A Conversation About Affirmative Action With Award Winning Author And Northeastern Professor

It has been a devastating past year for Patricia Davis.

In 370 days, the esteemed Critical and Cultural Studies scholar witnessed the dismantling of Roe vs. Wade and more recently, the termination of Affirmative Action programs nationwide. Graduating from the University of California, San Diego with a Ph.D., Davis currently studies public memory, identity, race, gender, and representation. She has taught courses on public memory, race and gender in the media and popular culture, and communication and diversity. She is also a dignified proponent of Affirmative Action programs.

Other ambitious Black Americans, especially Justice Clarence Thomas, have become vocal critics of such programs, claiming “the stigmatizing effects” of Affirmative Action puts Blacks at a disadvantage once they graduate from university and begin looking for employment. With a Supreme Court stacked 6-3 in favor of Conservatives, it comes as no surprise that these programs were deemed a violation of the Equal Protection Clause in landmark cases Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina late last month.

I sat down with Ms. Davis to get her take on the on the recent ruling, in hope that she could shed some light on the importance of Affirmative Action and help me understand why the court would attack programs that have helped so many Black Americans get the educational opportunity they deserve.* Here is how the conversation went:

Q: I understand that in 1996 California banned Affirmative Action. I'm not sure [what years you attended UC Davis] but I am interested to hear if you or anyone you know has had a personal experience with Affirmative Action.

Well that's one of the interesting things about Affirmative Action. If you are a person of color you don't really know when you have benefited from it because nobody is really privy to admissions discussions; why a particular applicant was admitted and why one was not. That's a little bit clearer when it comes to undergraduate admissions because those in large part are based on objective measures like the SAT and high school GPA, whereas with graduate admissions, it's much more subjective. So while GRE scores and undergraduate GPA are factors, they're not as significant as the equivalents are in undergraduate admissions.

In graduate admissions, your statement of purpose is one of the most important aspects of your grad school application package. Things like that are more subjective [and] are bigger factors than they would be in undergraduate admission. So while it's not a hundred percent clear in undergraduate admissions, it's even less clear for graduate admissions why a particular applicant was accepted and why other applicants were not. So any intervention of affirmative action in those processes is going to be much more of an unknown in graduate admissions.

Q: I saw that Michelle Obama posted about her experience in college. She questioned if people assumed she was only accepted because of affirmative action and internally wondered if that was the case. Barack Obama echoed that sentiment but said that despite its flaws, the positives of affirmative action heavily outweigh the negatives. Have you personally had that struggle in your mind when you went to apply for jobs outside of graduate school?

I absolutely have not for a multitude of reasons. One reason is that I did my undergraduate at a historically black university [Howard University], so affirmative action did not have any impact on my admission there. I did my master's at Ohio State University and I did my PhD at UCSD, and I have never thought of myself as the beneficiary of affirmative action because you just really don't know. But even [in] my K-12 education, my intellectual capacities were never questioned by teachers. I come from a middle class background [and] both my parents went to college, so I grew up in a household and come from a background generally where I was always encouraged academically. If there was any criticism at all [in] my academic performance, it was always along the lines of ‘you have the capacity to do better than you're actually doing. What's keeping you from doing better?’ So there's that sense of insecurity.

In terms of whether or not I belonged in graduate school at UCSD [it] never entered my mind separate from the normal imposter syndrome that [a lot of] graduate students, regardless of race, experience at some time or another. That's a normal part of being a PhD student or an MA student. So [not coming from a background of disadvantage and of low expectations] is another reason. I've always had the confidence to not be bothered by things like that.

The third and probably most important reason is because I recognize that stigmatization for exactly what it is. Any stigmatization that's based on affirmative action comes from those racialized illogical assumptions, and recognizing those for exactly what they are goes a long way towards not internalizing that stigma that comes with affirmative action. So with all of those things said on balance, I understand that a lot of students of color do internalize that, but I agree with Obama that on balance, the benefits of it are far greater than any stigma that might result from it. What's always been interesting to me is you've got white students who are legacy admissions or who get into college for various reasons that have nothing to do with their intellectual abilities, and they don't ever seem to feel stigmatized. Nobody makes them internalize any kind of stigma. The whole idea of stigma is very racialized.

Q: Why do you think that is?

