While arguing why blacks deserve redress for the history of governmental and societal oppression, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “During World War II, our fighting men were deprived of certain advantages and opportunities. To make up for this, they were given a package of veterans’ rights?In this way, the nation was compensating the veteran for his time lost, in school or in his career or in business?Certainly the Negro has been deprived. Few people consider the fact that, in addition to being enslaved for two centuries, the Negro was during all those years, robbed of the wages of his toil?The most profound alteration would not reside so much in the specific grants as in the basic psychological and motivational transformation of the Negro.”

King’s statement is the basis of affirmative action policies in higher education giving preference to racial and ethnic minorities in college admissions processes. The tradition of social, political and economic marginalization of non-white Americans has pushed minorities into lower economic status and into poorer neighborhoods with atrophying public infrastructure. The psychological and social effects of slavery were not eliminated when the Civil War ended. The long history of wrongs perpetrated on women and minorities were not erased when the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964. On paper everyone is seen as equal today. On paper we live in a happy utopia free from discrimination and bigotry. That is not reality. The worst neighborhoods, with the worst schools, that have the most high school dropouts and see more of its citizens in prison than any other population group are mainly black and Hispanic.

It is societal and political factors that have contributed to the continued discrimination and neglect of minority communities, not because of inherent inferiorities. We have equality on paper but it is access to opportunity that eludes many minorities.

Affirmative action, specifically in college admissions, is something Sacramento State and America needs. Thanks in part to former UC Board of Regents member and Sac State alum, Ward Connerly, California public universities and colleges cannot use race as a factor for admissions. Proposition-209 banned preferential treatment of minorities for college admissions. Euphemistically called, “The California Civil Rights Initiative” made it appealing to California voters who passed the proposition in 1996. The result was a severe drop in minority student admissions to California universities. By 2005, black, Latinos and American Indians represented 46 percent of the state’s high school graduates and only 19 percent of the freshmen at UC, a 27 percent gap, while in 1997 the gap was only 21 percent.

According to the magazine “Diverse: Issues in Higher Education,” Sac State is ranked 27th nationwide for the number of ethnically diverse students who earned baccalaureate degrees in 2004-05. However, Hispanic and Asian students make up most of those baccalaureate holders, and nowhere in the rankings can you find Sac State for black undergraduate degree holders. This could be partially explained by the fact that according to the 2000 United States Census, blacks make up only 15 percent of Sacramento’s population. However, only six percent of students at Sac State are black. A university cannot truly call itself “diverse” when only two minority groups are prominently represented in the student population.

Sac State needs more students of color, especially blacks. Elizabeth Anderson, a professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, argues that, “Unless disadvantaged racial groups are integrated into mainstream social institutions, they will continue to suffer from segregation and discrimination. But the loss is not only theirs. It is a loss suffered by the American public at large in its failure to fully realize civil society – extensive social spaces in which citizens from all origins exchange ideas and cooperate on terms of equality – which is an indispensable social condition of democracy itself. “

We are missing the opportunity to learn, understanding and expand our knowledge and scope of our world because so many diverse peoples and their voices and ideas are not being utilized. Californians need to consider that the very people of color we are restricting from attaining a higher education who may become lawyers, social workers and psychologists are the ones best equipped to help their fellow brothers and sisters of color.

Scott Allen can be reached at [email protected].