young liberal as Mr. Obama could see the injustice and inequality of affirmative action, it should be a message to all of us; that affirmative action is not an appropriate reaction in today’s day and age to the Jim Crow racism of forty years ago. The wigs in Washington must understand that and not allow this discrimination to continue.
CHARLES GIBSON: We are running out of time, so I will ask each of the speakers one more question and ask that they limit their responses and to include their closing remarks in their responses.
Justice Sotomayor, Do you think that Affirmative Action encourages or discourages minorities?
SONYA SOTOMAYOR: I think that affirmative action is a very strong motivator for today’s youth. In 2010, children are constantly being told that they can’t; that they will not succeed. I think affirmative action sends a message to students telling them that there is a program out there endorsed by our government saying, “Yes you can”.
The other reality is what I mentioned earlier. Many people do have racial prejudices, and students from minorities can often start out with a disadvantage because they are minorities, and that is exactly what a program like affirmative action was created to combat.
I want to thank Charles Gibson and Roger Clegg for an excellent debate and I do look forward to debating again in the future.
ROGER CLEGG: If I were to approach a student and inform them that certain applicants only needed a GPA of 3.4 to get into Harvard while the rest need a 4.0, I think the response would be outrage from the students required to achieve a 4.0, while the students required to attain a 3.4 would breathe a sigh of relief. But then if I would say the criterion for the lower GPA requirement wasthat the student had to be from a minority race because that was their only chance of gaining admission, there would be an outcry from the minority community1.
When the case of Bakke v. University of California occurred, the first massive debate questioning affirmative action took place. One of the big injustices was that “the full admissions committee formed a sub-committee to process black and Mexican- American applicants only” (Eastland, 69). Is that not discrimination? That is exactly what affirmative action does. It is condescending to minorities to say that they can only be accepted and succeed with affirmative action. I’ve seen many people from minority groups who have succeeded based on the fact that they were hard workers, not the fact that they received affirmative action benefits. One of those people debated with me splendidly tonight.
On that note, I would like to thank Judge Sotomayor and Charles Gibson for the outstanding and stimulating debate tonight, as well as the audience for listening—I hope you gained as much as I did.
CHARLES GIBSON: I would like to thank both of our debaters for the enlightening debate tonight, and I regret that we did not have more time to give to them to discuss this issue. To our audience and viewers, I would like to thank you for taking part in this debate and wish you a wonderful night.
*This was a fictitious debate and does not represent either of the candidate’s or the moderator’s views regarding this topic or any other issue.
WORKS CITED
1) Balanced Politics: Pros and Cons of Affirmative Action
2) Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Opponents and Supporters of Affirmative Action Debate Use of Race in College Admissions. Nealy, Michael J. May 22, 2008
3) Center for Equal Opportunity: Biography of Roger Clegg
4) CNN Political Ticker Online State of the Union: Powell on Sotomayor, affirmative action. July 5, 2009. Stewart, Martine
5) Fox News Sotomayor: Affirmative Action Sent Me to College June 11, 2009
princeton/
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7) Forbes Magazine The Supreme Court And New Haven's Firefighters. June 29, 2009. Bolick, Clint
racial-equality.html
8) Eastland, Terry Ending Affirmative Action: The Case for Colorblind Justice. “Remediation and Diversity: Affirmative Action in Higher Action”. BasicBooks/HarperCollins. 1996
9) Infoplease.com Affirmative Action History. Brunner, Borgna