Eugenics and evolutionary theory helped sustain society’s perception of African-Americans and other people of color as socially and intellectually inferior. This social construct of inferiority remained constant for most of the 20th century. Its fingerprints linger still on our remedies to reverse the damage inflicted by our country’s unequal social order.

The civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 provided the first meaningful enforcement of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling by demanding compliance as a condition to receive federal funds.

Unfortunately, most of the early programs adopted a deficit model that placed the burden of assimilating on minorities while sustaining a sense of superiority in White America. In education, this model identified minority students’ culture, socioeconomic status, language and other characteristics as the source of dissonance. While this reflects an improvement from previously held notions of inferiority, it still sustained the ethnocentric attitudes of the dominant society.

Is the work of affirmative action over? Hardly, but its strategies must move towards a new model that promotes cultural democracy in all social systems and education in particular. Higher education must discard the deficit model of assimilation by adopting a value-added perspective as we continue our quest for a more perfect union.

Affirmative action represents a social policy to promote a cultural restitution for democracy. Affirmative action must move beyond legal arguments and critically respond to the social, moral and ethical dimension of our country’s history relative to race relations.

— López-Vasquez is assistant professor and director of community partnerships at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore.