From Bakke to Atkinson

"The consideration of race as a measure of an applicant's qualification normally introduces a capricious and irrelevant factor working an invidious discrimination.   Once race is a starting point educators and courts are immediately embroiled in competing claims of different racial and ethnic groups that would make difficult manageable standards consistent with the Equal Protection Clause."   -   Justice William Douglas, DeFunis v. Odegaard, 1974.

"Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality."   -   Justice Harlan Stone, Hirabayashi v. US , 1943.

The University of California System perpetually finds itself at the center of affirmative action controversies in college admissions. This is no accident. In 1973, Alan Bakke applied for admission to the University of California, Davis Medical School. The medical school had 100 positions available for incoming students. Of these, the medical school reserved 16 for minority applicants. Alan Bakke demonstrated that he had test scores and an academic record superior to minority students that had been admitted under the special program.

Bakke sued. The case worked its way up through the courts. In 1978, the US Supreme Court found that since race was the only reason that Bakke had been excluded from the special program, the University of California violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. The Court did, however, leave open the possibility that race might still be considered as one factor in the admissions process. In particular, "race or ethnic background may be deemed a 'plus' in a particular applicant's file, [so long as the applicant's race] does not insulate the individual from comparison with all other candidates for the available seats."

The University of California System nonetheless seems intent upon making sure that the college admissions process yields the appropriate number of students in different racial and ethnic groups. Seizing upon the wording of the Bakke decision, the University of California employed race and ethnicity as one additional factor in admissions. If race and ethnicity had remained a modest consideration only playing a part in borderline cases, splitting the difference between students with similar credentials, the policy might have continued indefinitely. However, this additional factor turned out in many cases to be a definitive one. At the University of California at Berkeley there was a time when the mean SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores between black and white students was 200 points out of a possible 1600. Since Asian-American students were statistically over-represented, they faced even higher barriers than whites did for admission.

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