The Problem With Affirmative Action
The Pay Check
Bloomberg
4.4 • 630 Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For the last few weeks, we've talked about the origins of the racial wealth gap. This week, we're turning our attention to one of the first major efforts to create more economic opportunity for Black Americans: Affirmative action in education. Kelsey Butler takes us to California, a place that for decades had strong, successful affirmative action measures, until one day, it didn't. She explains what getting rid of the policy meant for Black and white graduates, and why reinstating it isn't enough to close the wealth gap.
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| 0:46.2 | Up to now, we focused on the origins of the racial wealth gap, how black people have been consistently excluded from building wealth and ensuring their own financial stability since |
| 0:51.5 | the end of slavery. |
| 0:53.1 | Today, we're going to look at one of the first |
| 0:55.0 | attempts to address the disparities, to make America a more equal society, to level the playing |
| 1:01.1 | field. We're talking about affirmative action in education. This starts more or less in September |
| 1:07.7 | 1965, with an executive order that makes new rules for federal contractors. |
| 1:13.4 | It's not enough to not discriminate. That's already illegal. The order says it's time to ensure |
| 1:19.5 | no one's being left out. President Lyndon Johnson was clear about his rationale. Here he is |
| 1:26.0 | speaking at graduation at Howard University, |
| 1:28.5 | the historically black college in Washington, D.C. |
| 1:31.2 | You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains |
| 1:36.6 | and liberate him, |
| 1:40.0 | bringing up to the starting line of a race and then say, |
| 1:46.5 | you are free to compete with all the others, |
| 1:52.7 | and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. |
| 1:55.3 | That's the theory behind affirmative action. |
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