The Admission of Legacy Blacks Angela Onwuachi-Willig Boston University School of Law
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Boston University School of Law Scholarly Commons at Boston University School of Law Faculty Scholarship 5-2007 The Admission of Legacy Blacks Angela Onwuachi-Willig Boston University School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Law and Race Commons Recommended Citation Angela Onwuachi-Willig, The Admission of Legacy Blacks, 60 Vanderbilt Law Review 1141 (2007). Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/311 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons at Boston University School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons at Boston University School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Admission of Legacy Blacks Angela Onwuachi-Willig* INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................1142 I. RACE, CULTURE, CLASS, AND A MODEL BLACK MINORITY? ..............................................................1160 A. Understanding the Meaning of Social Justice in Affirmative Action ..............................................1161 B. The Model Black Minority? ....................................1165 II. UNPACKING THE MYTHS OF THE MODEL BLACK MINORITY................................................................1180 A. Enhancing Diversity ...............................................1181 B. Reaching Social Justice..........................................1185 C. Models of Affirmative Action ..................................1204 III. ON CONSIDERING THE IMPACT OF ANCESTRAL HERITAGE ON STUDENTS ....................................................1207 A. Understanding the Significance of Diversity .........1210 * Professor of Law, University of Iowa. [email protected]. J.D., University of Michigan Law School; B.A., Grinnell College. I would like to thank Deans Carolyn Jones and Rex Perschbacher for their encouragement and generous support. I give special thanks to Lani Guinier for conversations and discussions on earlier drafts of this paper. Also, thanks to Kerry Abrams, Michele Alexandre, Dave Baldus, Rick Banks, Mario Barnes, Derrick Bell, Stuart Benjamin, Laura Beny, Jacquelyn Bridgeman, Richard Brooks, Dorothy Brown, Bill Buss, Paulette Caldwell, Devon Carbado, Jennifer Chacón, Bob Chang, Erwin Chemerinsky, Miriam Cherry, Tino Cuellar, Mechele Dickerson, Catherine Fisk, Marjorie Florestal, Patricia Hansen, Mark Kelman, Kim Forde-Mazrui, Michele Goodwin, Mitu Gulati, Angela Harris, Emily Houh, Kevin Johnson, Trina Jones, Carlton Larson, Trevor Morrison, Camille Nelson, Reggie Oh, James Onwuachi, Daniel Ortiz, Alex Romain, George Rutherglen, Saul Sarabia, Neil Siegel, Jessica Silbey, Stephen Smith, Verna Williams, Adrien Wing, and Tung Yin for their helpful comments. I also express thanks to Shelly Kurtz, Todd Pettys, Peggie Smith, and Jim Tomkovicz for their support, and to Susan Eisenberg for her hard work and patience. This Article gained much from faculty presentations at the University of Wisconsin Law School, Stanford Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, Duke University School of Law, and the University of Texas School of Law; comments from participants in the Advanced Critical Race Theory Speaker Series at UCLA School of Law; and a works-in-progress session at the Midwest People of Color Conference in Tucson, Arizona, especially from Derrick Bell who served as a commentator on my paper during that conference. My research assistants Tai Duncan, Shelby Feuerbach, Christopher Jerry, and Dia Moua, and U.C. Davis Law Librarian Erin Murphy provided valuable research assistance. My greatest thanks are given to my husband, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, and our children, Elijah and Bethany, for their constant love and support. This Article is dedicated to my children—who are both third generation and mixed race—with high hopes for the legacy that will follow them. 1141 1142 VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW [Vol. 60:4:1141 B. Policing Racial Identifications on the Road to Diversity: Uncovering Racial Fraud.......................1215 1. Concealing Racial Identity..........................1216 2. Discovering Race .........................................1217 C. Satisfying Missions of Diversity: A Discussion on Proposed Solutions ............................................1220 CONCLUSION..................................................................................1227 INTRODUCTION In June of 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported what it referred to as a “startling statistic at UCLA.”1 According to the Times article, in the fall of 2006, only ninety-six of the 4852 entering first- year undergraduate students at UCLA—approximately two percent— were black, the lowest number of incoming black freshman since at least 1973.2 The revelation of UCLA’s “startling statistic” caused a firestorm among students and academics, a number of whom expressed concerns about how the disparity of black student representation at UCLA could affect the quality of the educational experience.3 For some, the low numbers highlighted the importance of college and university affirmative action,4 a program that currently cannot be employed at any institution within the University of California system because of Proposition 209.5 For example, UCLA 1. Rebecca Trounson, A Startling Statistic at UCLA, L.A. TIMES, June 3, 2006, at A1. 