Benefits Of Affirmative Action Programs

Current affirmative action programs rest on fundamentally incompatible principles that frustrate, rather than facilitate, the attainment of true educational diversity. The core problem is that universities have largely disregarded the only permissible goal of affirmative action programs—educational diversity —in favor of remedying past discrimination. In doing so, race and other immutable characteristics have become proxies for a diverse student body at the expense of the many factors that more directly influence an individual’s perspectives, values, and world view, thus enabling that individual to offer unique perspectives in the classroom.
Put differently, affirmative action programs must consider the purpose of diversity before identifying
Indeed, when affirmative action programs strive to remedy past discrimination, universities fail to meaningfully consider the characteristics that enrich classroom dialogue and thereby advance the very purpose for which diversity is valued. As such , the unintended consequences of race-conscious affirmative action is that it frustrates, rather than advances, the educational benefits of diversity because it leads to a student body that is diverse in only one respect. As Justice Powell recognized in Bakke, affirmative action programs that focus “solely on ethnic diversity … hinder rather than further attainment of genuine diversity.”
In short, affirmative action programs can benefit students of all backgrounds in more meaningful ways by taking into account all six categories of diversity, not by placing disproportionate weight on race and ethnicity.
A. THE CROSS-SECTION REQUIREMENT ENABLES UNIVERSITIES TO CONSIDER ALL SIX COMPONENTS OF
Second, the Court’s prohibition on the improper exclusion of jurors and, more particularly, the permissibility of inferring improper exclusion based on a significant “disparity between a group's population figures and its representation in the jury venire,” reflects an understanding that race and ethnicity are components of a meaningful cross-section of the community. Thus, where a community is racially and ethnically diverse members of each group should ordinarily be represented in the jury pool. However, because the cross-section requirement does not mandate that juries actually mirror a community’s racial and ethnic demographics, it avoid the quantitative approach to diversity that Grutter’s “critical mass” standard creates. In so doing, the cross-section requirement facilitates a consideration of factors such as personal and family background, life experience, political views, values, and perspectives, and thus embraces a more holistic view of