Certainly enduring stereotypes that have existed for hundreds of years about black intellectual inferiority. That has a lot, if not everything to do with that attitude. Then of course, when you are in an elite college space and you see the number of African-Americans in those spaces are low, that tends to reinforce that stereotypical assumption. Because you're assuming most people don't necessarily go out of their way to make themselves aware of the historical formations that lead to disparities and educational attainment disadvantages that minority students have to face before going to college.

[If] you're an 18 year old white kid who's unaware of these things and you're at an elite college and see very few black students on campus, you're not going to be aware of the factors that actually led to that. You're just going to assume ‘well, they don't belong here.’ And then if you happen to see examples here and there, either on campus or off campus of someone of color who is behaving in ways that could be seen as not intellectual or not intellectually up to par, it's just going to reinforce the stereotypes that have already been there. I think that's where these things come from and that's what helps them endure; the whole idea of reinforcement of what people already believe.

Then of course you've got a lot of right wing discourse that also pushes that narrative. [You don’t hear] the biological explanations that were prevalent a hundred years ago as much today, although they have not completely gone away. But you do hear what's referred to as “cultural arguments” that suggest that black culture in particular is anti-intellectual. [It’s] kind of a remanufacturing of the old biological arguments recount[ed] in the language of culture. So if you've got any exposure to right wing discourse, you're more likely to believe those things.

Q: How would you respond to somebody that claims that white men shouldn’t have to suffer for the [metaphorical] sins of our father? Because our nation does have a super ugly history; there is still infrastcuture today that was created by Blacks generating wealth for the whites, and I think there's obviously a multi-generational wealth gap [that exists.]

That's an important point that people seem to lose sight of sometimes. These things are not just in history, they are ongoing. An example would be a high school in a primarily black working class neighborhood that does not offer AP classes. That's one of the things that helps [high school students who are applying to selective colleges] get their GPA up so if you are in a high school that offers 15, 20 or even 10 AP classes, you are going to have a huge advantage in admissions when using objective standards over a student who goes to a high school that offers no AP classes or that [only] offers two or three just because of the way AP classes help pump up your GPA. That's just one of many different factors that can be pointed out that.

[Something] that really illuminates the issue once students actually get to college that people also tend to lose sight of is that sometimes awareness of these stereotypes and how students are stigmatized because of them – with or without affirmative action – also impacts their performance in college, so that's an issue.

Q: What are some of the others?

You have the fact of having to take out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans that you're going to have to pay back at some time; research has shown that also impacts your academic performance. So when you are a white kid who's sitting in the classroom at an elite college with the one black kid in the classroom, and you're seeing that student struggling, you're not going to be thinking about these other factors that might enter into the picture.

Q: Can you expand on that?

The easier explanation is going to be ‘this student is black, they're probably not quite up to par in terms of their intellectual capacities.’ That's the easy way to see things and that's how most people are going to see them; they don't look any deeper than that with or without Affirmative Action.

When I was at UCSD affirmative action had been gone for years when I first started there and I still heard students attributing certain negative things they could attach to [blacks and hispanics]; not just [about] students but also staff members. You would hear little giggles and whispers, ‘well this person's an affirmative action hire’ and affirmative action had been gone for years so don't expect these kind of put downs to go away just because affirmative action has gone away officially because the attitudes that were attached to it and that predated affirmative action are still there.

Q: What do you think the short term and long-term consequences of abandoning affirmative action are going to be? Will this contribute even more to this ongoing problem?

I think so. I know a lot of colleges anticipated this decision so it's not a shock to most people in academia. I'm sure a lot of schools have put some kind of plan in place for what's going to replace affirmative action, I just don't have any specifics as to what those plans might be.

For more of the long term consequences, you can look for the UC system. A lot has been written about how when affirmative action was done away with there in 1996, the numbers of black and Hispanic students at institutions plummeted. Part of it was probably [that they weren’t] admitted. Part of it was probably [the feeling of] why should I apply to UCSD, UCLA, or Berkeley [if ] I feel unwelcome? I would feel unwelcome there because these policies have been put in place. So you may have some students who just won't apply just because of what they feel will be a hostile unwelcoming atmosphere on those campuses. Gavin Newsom just warned a couple of days ago that that's what the outcome is going to be, because the numbers dropped in the UC system as a result of this. And regardless of the valley of efforts on the part of some universities to rectify the impact of this decision, this is [ultimately] what the outcome is going to be. What I think would be wonderful is if a lot of [Black students] decide to give historically black universities and colleges another look.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of this is [probably] going to be Howard University. A lot of HBCUs are going under financially because of lower enrollments over the last few decades. Maybe this will be what taps them up. But that's only one issue and it could be helpful to Black students in many ways, but then there are other ways when it may not be quite as helpful because there's a lot of social and economic capital that comes from graduating from an elite, predominantly white institution that just is not going to happen at most black schools.

