Arguments about affirmative action almost exclusively revolve around what it has done for people of color. Lost in the debate is what affirmative action does for white people. Growing up in a rural state I saw the flip side of ensuring diversity in higher education as I worked my way through my general education courses. In conversations overheard and with my classmates it quickly became apparent that for many of the white kids around me from very small towns, college was the first time they had ever had to sit down next to a person of color, much less learn to collaborate with someone that did not look like them.
Part of educating the next generation of students is ensuring that they have the mental and emotional skills to thrive in a diverse environment, because as America moves toward a majority minority country, a diverse working environment is an inevitability. Learning together, working together, understanding and overcoming one’s own biases is a skill. It has to be learned and it has to be taught. In a perfect world it would be taught to everyone long before they reach higher education. But we live in an imperfect world. There are a lot of kids growing up in social environments that are so heavily de facto segregated that white children reach young adulthood without having had any meaningful relationships with anyone outside their own race.
Affirmative action allows minorities to have opportunities they would otherwise not have––but it also provides even more important opportunities for white students. It ensures that people poised to be in leadership positions do not go out into the world knowing only their narrow social group. We live in an increasingly diverse world, but many of our elite high schools remain heavily segregated. There are a lot of white kids out there for whom their first real experience of working with someone who looks different from them will come when they leave their small, heavily segregated communities behind to seek higher education.
Affirmative action is doing more than just leveling the playing field–affirmative action is ensuring diversity. And, that mandate, to ensure that colleges and universities remain places where all students learn in diverse environments is a mandate that absolutely cannot be ignored.
Diversity is a two-way street. Often it isn’t people of color who benefit the most from a diverse learning environment. College can and must be a place where students’ horizons are broadened. Higher education prepares individuals to be active citizens. How can we hope to adequately prepare students to be citizens and leaders in our democracy if they have never been pushed to relate to people not of their own race? How will we combat unconscious bias if not through diversity? Just as Black students need teachers who look like them, white students need students who do not look like them. Otherwise, we run the risk of having leaders in this critical generation of citizens who are unable to see past their own skin color.
Progressive Without Apology 