The Diffusion of State-level Affirmative Action Bans

• In Event: 3155 - Inequality, Policy and Affirmative Action

Abstract

Since Regents of California v. Bakke nearly forty years ago affirmative action has been an issue of great public debate. It has reached the Supreme Court on numerous occasions, but because the courts have not directly banned the practice of affirmative action states have taken it upon themselves to determine their stances on affirmative action policies. This is has allowed California, Texas, Florida, Washington, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma to implement their own affirmative action bans over the past twenty years; banning the practice of race-based affirmative action in public education, work places, and contracts. Using mixed methods this work answers two questions. First, why were the bans introduced and passed in each of the nine states where they were passed, fail after a ban was put on a ballot initiative in Colorado, and not introduced as ballot initiative or other legislation in other states? Second, are there any patterns that can describe how affirmative action bans have diffused? I use 1,234 different news papers articles in a qualitative content analysis to characterize the institutions, individuals, and ideologies of the pro- and anti-affirmative action positions, use that information to illustrate how the ban spread from state to state, and inform why the ban was adopted, rejected, or not formally introduced for consideration in each state. I then turn to some light quantitative descriptive statistics to investigate alternative explanations for the spread of the bans such as the prevailing attitudes and values of people across states, economic conditions in those states, the 5 and 10 year changes in the percentage of Blacks, and Hispanics by state and the political representation in each state at the time when the bans were passed.

Author

• David Antonio Mickey-Pabello, University of Michigan