Q: In what ways would going to HBCUs be beneficial?

[Students of color would be] able to get a college education without having to deal with the stigma that would come from assumptions about affirmative action. Even though affirmative action is legally gone, the stigma is not going away, so [the benefit would be] the ability to get that college education without having to deal with the achievement barriers that come from sitting in a classroom where you might imagine some of your classmates and professors feeling that way about you; the ability to get an education without the overt and covert racial hostility that would come from going to school on a predominantly white campus. [Going to an HBCU with a] more welcoming, homelike environment, psychologically will do wonders for you. That's something that really boosted me when I was at Howard: the knowledge that these people here are always going to have your best interests in mind.

You're at a school with a large population; it may not always be obvious because the faculty and staff are grappling with the large number of students. [At] some of the smaller ones there might be more of an atmosphere of that, although I do think a lot of Black people tend to over assume that's the case. [At] HBCUs there's more of a possibility that you'll get more of that then you would've at a predominantly white one. I don't [know where I would be] if I had not gone to Howard. Your experience at a historically black university always stays with you in some ways, even in ways you don’t recognize, so I think that had a lot to do with where I see myself now.

Q: It's interesting how you said the same thing that Clarence Thomas said [almost a decade] after he graduated from Yale [in that] you don't know where you would be. Thomas was referring to affirmative action programs** and why [they are] so important and need to stay in place. Then now that he's in this position he has switched up. Just looking at all the corruption in the court, all the airplane trips, all the gifts that he's benefited from, what do you think is the reasoning behind that? Do you think that it's more corruption or do you think there was just an ideological shift within him?

I think it's a combination of both. You could probably make this argument about all of [the justices] but you can make it much more strongly about the conservative ones [Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett] that they were put on the court for specific reasons. There's a lot of money involved. The Federalist Society is involved in recommending potential Supreme Court picks and seeing their confirmation pushed through, so all that money that goes into cultivating Supreme Court Justices – while they're still in law school all the way through getting them confirmed to the Supreme Court – is being put into that as an investment. So a lot of it is corruption. And of course the trips once they're actually on the court and all the other money and perks that have gone into it that we haven't even heard about to make sure that the relationship continues and that they stay in line. There’s never any payings of conscience, logic, or legal reasoning involved in how they might rule, so that's part of it.

Q: What is the not so obvious corruption that occurs?

With that said, they don't pick these specific people in a vacuum. It's not like they'll take some idealistic law school student who wants to help people and save the world and cultivate them into a right wing asshole. They pick people who are already inclined in that direction and they just cultivate them even further. So I think it's a combination of ideology and corruption. They know exactly who it is that they can more easily cultivate in that direction.

Q: Where do you think we go from here in terms of reforming the judicial system? It doesn't even seem possible to me because in order to enact term limits you need to ratify the Constitution and in order to expand the court, you'd need Congress to agree to that.

I agree at that particular level. There are things that colleges themselves can do; a lot of them have started to do away with the SAT so [a solution would be] if more of them do that and it becomes more of the norm that the SAT score is not used as a factor of admission.

Another solution is to do the Texas model. After affirmative action was constrained by that Fisher decision in 2015, the University of Texas system moved to a model where they accepted the top 10% in every high school, although I suspect you've got white students who are probably enrolling in predominantly minority high schools on the assumption that their kids will make the top 10. The assumption [is that] these black and Hispanic students are not nearly as smart genetically, so any white kid who enrolls in a predominantly Hispanic or Black high school is going to probably be valedictorian. But I'm sure those [runarounds] are relatively rare. As you said, it is difficult for structural court reform because it's going to require the consent of Congress. You can say people just need to get out and vote and that certainly is true, but there are enough people who are opposed to affirmative action or are nonchalant about it that they're not going to necessarily vote based on that. Most people in the US don't go to college and get a four year college degree so some people don’t feel that they don’t really have a personal stake in this either way.

The long-term solution would be to keep voting democratic. [Clarence Thomas] is probably the oldest one on there, and Alito is not that far behind. Neither one of them is going to retire as long as Biden is president. They're going to wait until another Republican gets in the White House before they retire, unless nature, does the job [for them] but who knows when that will be. Supreme Court Justices are pretty wealthy compared to the rest of the population. Whatever governmental healthcare plan they get is probably better than what most people get, so they are probably going to live long lives and won't retire until another Republican is in the White House. So one thing is to make sure that there are no more Republicans in the White House for a while. But again, these are long-term solutions and there are a lot of what-ifs associated with them.

