Speaking Out About Affirmative Action

By: Julia RandleIn high school, Donald Hubert, a poor kid from the South Side’s Englewood neighborhood, was assigned to classes that prepared him to become a laborer, and few classmates assumed he’d do anything different. Even his mother encouraged him to join the military. But he had a different plan.

When his parents moved to Kankakee County during his sophomore year, in 1963, Hubert stayed behind and graduated from Hales Franciscan High School, 4930 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Then he attended Loyola University Chicago, where he became one of the founders of Loyola’s black student association.

After Hubert graduated from college, a black University of Michigan professor he met through a summer job encouraged him to enroll in the university’s law school. Hubert recalls that his class was one of the first for which Michigan aggressively recruited black students.

He graduated in 1973 and returned to Chicago to practice law. In 1996, The Chicago Bar Association named Hubert its president, making him the second African American in the post. Now a partner with Hubert, Fowler & Quinn, he has represented clients ranging from the City of Chicago to General Electric Co.

Hubert, 53, said he strongly supports the University of Michigan’s policy of using race as a factor in admissions. But that policy is currently under fire. In two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, white applicants have charged that the school’s use of race in admissions is unconstitutional. The Bush administration and more than a dozen organizations have filed amicus briefs supporting the applicants, while more than 70 universities, civil rights groups and corporations have filed on behalf of Michigan. Both sides believe the cases, which were heard together April 1, could define the future of affirmative action.

Hubert believes students who’ve benefited from the policy need to speak up. “If they don’t talk about how they’ve benefited from affirmative action and how they’ve benefited the overall American community, white people on the fence are going to fall to the side of Bush.”

Hubert shared his story with The Chicago Reporter.

What do you think people should know about affirmative action?
All of the things that you could write about my successes, none of that would’ve happened if Michigan hadn’t taken a chance on me. A whole group of prestigious law schools around the country opened their doors to blacks who, based on their evaluation, were as smart as or smarter than anybody else that they were letting in. However, because of their background, they [previously] had not been given the chance. And they gave me the chance. [By doing so,] they gave to the American community an end-product that was something they could be proud of.

There are only a limited number of seats [at] the best schools, even if no black ever got in. I’d like to be able to convince whites who are sitting on the fence to support affirmative action, even though I feel their pain for their own kids having a tough time getting into these schools.

Why is diversity necessary at educational institutions?
It is a legitimate educational objective. When students start taking property classes, I’d love to have someone who’s a Native American to talk about what impact property rights have had on them.

I lived in a home in Ann Arbor, [Mich.], with a white guy from Stanford, a white guy from Yale and a white guy from Northwestern. I bet you they still talk about the time they lived with a black guy and the experiences that offered them, and I would like to think that it changed their perspective.

Do the terms ‘quotas’ or ‘reverse discrimination’ describe Michigan’s admissions policy?
Most white Americans would say, well, they don’t want quotas. But that’s not what the University of Michigan program is. They [weigh] different factors to make a decision on who they will admit. Each year, depending on the talent pool that’s available, the [diversity of the] population at Michigan has fluctuated.

When you get 5,000 applications and you’ve got 350 spots, guess what—4,650 kids just got discriminated against for a whole lot of different reasons. It is not reverse discrimination because race is only a factor—it is not the factor.

What about alternatives to affirmative action, such as using a lottery system or granting admission to the top 10 percent from any high school?
I don’t like [those alternatives] because they are trying to substitute, with a statistic or a machine process, the human element of individuals who make admissions [decisions by] using their judgment to determine who they think might be successful.

If they had [these policies] at Michigan, I wouldn’t have been admitted, because when I went to Hales the school didn’t see my potential yet. I was living alone on a stock boy’s salary. I came to school looking raggedy because I worked until midnight to pay all of my costs. But people saw that I had intelligence [and] passion. They saw that I was a very hard worker, and I was respectful and appreciative. So how do you quantify those things? You just sort of say, ‘Okay, I think this kid is a winner.’

What will happen if the Supreme Court rules against Michigan?
The Supreme Court is not the end of the world. If it were, black people would still be slaves, because that’s what [it] said we were. What you have to do is understand that law is a living creature that changes from year to year and from generation to generation, and that you must continue to struggle to educate.