The Decline of Affirmative Action
The Abolitionist Examiner
by Wendy McElroy
July/August 2004
A year ago, on June 23rd, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of affirmative action (AA) in two cases that challenged the University of Michigan's (U-M) admissions policies. Yet Ted Shaw, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund, has stated, "in the year since Michigan…some institutions have retreated from affirmative action even though we won the case." Why is AA on the decline?
There are several reasons. First, the Supreme Court decisions were not a clear victory, with the main case Grutter v. Bollinger et al. decided by a close 5-4 vote. In the second case, Gratz et al. v. Bollinger et al., the Court struck down the specific AA policy being used for undergraduate admission and insisted upon a more 'holistic' approach to evaluation.
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