The more immediate, easiest solution is for colleges to do what they can to diversify their student body, because all students benefit from diversity, not just the students who are most directly impacted. Students of color are most directly impacted [but] white students also benefit from that. And of course businesses that hire the students who graduate, whether they're white students or students of color also tend to benefit from it. Even that solution is not easy, but it can be a little bit more immediate than the political solutions.

Q: Christopher Edley, former dean at UC Davis and former Harvard Law professor wrote a book called Three Different Ways of Looking at Affirmative Action. He described the third way as a redistribution of reparations and I wanted to get your opinion on that.

Again I reiterate my point that the so-called “sins” have not been relegated to just the fathers. This stuff is ongoing both in terms of the legacies of the past overt structural discrimination and the ongoing structural discrimination. For example, in terms of housing, you might hear about redlining and some of the overt structural issues of the past with the FHA and other governmental and business institutions that were openly discriminating against black people. [That] has a lot to do with the wealth that's created through black home ownership today, so you can position that as a legacy of past policies with respect to housing discrimination.

But these things are still ongoing. I'm constantly hearing about banks; Wells Fargo is a prime example. I actually have a mortgage with [them and] I was just able to refinance my house because of the results of a recent lawsuit against Wells Fargo [for] the way that they've treated their black customers. And this is recent, this was not 50 years ago, so I would always push back on the idea that non-black people or white people today are paying for stuff that was done 50 or 100 years ago. This is stuff that's still going on. Some of it has gone, some of it has remained overt, and some has remained intact, but has just become more implicit than explicit. So I always push back on the idea that this stuff is relegated to the past. That is still very much going on.

Q: We talked briefly about a man you worked with who was less qualified than you and your colleagues who were Black but was promoted to a higher position. Can you tell me more about that?

At the time we were both in low level positions but he was enrolled in a community college and the minute he [got] his associates degree he was promoted because it's like ‘now he's got a degree [so] he should be doing more than what this job entails so we're gonna promote him.’ I had a master's degree at the time and I knew of other black women who had master's degrees. Nobody was talking about promoting us and here's this white guy with an associate's degree who gets an automatic promotion for getting a two-year college degree. That kind of stuff benefits white males far more often than affirmative action has benefited anybody, including its biggest beneficiaries: white females.***

But no one ever complains about those because it's not called affirmative action. It doesn't even work the same way because these are people who are not particularly disadvantaged, so it can't even be likened to affirmative action. But that's how these things really tend to work. You can probably talk to any black person and they can regale you with similar stories. I guarantee any black person who's spent their entire career in corporate America has stories like this.

Q: Does the extent of these racial biases and prejudices subside in the educational field?

Academia is much better because it's probably the closest you're going to get to a truly meritocratic system. There is no such thing as a meritocracy but this comes a little bit closer than most other fields. And [there are] even problems here.

Q: Are there any stories you could share about experiences at Northeastern?

I've seen faculty come through giving job talks in order to get hired and I've seen if it's a white woman or a woman or man of color, their qualifications get ripped apart. Sometimes nitpicking little things, but all these things are subjective and then a white male comes and does a job talk [and] he gets praised. There's no nitpicking, no picking apart his qualifications. There are all these reasons given for why he should get the job. It's very stark.

Then at my previous institution [Georgia State University] where I taught for nine years, I would see white male faculty get praised heaped upon them for accomplishments that were notable, but were not as notable as accomplishments of other faculty who happened to be women or faculty of color; [they] got no praise whatsoever. So this kind of stuff goes on even in academia and among people who pride themselves on being knowledgeable, woke, and aware and progressive; they're engaging in the same behaviors. That just shows how deeply ingrained they are, when people don't even realize they're doing it. It [becomes] the norm.

Q: How do you feel about colorblindness? That term that was brought up a lot in the dissents as well as in Justice Thomas' opinion.

