Affirmative Action's  Lost Luster

What's different about affirmative action this year? Despite some major decisions recently made and some others that are coming up, the issue hasn't been high on the political radar screen. The last decade saw affirmative action policies in higher education undergo serious retrenchment and heavy political attack from opponents. In 1996, conservative political candidates, emboldened by the results of anti-affirmative action referendums and court decisions, went so far as to seek favor with voters by campaigning actively against affirmative action policies.     
Not so this election year. The issue has diminished politically and been removed from the center of national and local campaigns, according to political and legal experts. Not one anti-affirmative action ballot initiative has emerged in any of the states, contrary to the efforts that prevailed in California in 1996 and Washington state in 1998.
Affirmative action "is not as high a priority," says Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis, an associate professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
Political observers such as Travis say the issue has lost resonance among voters and that opponents have placed far less emphasis on it this year than in the past five years. 
But although it has failed to capture voters' attention as a political issue, many see the federal courts as a more immediate threat to race-
sensitive policies in college and graduate school admissions. Affirmative action foes cheered a recent federal court decision in Georgia — likened to the 1996 ruling in the Hopwood vs. Texas case — that ruled against the use of race in admissions at the University of Georgia (see Black Issues, Aug. 17).
And earlier this summer a Florida judge rejected a challenge by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People of that state's race-neutral admissions plan (see Black Issues, Aug. 3).
"Those kinds of decisions can diminish the willingness of administrators to go about continuing to implement race-sensitive admissions and financial aid," says Robert Kronley, senior consultant to the Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation.   
With two big cases coming up in Michigan this year, Georgia officials in the midst of preparing an appeal and others on the attack regarding some states' alternative percentage plans, this year will be an important one regarding affirmative action's fate.