SAMPLE OUTLINE - CITIZENSHIP PUBLIC POLICY DEBATE Debate Topic: Resolved, Affirmative Action should be abolished as a public policy.

BACKGROUND

I.

About the Issue & The Current Situation A. What is the Issue About? What is Affirmative Action (AA) ? 1. The American Heritage Dictionary: A policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination through active 2. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law: measures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment.; an active effort (as through legislation) to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups or women 3. In the U.S., affirmative action mostly applies at transition pointstimes when individuals are changing their employment or enrollment. Thus, any potential advantage or disadvantage is predominantly conferred upon working age adults who hope to improve their lot through a change in employment or the pursuit of educational opportunity. a) This arrangement has the greatest impact on young people, while maintaining the status and position of established members of society. This overall framework was established by Presidential Decree in March 1961 by President Kennedy, but has evolved significantly. b) Born of the civil rights movement three decades ago, affirmative action calls for minorities and women to be given special consideration in employment, education and contracting decisions. 4. Define the following: a) 14th amendment equal protection clause: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. b) Merit System c) Reverse discrimination d) Institutional racism e) Quota B. What is the current policy on the issue? 1. Institutions with affirmative action policies generally set goals and timetables for increased diversity and use recruitment, set-asides and preference as ways of achieving those goals. 2. In its modern form, affirmative action can call for an admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority over the white, or for a manager to recruit and hire a qualified woman for a job instead of a man. Affirmative action decisions are generally not supposed to be based on quotas, nor are they supposed to give any preference to unqualified candidates. And they are not supposed to harm anyone through "reverse discrimination." 3. Examples a) Federal contractor example: Caltron, Inc. b) University of Minnesota example 4. What are the goals of Affirmative Action? a) Affirmative action began as a corrective measure for governmental and social injustices against demographic groups that have been subjected to prejudice. Such groups are characterized most commonly by race, gender, or ethnicity. Affirmative action seeks to increase the representation of these demographic groups in fields of study and work in which they have traditionally been underrepresented. b) Discrimination practices of the past preclude the acquisition of 'merit' by limiting access to educational opportunities and job experiences. Some measures of 'merit' may well be biased toward the same groups who are already empowered. Regardless of what people say, people already in positions of power are likely to hire people they already know, and/or people from similar backgrounds.

C.

Why is Affirmative Action an issue today? 1. There is much debate concerning claims that AA fails to achieve its desired goal, and that it has unintended and undesirable side-effects. There are also claims that the practice is itself racist or sexist. 2. What are some of the problems with Affirmative Action? Opponents of affirmative action have challenged its constitutionality under the 14th amendment, arguing that government-imposed group preferences deny the equal protection of the laws to those who do not belong to the preferred groups.

II. The Background of the Issue A. What is the history of the issue?
Though affirmative action in the United States is primarily associated with race and gender, the American civil rights movement originally gave as its purpose the correction of a history of oppression against all working-class and lowincome people; women have figured as prominently as ethnic minorities among its beneficiaries. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution mandates that no State deny any person the "equal protection of the laws." 1. Why AA was adopted as a public policy When members of targeted groups are actively sought or preferred, the reason given is usually that this is necessary to compensate for advantages that groups such as males or those of European descent have derived from racism (including institutional racism and unconscious racism), sexism (similarly), and results of historical circumstances. Past discrimination will be sufficiently countered that such a strategy will no longer be necessary: the power elite will reflect the demographics of society at large. B. What laws, court cases, and/or public policy has played a part on the issue in the past? Executive Orders, Laws, and Court Rulings regarding AA 1. Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 2. Executive Order No. 10,925, 1961 issued by President Kennedy Establishing the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity to scrutinize and study employment practices of the Government of the United States, and to consider and recommend additional affirmative steps which should be taken by executive departments and agencies to realize more fully the national policy of nondiscrimination within the executive branch of the Government. 3. Compensatory Preferential Treatment, 1962 James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, held a meeting with then vice president Lyndon B. Johnson. Farmer proposed that a program that he called Compensatory Preferential Treatment should be put in place in order to advance the equality of the black race. In 1965, Johnson (then president) renamed Compensatory Preferential Treatment "affirmative action" in a famous speech at Howard University, which became the national justification for moving the country beyond nondiscrimination to a more vigorous effort to improve the status of black Americans: "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others', and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." It was a counter-argument to the previously prevailing notion of meritocracy. The skills that merit-based admission rewards are cultivated in children by parents with money. Affirmative action was to be a method by which minorities could eventually develop those skills in their own children. 4. Operation Breadbasket Also during this time Martin Luther King Jr and Ralph Abernathy were bringing their southern civil rights movement to the Chicago area. One important part of this strategy was Operation Breadbasket. This operation consisted of targeting local employers and threatening boycotts unless more African Americans were hired by the business. Many of these businesses operated largely in African American neighborhoods and thus had a large customer base to worry about losing if a boycott ensued 5. Revised Philadelphia Plan During the Nixon administration, affirmative action was adopted as a federal mandate for companies with federal contracts and for labor unions whose workers were engaged in those projects. This "revised Philadelphia plan" was spearheaded by Labor Department official Arthur Fletcher

In the 1960s and 1970s, affirmative action became overwhelmingly popular on campuses across America as mass student protests spurred schools to actively recruit minority applicants. National excitement died down in the late 1970s, and quickly turned to national controversy. 6. U.S. Executive Order 11246 and Executive Order 11375, 1965 The Johnson administration embraced affirmative action in 1965, by issuing U.S Executive order 11246. The order specifically requires certain organizations accepting federal funds to take affirmative action to increase employment of members of preferred racial or ethnic groups and women 7. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) The Supreme Court held that the UC Davis medical school admissions program violated the equal protection clause with the institution of quotas for underrepresented minorities. However, the court ruled that race could be one of the factors in university admissions. 8. Hopwood v. Texas 1996 - was first successful legal challenge to racial preferences in student admissions since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke 9. California Proposition 209, 1996 - forbids many forms of Affirmative Action. 10.Washington Initiative 200, 1998 - in Washington was overwhelmingly passed by the electorate, it applies to all local governmentsprohibits "preferential treatment" based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, education, and contracting. The Washington State Legislature has generally been in favor of affirmative action and appears to wish to reinstate aspects of it. However, despite several proposals, they have not yet done so. 11.Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003 The Supreme Court ruled that race could be used as a criterion in school admissions and that it would not be in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The Court found that the University of Michigan Law School's narrowly-tailored policy was constitutional and appropriate "to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." 12.Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003 The Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan's point-based undergraduate admissions policy that took race into account numerically was too mechanical and unconstitutional. An attorney who filed an amicus brief on behalf of Pennsylvania legislators and former legislators in Grutter v. Bollinger, Rep. Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia, said that "The cumulative effect of the Bakke, Grutter, and Bollinger cases is that no one has a legal right to have any demographic characteristic they possess be considered a favorable point on their behalf, but an employer has a right to take into account the goals of the organization and the interests of American society in making decisions. This is a moderate, inclusive position that ably balances the various legal interests involved." 13.Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 2003 The Washington State Supreme Court interpreted I-200 to forbid affirmative actions that promote a "less qualified" applicant over a "better qualified" one, but not programs that sought to achieve diversity without consideration of individual merit. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that racial classifications that benefited underrepresented minorities were to only be upheld if necessary and promoted a compelling governmental purpose. (See Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co.) There is no clear guidance about when government action is not "compelling", and such rulings are rare.

III. A.

B.

Proposed Solutions in the Public Debate What solutions are in the public debate? 1. Keep Affirmative Action 2. Modify Affirmative Action 3. Eliminate Affirmative Action What has been tried? How effective has it been? 1. What has been tried? a) California: Proposition 209 in 1996 which prohibited the use of racial preferences by public universities California schools. b) Texas - In order to avoid a system of racial quotas, the States of Texas passed a law guaranteeing entry to any state university of a student's choice if they finished in the top 10% of their graduating class.

c) Florida has also replaced racial quotas with class rank and other programs. Class rank tends to
discriminate against those at relatively competitive high schools, simply because schools are not uniform in student ability. Consequently, there have been fears that this would lower standards, disadvantaged students from schools with lesser performances would receive an unfair opportunity. Critics argue that class rank is more a measure of one's peers than of one's self. The top 10% law is highly controversial on the grounds that it overemphasizes GPA. d) Implementation in universities (1) In the U.S., the most prominent form of affirmative action centers on access to education, particularly admission to universities and other forms ofhigher education. Race, ethnicity, native language, social class, geographical origin, parental attendance of the university in question (legacy admissions), and/or gender are often taken into account when assessing the meaning of an applicant's grades and test scores. Individuals can also be awarded scholarships and have fees paid on the basis of criteria listed above. (2) Affirmative action programs at universities benefit mostly African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and women (in engineering and the physical sciences). Asian Americans, although a racial minority, do not benefit at most colleges because the rate of college education among Asian Americans is higher than the other racial groups (including whites). How effective has it been? This is the crux of the debate. If really is several questions: a) Does affirmative action actually do what it is supposed to do? b) Do the benefits of AA outweigh the detriments? c) Do we still need AA? d) These will be debated by the pro & con.

2.

IV.

Transition to the Debate After going through the solutions that have been suggested, focus on the one that is going to be debated. End with the debate resolution: Resolved, Affirmative Action should be abolished as a public policy. Question Period - Take questions from students. Bibliography

V. VI.

Affirmative Action. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. http://dictionary.reference.com/ Affirmative Action. : Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/ Affirmative Action. July 26, 2006 Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_Action David E. Bernstein - You Can't Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws, Cato Institute, October 25, 2004 Espenshade, Thomas J. & Chung, Chang Y., The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities. Social Science Quarterly, Volume 86, Number 2, June 2005. Princeton University. http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/tje/espenshadessqptii.pdf Fischer, Karin. Class-Rank Plan Faces Trouble in Texas. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Fri, Apr 22, 2005, Section: Government & Politics, Volume 51, Issue 33, Kivel, Paul. Affirmative Action Works! In Motion Magazine, November 17, 1997. http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/pkivel.html Johnson, Lyndon B. To Fulfill These Rights. Commencement Address at Howard University: June 4, 1965 Ogletree, Charles J. Jr The Case For Affirmative Action. Standford Magazine online edition. July 28, 2006. http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1996/sepoct/articles/for.html Wilson, John H and Harold Nelson. The United States: a Cultural Study. The Englewood Journal 50 (1999)