As much as we want to think that our essays, about how inspirational War and Peace was to our 17-year-old minds, were brilliant and stood out from the crowd, getting into a specific college can't be guaranteed. Some kids get in, others don't, and those who didn't probably get into some other schools that turned us down. So how does Dean Blackburn decide? He and his crew in Admissions actually read the applications. Several times. Surprised? Yep, they actually made us labor through all that work and agonize so they could find something out about us. These days, there are a lot of people who seem to think that there really isn't a reason for us to go to all that trouble to get into college.

SAT scores are what really matter, right? Well, that's what the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), the conservative think tank founded by Linda Chavez, said in their report released in late January on "Preferences in Virginia Higher Education" (check it out at www.ceousa.org). That's also what the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), another conservative think tank, said in their full page ad in The Cavalier Daily around the same time. Are you white? Are you male? Do you have no clue what the admissions process entails at U.Va.? Join our suit against the University -- they're obviously discriminating against whites because there's no way there could be 11 percent African Americans at U.Va. otherwise. They say that affirmative action programs are unfair, and that they thwart the goals of equal opportunity by using race as a factor in admissions. I think that they have their definitions all wrong. These think tanks talk about everyone having the same opportunities, not equal opportunities. Remember, we all learned this in first grade arithmetic. Same means identical, right? You have three red apples and a green one. Which one is different? The green one. Good. That makes the red ones the same. But even back in those first grade days, being equal didn't mean being the same. Is it coming back to you? Equal means that two things have the same value. two plus two is not the same as four, but it equals four.

So, wait, where am I going with this? Apples? Addition? What does this have to do with affirmative action? It has everything to do with affirmative action. Affirmative action is not a quota system at U.Va. (racial quotas are illegal under the Supreme Court's decision in Bakke v. UC Board of Regents in the late 70s); it doesn't put a gold star on the applications of all of the black students who apply, but it does take into account the fact that black and white are different. The white standard is what affirmative action is trying to combat -- African Americans shouldn't have to be the same, their experience and culture should be equal, or of the same value, as white experience and culture.

That's not the whole issue with affirmative action, though. This is my biggest problem with the flurry of attacks on affirmative action programs across the country. California's Proposition 209, the Hopwood v. Texas case, and the CEO's analysis condemn the acknowledgment of racial differences. The current arguments against racial affirmative action are eerily similar to the court's racist argument for "separate but equal" in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. The focus on race is reaffirming the continued existence of racism in our society because looking at racial diversity as a factor in admissions is only the tip of everything that affirmative action does. This debate consistently defines diversity as race and race as black. Affirmative action in U.Va.'s admissions process directly benefits white and minority women, all people of color, international students, students from rural areas, and students from urban areas; it also takes into account who your parents are, what state you're from, and that you play a mean game of tennis. Okay, so some organizations in D.C. said that our school is "reverse discriminating" based on race because they think we have too many African American students. So what? We're justified by legal precedent (the opinion in the Bakke case ruled that racial diversity is an acceptable factor to use in college admissions) as well as by our continued ranking as the best public university in the nation. Ask a professor or administrator who has been here for 30 years or so -- when U.Va. was all white and all male. He or she will acknowledge that the caliber of this school has risen leaps and bounds since the admission of women and people of color. Even so, U.Va. was concerned. The Board of Visitors responded to the accusations of the CEO and the CIR. They appointed a "task force" charged with examining U.Va.'s admissions policies: a task force whose purpose was publicly unclear and upon further probing was kept secret from the people whom the decision would most affect, the students and faculty.

So, a group of students started raising hell. Surprising, since the student body is so widely apathetic here. But if you've been paying attention, it's not surprising at all. There is a loud and proud group of students here who are always prepared to campaign when issues are raised. There aren't very many, but this group of students, who are affiliated with organizations such as Critical Mass, NOW (National Organization for Women), CARE (Central America Relief Effort), NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Amnesty International, and LAG (Labor Action Group), have a much broader concept of activism than being involved in just one cause. So a small group incited the larger activist network and created a new group called Advocates for Diversity in Education (ADE) to address the attack on the university. Two of the organizers, Deva Woodly and Stephanie Taylor, described the formation of ADE as an immediate need in the university community. Woodly felt the issue of affirmative action "needed our voice and our support" because the students are largely unaware of the benefits that affirmative action has for our entire student body. Taylor added that the creation of ADE was important because it is a "campaign that had the possibility of directly influencing students here." And under the leadership of fourth-year student Dan Warner, ADE debuted in early February with the goal of educating the student body about the benefits of affirmative action, as well as sending a strong message to the BOV that diversity is an important factor in the quality of education at U.Va.