2. Id.; see also Tamar Lewin, Colleges Regroup After Voters Ban Race Preferences, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 26, 2007, at A6 (noting that “Hispanic representation at U.C.L.A. has dropped, too”). 3. Trounson, supra note 1, at A1 (referring to comments by Janina Montero, UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, and Jenny Wood, then UCLA student body president). 4. By “affirmative action,” I refer to the act of considering the race of underrepresented racial minorities as a plus factor in admissions decisions and the expansion of the merit standards that are traditionally used to admit people into educational programs. Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Using the Master’s Tool to Dismantle His House: Why Justice Clarence Thomas Makes the Case for Affirmative Action, 47 ARIZ. L. REV. 113, 114 n.2 (2005); see also Paul Brest & Miranda Oshige, Affirmative Action for Whom?, 47 STAN. L. REV. 855, 856 (1995) (“An affirmative action program seeks to remedy the significant underrepresentation of members of certain racial, ethnic, or other groups through measures that take group membership or identity into account.”); Anupam Chander, Minorities, Shareholders, and Otherwise, 113 YALE L.J. 119, 120 n.3 (2003) (defining it “as minority-mindfulness in decisionmaking resulting in either a preference or a disproportionate distribution of benefits”); Martha S. West, The Historical Roots of Affirmative Action, 10 LA RAZA L.J. 607, 614 (1998) (stating that “affirmative action has come to mean any type of program or policy where race, national origin, or gender is taken into account”). Please note that Miranda Oshige is now Miranda McGowan. 5. Trounson, supra note 1, at A1. Proposition 209 is a voter initiative that has prohibited any consideration of race and gender in admissions and hiring within the state system since 1996. Id.; see also CAL. CONST. art. I, § 31 (codifying Proposition 209); cf. Cheryl I. Harris, What the Supreme Court Did Not Hear in Grutter and Gratz, 51 DRAKE L. REV. 697, 705-06 (2003) (describing the effects of Proposition 209 at UCLA’s law school, where in 2000 Professor Harris 2007] THE ADMISSION OF LEGACY BLACKS 1143 Chancellor Albert Carnesale proclaimed that the university was “going to have to meet this crisis [of low black enrollment] by redoubling [its] efforts.”6 Others such as Darrell Hunt, a sociology professor at UCLA and the director of the Bunche Center for African American Studies, critiqued the university’s admissions process, which he argued was “linked more to socioeconomic privilege than academic merit.”7 What remained unacknowledged in this Los Angeles Times article and what is often ignored in discussions regarding racial diversity on college and university campuses is the actual ethnic backgrounds or ancestral heritages of those few black students who had successfully made their way into UCLA’s undergraduate program. While UCLA’s crisis of diversity with black students draws attention to the importance of continuing affirmative action on campuses across the country—a policy that Grutter v. Bollinger8 suggests should remain in place for at least twenty-one more years9—UCLA’s crisis also raises another critical question: whether this vital policy of affirmative action is effectively working to provide educational opportunities to a diverse body of black students across the nation. Scholars have examined how the model minority myth, in particular the view of Asian-Americans as a monolithic group, may have a negative impact on affirmative action policies for Asian- American students, especially those who are of Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese descent.10 Much like students of Asian taught “Brown to a Constitutional Law class that had no black students”); Adrien Katherine Wing, Race-Based Affirmative Action in American Legal Education, 51 J. LEGAL EDUC. 443, 446- 47 (2001) (noting the immediate, damaging effects of Proposition 209 on black enrollment at the University of California-Berkeley); Laura E. Gómez, The Legacy of Affirmative Action, UCLA TODAY, Apr. 11, 2006, http://www.today.ucla.edu/2006/060411voices_legacy.html (discussing her sadness at