Helping the Truly Needy Students

by Fern Kupfer

'MEND IT, don't end it," President Bill Clinton suggested about affirmative action programs and the trouble they have seen, most recently as the Supreme Court refused to hear a legal challenge to California's ban of preferential programs. I supported affirmative action in its early years. But as the parent of applicants to colleges and professional schools and as a university teacher, I know how irregularly paved can be the road of good intentions.

The original purpose was to recognize that years of racial discrimination had "disadvantaged" certain groups and that the government - by offering minority educational scholarships and favorable business contracts - could help correct this imbalance. Affirmative action thus conceived is a good idea. But its execution has been flawed, complicated by bureaucracy, insensitivity and a lack of basic common sense. The result has been a swell of resentment and a backlash of racism from a generation that should be coming of age with better values.

Some years ago, I taught summer school at a prestigious liberal arts college. It was a writing course for gifted high school juniors, a third of them minority students chosen by the college and on scholarship. The students wrote a lot and we talked a lot. In three weeks, I got to know them pretty well and I also got to know something about their families. What I discovered was that while there were a few truly disadvantaged youth - meaning they came from single-parent (read "mom"), minimum-wage homes - many of the minority students had parents who were teachers, social workers, even doctors and lawyers.

The minority kids had their own identity crosses. Brought in on scholarship, they acted Fort Apache. But they grew up Central Park West. They were smart. They fit well in enrichment classes. The question was not why they were in the program, but why was the college footing the bill? These kids were chosen because they were black, simple as that. Their special status - despite years of ancestral deprivation - was looked at with some suspicion by some of the other students who asked: Why did they deserve to go for free?

How are people selected to fill affirmative action slots? It's easier to look at the color of someone's skin and make a judgment than to read a family's financial portfolio and ask about the educational background of previous generations. But should people get the benefit of entitlement programs only because of the color of their skin or because they have a Latino surname? What about real need? What about doing more than creating a colorful palette on university campuses?

Many of the white students at the state university where I teach are quietly hostile - they know it is not politically correct to mouth off lest they be considered racist by their peers and challenged by a liberal faculty. But the reasons for the backlash need to be acknowledged. Here at a public institution, many students are struggling to stay in school. Their parents can't afford to help much, and so the kids start out in community colleges, they take out loans, they have jobs, they drop out a semester or two and work full time. And they witness those in affirmative action programs getting a full ride, not because they're so much smarter, not because they're so much poorer - but because an administration makes a judgment about minority entitlements from the most superficial standards. That this is not fair is recognized on many levels. That it was unfair to enslave and diminish a race of people is part of the answer. That it is unfair to reward some who may not be deserving of special treatment may be another.

As a mother, I learned that children are not alike and it is really a mistake to treat them as if they were. Some children need more - attention, discipline, sometimes even material possessions. The parent who makes a valiant effort to even out the goodies at holidays or in quality time will always be in a bind. Can't be done. For the kids, there's more privilege in being older. More responsibility, too. Some children get away with things by virtue of their place in the family or personal charm. That life is unfair is certainly recognized by most of us.

In the world at large, it is a myth if we think we can even the score, that we can make things fair either by knee-jerk affirmative action or by getting rid of all entitlements. The playing field is not even, and it never was. Entitlements have always existed in the way of money and special access. Children of privilege have parents who hire tutors, pay for private schools and summer camps. Children of privilege have parents who know someone who knows someone who can get them summer jobs and internships and interviews.

Who needs affirmative action? Well . . . first-generation college students of all ethnic varieties, new immigrants, single mothers, the disabled, the working poor. Let's not cut affirmative action programs, but expand them to include all those who need assistance to take their first steps on the uneven ground of opportunity in America.

Fern Kupfer is a novelist and writing professor at Iowa State University. She is a frequent contributor to Working Moms' Internet Refuge.

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