ADE organized with two main goals. Sponsored by the College Advisory Board, ADE sent alerts to hundreds of alumni, encouraging them to send a message to the BOV in support of our affirmative action policies. In addition, ADE organized a large publicity campaign, leading up to a rally on the lawn on February 24th, National Save Affirmative Action Day. The on-grounds organizing that lead up to the rally included lobbying for support from other student organizations, getting students to sign postcards addressed to the BOV that bore a message in favor of the current admissions policies, and designing a massive flyer campaign to negate some of the prominent myths about what affirmative action does. Members of ADE also contacted professors and administrators to ask them to show their support for the diverse student body. This flurry of action culminated in the rally on the lawn, which began with over 150 students, professors, administrators, and alumni chanting slogans like "Hey, hey BOV, I am not my SAT!" and displaying signs in support of a diverse student body. The group marched hand in hand up the lawn to the steps of the Rotunda, where postcard petitions were passed around and speakers like Dean Blackburn, Dean Turner, Professor Ed Ayers, and Karen Holt, the director of Equal Opportunity programs at U.Va., highlighted the importance of diversity in education and the true benefits of affirmative action for the student body. It was a pretty incredible feat of organizing. It all came together in three weeks, and ADE's tactics were effective. The alumni response was impressive, the faculty were supportive, and the BOV issued a statement the day before the rally, affirming that "We will not ... retreat from our commitment to maintaining a diverse educational institution."

ADE even elicited a counter-response from such organizations as the Objectivists, a group that takes Ayn Rand a little too seriously, and the Jefferson Leadership Foundation. The week after the ADE rally, the Jefferson Leadership Foundation brought Linda Chavez, the head of the CEO, to speak and debate with Dean Blackburn on the CEO's accusations of unfair racial preference in U.Va.'s admissions. Strangely, there was virtually no publicity of the event by the Jefferson Leadership Foundation on grounds, but there were several conservative groups brought in from other schools like Virginia Tech and Mary Washington in attendance. ADE, NAACP, and other groups that favor diversity in education organized quickly when they found out about the meeting, and the Maury auditorium was filled with over 400 students, faculty, and visitors.

The debate began with Linda Chavez's statement. I have never found any speaker so offensive. Her demeanor was very smooth, very calculated, and very racist. She spoke of "questioning the civil rights establishment" and spouted statistics that she couldn't explain, repeatedly avoiding audience questions by saying "I'm not a statistician." Her entire argument focused on a slight difference in median SAT scores that her organization "believes was statistically significant," and a statistic determined by an enigmatic "regression equation" that somehow determined that a black student is 45 times more likely than a white student to get into U.Va. Blackburn countered her argument by saying that admissions at U.Va. are not SAT driven, and pointing out several significant mistakes in the numbers that were used in the CEO's report. The crowd was fairly disgruntled, and quite understandably so. Tim Estes, the spokesperson for the Jefferson Leadership Foundation, tried to no avail to calm down the audience at certain points. Ann Lane, history professor, director of the Women's Studies department, and host of the radio show "Sister Talk" on WTJU, was surprised by how calm the crowd was under the circumstances. Chavez stood up in front of a mostly black audience and told them that they were not qualified to be there. She told them that there would not be resegregation, but "reshuffling" -- "there's nothing wrong with second rate schools," and that's where the black students who are getting into U.Va. should be. I was pretty offended. In fact, many people were. A member of ADE went to speak with Chavez after the formal debate was over, and she asked her a well-posed question: "Why is race the issue, and not gender? You say that the average SAT gap between blacks and whites is 30 points, but the expected SAT gap between men and women is 44 points." Chavez evaded the question, but the other attendees who were waiting to speak with her also pressed her on this issue. Finally the woman who initially had asked the question became so frustrated with Chavez's waffling and inability to respond to her point that she looked at Chavez, called her a bitch, and stormed out of the auditorium.

All of these arguments against the use of race as a factor in admissions are posed by those who wish to remain naively ignorant of the ways of the world. There is racism in our society. Three hundred and fifty years of explicit, institutionalized oppression can't be fixed in a generation. But these arguments that focus on race alone as an unfair criterion in the admissions process are themselves racist. Over and over I hear people, well, white men actually, whining, "Well, my friend didn't get in here and he had higher SAT scores than this black kid in our class who got in. He just got in because he's black." It's not the system that is racist here; it is the complainer. Suck it up. Maybe the African American student wrote a better essay. Oh no, that could never happen, right? Hmm ... sounds pretty racist to me.

It seems that this battle with the BOV has been won for the time being, but the fight is by no means over. This is only the beginning of a widespread attack on affirmative action across the country. What can you do? Get educated, think about how diversity has benefitted your educational experience here, tell a friend or 12, send a letter to the BOV, and get involved! U.Va. has one good-looking student body, let's keep it that way.

photos by Justin Dodd

Gary Payton

Both proponents and opponents of affirmative action have given great lip service to equality integration. Yet neither side has addressed the issue underlying affirmative action. The fatal flaw of affirmative action: it does not solve the problem of racism but merely treats the symptoms. It does not address the source of racial strife. The definition of Integration, or rather spatial mixing, is a major flaw that contributes to that of affirmative action. True integration is not as simple as having different ethnic groups publicly in each other's presence. This is public desegregation, not integration. True integration is not superficial eye-pleasing public desegregation, but co-equality of different ethnic groups throughout all aspects of society, both seen and unseen.

No one is born racist or ethnocentric. As human beings, we are all born into the world as clean slates, or one could say, un-programmed computers. Every input, from birth to old age, determines how we see the world and everything in it, including others. Those inputs taken as a whole amount to what can be considered a society's culture and are highly influential during childhood. If culture is ethnocentric, so too then are the great majority of those who have that culture. For example, consider the images that arise when we hear "gang member," "welfare mother," "business man," "clean cut," "terrorist," "intellectual," or "mathematician." It's likely that each of these words and phrases bring up similar images in the minds of most Americans, and those images are likely to be ethnically specific. In fact, many of us probably find it difficult to interchange the ethnic associations to which these labels are attached. As the complex yet absolute entity that identifies a society and individuals within it, culture determines such essential characteristics as the mainstream worldview, social behavior, way of thinking, values, standards of beauty, and life goals in a society. More important for the purpose of this essay, culture determines how one sees other ethnic groups and their own. Unfortunately, in mainstream American culture all ethnic groups are not co-equal.

Years of schooling teach us that the greatest minds of humankind have been those of the ethnicity that we today call European. Years of exposure from infancy to old age to broadcast, print, cinematic, and other mainstream media tell us the same. They tell us that all or most Biblical figures, from the prophets to God himself, are of this same ethnicity. The shortest month of the year is designated Black History Month (what a "coincidence!") when in reality there is no such thing as "black history" or any other ethnic or gender-segregated type of history, because time is linear. Furthermore, mainstream culture tells us that "Western" culture is purely the achievement of the ethnicity we today call European. In fact, Arab, African, and Asian civilizations made current "Western" civilization possible.

In the mainstream mass media, all ethnic groups have a place in society. Throughout our years of exposure we learn both our own places and those of others from the mass media. Asians are viewed as having mathematical, scientific, and engineering intellects. Arabs are hardly given a place within our society, but instead are placed in the role of foreign terrorist. African Americans are the staple for scenes of poverty, ignorance, violence, unrest, and stupidity. The mainstream media and thus, mainstream America, rarely if ever takes African Americans seriously unless violence, entertainment, or athleticism is involved. Native Americans are almost nonexistent and Latinos, when they are present, often share similar places with African Americans in the media. The media of the 90s is stuck in the 50s. One can validate these facts by patiently and even semi-objectively reading, watching, and listening to the mass media.

On all levels, even on the visible level, this society is far from integrated. There are still black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods. Many studies have been done to show that discrimination is still prevalent in real estate and bank transactions as well as hiring practices. Even the publishers of beauty magazines acknowledge that when they have dark African American women on the cover, newsstand sales drop noticeably. Those attacking affirmative action only look after Euro-American interests, seeking to disintegrate the program and the effort to counteract pro-Euro-American racism. They consider standardized tests a fair measure, ignoring the fact that not everyone starts from the same point. Yet, they cringe at the idea of a nationally standardized education system. Essentially they are happy to run a race with a crooked start and a straight finish. In this society, entertaining the idea that intelligence and behavior vary according to race (with whites at or near the top), wins praise and sales books regardless of extreme scientific frailty.

True integration and thus, the true end of racism, can only come with changes in the mainstream culture on all levels so that all ethnic groups are co-equal. History must embrace and acknowledge the importance of the contributions of all ethnic groups. In the mass media, all ethnic groups should be portrayed co-equally. No ethnic group should be disproportionately portrayed either positively or negatively. In essence just as we have been cultured to be ethnocentric, we must be cultured to be co-equal. After all, we are the sum of what we know. Indeed affirmative action does need to be discontinued, but not at the expense of efforts to counter racism. Doing so will legally send us back nearly 30 years. What must happen now is what should have happened for African Americans not long after 1865, and for Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans long ago as well: acceptance and integration as co-equal human beings within the whole of society.