I'm not surprised that it was brought up; I [just] assumed it would be a matter of how many times it was brought up. But there's no such thing as colorblindness. [Colorblindness] is basically used as a shield. Anybody who has any hint of knowledge about the way society and the world works knows that we don't actually live in a colorblind society. The only time you really see colorblindness invoked is when someone is trying to dismantle a program that's designed to foster equity. That's the only time, so it's used more as a weapon than it adheres to any kind of reality. It is like the 1960s version of what's referred to as post racialism now. They are essentially the same thing; basically the assumption that we don't live in a racialized society when we see evidence every single minute of every single day. We most definitely still live in a society that is very highly racialized. We still have a racial caste system here in the U.S.

Q: How can combat that? Is that just by getting more people informed?

Ordinarily I would say yes but the democratization of education doesn't seem to have done very much. We see [here] the resurgence of overt white supremacist discourse in politics where you've got candidates who are openly attacking gay people, people of color, immigrants, religious minorities (Muslims in particular) because they see that as a means of attaining political power.

As someone who studies the way history is represented in public, I can see parallels between our political discourse now and the political discourse from 70 years ago during the Jim Crow era. We've had decades of education where back in the 1930s and 40s, education was mostly an elite endeavor. The vast majority of people in the U.S. had no hope of getting an education beyond high school but thanks to the GI Bill, affirmative action, the Civil Rights Movement, the women's movement, [thanks to] huge changes from the 1950s and 1960s, you've got greater numbers of people going to college and getting four year degrees even though they're not even close to a majority. Nevertheless, Jim Crow style political discourse is still just as powerful as it was 60, 70, 80 years ago. What that says to me is that greater access to education has improved things, [but] just not enough. So I don't necessarily see that as the solution.

People always say ‘it’s the older generation that's doing this. They will eventually die out and the younger generation that tends to be more liberal will save our society from creeping fascism.’ That might be true because you've got younger people who have grown up in more racially diverse circumstances, who are more empathetic, more compassionate, less self-centered than the older generations. But I would qualify that by saying that a lot of these older people who are very conservative [and] were happy to see affirmative action go away, who have no problem at all seeing voting rights being suppressed, were also young at some point and the same discourse was leveled at them. They were [seen as] the younger generation. They were more liberal, more progressive, more open-minded. Then as they got older, they became more conservative, more selfish, more self-centered in their worldview and their outlook and life. The hope is that things will be different for the generation that's young now but I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath that it's going to be as different as people are hoping it's going to be simply because younger people do tend to be more idealistic and more empathetic and compassionate when they're young and their feelings and attitudes tend to harden as they get older.

Q: Why do you think that is?

I don't know. I don't think it's necessarily a result of getting older. It's just a result of seeing more how the world works [and] becoming a little bit more materialistic. It's one thing when you're 18 years old and your parents are providing for you materially. You can psychologically afford to be more idealistic, but once you get to the point where you're having to start providing those things for yourself it tends to foster a more individualistic attitude versus the more collectivist attitude. I think that might have something to do with it. Particularly, if you are not deprived in any way, once you start to see the benefits of privilege and you start to experience them then you're less likely to be inclined to challenge them. So I think it's a combination of factors.

Q: It completely makes sense what you're saying, although I hope that's not the case with my generation. That’s the whole reason I started my website; my privilege has definitely made me want to do something to make a change. The whole premise is to inform more people of these issues. I want to try to help in as any ways as I can and if it doesn't work out I really hope I don't get cynical like past generations.

I hope that optimism bears out [for your generation]. History suggests that it does not, but there's a lot to be said for having hope that the subsequent generations are going to be the one to break that cycle. You have young people who are already very conservative when they're young, most of whom are [probably] going to stay that way as they get older. Some might change, but I think that's another benefit of affirmative action; that it [positions] young white people better to be around people who are not like themselves. The threat is that they're going to become more cynical [and] more selfish as they get older and hopefully retain their empathy for people who are not like themselves. That hope [won’t completely] go away once affirmative action is gone, but in large part it very well might.

* According to a Harvard review of William Bowen and Derek Bok’s book The Shape of the River, affirmative action acts as an engine for social mobility for its direct beneficiaries. This in turn leads to a more diverse leadership, which you can see steadily growing in the United States.

**This is notable because 30 years before he diminished affirmative action to “Jim Crow Style” programs, he lauded them as being “critical to minorities and women in this society.”

*** Columbia University law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw wrote “the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action have been Euro-American women” in the University of Michigan Law Review in 2006. This claim is backed up by decades of research as a recent Vox article points out.

According to Vox, a 1995 report by 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) after the first two decades of affirmative action in the private sector. In 2015, a disproportionate representation of white women business owners set off concerns that New York state would not be able to bridge a racial gap among public contractors.