Activist supports affirmative action

With the University of Michigan Affirmative Action case being heard in the Supreme Court today, a lecture supporting the measure, hosted by anti-racism activist Tim Wise last night, was aptly timed.

Wise, a lawyer and former consultant to plaintiff attorneys in federal discrimination cases, was quick to point out to the crowd at Northeastern University that his white privilege allows him to speak about institutional racism.

‘Racism and culture condition people to hear the truth better from a dominant culture, while non-white anti-racism lecturers don’t get asked to speak at colleges,’ he said.

Wise said he and his family have benefited from institutional racism, allowing his relatives to receive jobs and housing non-whites may not be entitled to.

‘Who better than a white man [to speak about affirmative action] because who better has benefited from racial preference?’ he said. ‘If the UMichigan case wins, it will cause rollbacks of civil rights everywhere,’ Wise said, citing colleges such as Northeastern.

Wise pointed out flaws in the UMichigan plaintiffs’ argument, saying while the school awarded 20 points for minorities, it was awarding many more points to things like Advanced Placement classes and the quality of high school, both factors influenced by race. Between 58 and 70 points are almost exclusively available to whites because of the overlap between race and class, he said, and still the majority of points are awarded to academics overall.

‘Even with equal scores, the minorities are probably better students because they had to overcome more,’ Wise said.

Standardized tests do not truly reflect minority students’ abilities, Wise said.

‘Black and white students in the same department of the same school with the same grades will not score equally on the LSAT; the black one will most likely score worse,’ he said.

‘When you are a member of a stigmatized group you will face the pressure on a standardized test that you will confirm the stereotypes of a race,’ he said, saying whites do not face the same pressures.

Affirmative action should be kept because it simply helps level the field for minorities suffering from institutional racism, Wise said.

‘When you target certain people it is preferential grammatically, but it is not unjust when you look at the context of racial preference in the society,’ he said.

Societal racism is still a problem, Wise said, citing a recent experiment that found that resumes of applicants with ‘black-sounding’ names were considered inferior to others.

Wise said ‘whites still get paid 30 percent more than blacks and Latinos do in this country according to the Labor Department, even when all other factors, including geography, are controlled for.’

Northeastern English professor Gerald W. Bergevin said he was glad to see Wise take on such a difficult issue.

‘We all have a choice in what society to live in; everyone has a stake in it,’ he said. ‘Too few people talk about issues like racism.’