NC Voices: Re-thinking Affirmative Action
Wednesday, January 31 2007
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President Lyndon Johnson first defined a federal policy of affirmative action in a speech at Howard University in 1965. Johnson characterized affirmative action as the next stage in the battle for civil rights and said the policy was needed to make equality not just a "right and a theory," but a "fact and a result." More than 40 years later, African-Americans are still much less likely to go to college than white students are, and much less likely to graduate. And support for race-based preferences may be waning -- in both the courts and the voting booths. Some traditional supporters of affirmative action now see a different way of creating diversity on college campuses. Dave DeWitt reports for our series "North Carolina Voices: Considering College."
Additional sources of information heard in this report:
- College going and college completion by race: see table 181 here and read more p. 68 here
- At NC State University, about two thirds of the students are white; about 9% of the students are African-American. Find more here
- A national poll showed Americans are against race-based affirmative action by a two-to-one margin. The same poll shows overwhelming support for a system that would give the same preferences to low-income students. There's more here and here
- Fifty percent of low income high school graduates go on to college; sixty three percent of African-American high school graduates do. See p. 5 of this report
- Unpublished analysis of statewide SAT data by race and income provided by Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools
