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The Pros And Cons Of Affirmative Action

1209 Words5 Pages

Affirmative Action -- Reform is Necessary
The college application process no longer analyzes students based on their GPA and standardized test scores alone. Colleges conduct a holistic review of a student and consider both life experiences and quantifiable qualifications. Within a holistic review, many American schools consider race in application processes; they hope racial affirmative action will prioritize diversity and the influx of diverse ideas on a college campus. However, these race-based policies have been the subject of numerous controversies and court cases, as people question the ethics behind considering physical appearance in an application process. Due to proposed discrimination, affirmative action is under the spotlight -- with …show more content…

Although this will not happen tomorrow, we need to remove race-based affirmative action from the college application process; race-based affirmative action fuels discrimination on college campuses, harms the learning of minority students, and doesn’t reach the primary source of disparity in college admissions -- socioeconomic status.
Racial affirmative action should have no place in admissions because it fuels discrimination on college campuses. A former first lady, Michelle Obama, experienced negative implications of racial affirmative action firsthand. In her book, "Becoming," Obama discusses how she felt the "shadow of affirmative action" throughout her time at Princeton University. Obama claims she could feel scrutiny from her peers and teachers, as if they were thinking, "I know why you're here." Moreover, affirmative action delegitimizes the hard work minority students put in throughout high school, and causes their peers to view them as unworthy counterparts. Whether or not affirmative action truly benefitted an accepted student doesn’t matter. Students and staff will likely treat minority students if they are simply a result of affirmative action -- which is demorilizing to minority students. …show more content…

For example, before UC schools implemented Prop. 209 in 1998 -- which abolished affirmative action policies -- more than 10% of minority students at UC schools were at risk of failing as opposed to only 4% of white students (“Is it Time for Affirmative Action to End”). Affirmative action places minority students in academic climates where they cannot thrive. Students deserve a post-secondary education environment where they can be successful; affirmative action can strip minority students of the success every student deserves at a collegiate educational level. In a similar vein, affirmative action is detrimental to student learning because it fails to incentivize the most fruitful exchange of individual beliefs and ideas. In his dissenting opinion of the Bakke court case regarding the legitimacy of affirmative action, Lewis Powell explained that the affirmative action process is detrimental to all students at an institution; colleges should select students who will contribute to the most “robust exchange of ideas” to fulfill their primary purpose (“Promoting Racial Diversity in College Admissions”). Rather than focusing on diversity, colleges must create an environment where the largest exchange of diverse ideas can occur. Affirmative action directly defies this idea -- and discriminates against students who have the merit to engage in

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In “Net (Race) Neutral: An Essay on How GPA + (reweighted) SAT - Race = Diversity,” Christine Goodman illustrates the opposing viewpoints in regards to the racial discriminatory efforts by the college institutions to help diversify the incoming freshman class. With this, Goodman provides statistics and opinions of experts on the matter, which includes comparison of such discriminatory acts against other institutions. To begin, she brings up an enlightening, yet controversial court case decision: Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (2013). This court case demonstrates significance to this topic because it counteracts a previous court case, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which, “upheld diversity as a compelling interest that would justify narrowly

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The U.S. Supreme Court Case Regents of the University of California v. Allan Bakke was officially decided June 28, 1978. The case addressed the issue of use of affirmative action in university admissions processes. Affirmative action, also referred to as positive discrimination, was a result of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and was intended to ensure equal entry to educational institutions or employment entities to certain groups that “have historically suffered invidious discrimination” (Janda et al., 477). However, sometimes this method causes discrimination of other groups, through establishment of racial quotas. University of California employed the process of affirmative action and instituted racial quotas in its admissions

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Part III applies the Court’s precedent to the University’s affirmative action policy and concludes that the policy violates the Equal Protection Clause. Part IV examines the impact of Fisher II on existing affirmative action policies and concludes that the Court’s holding will be narrowly crafted and thus negligibly impact other policies. In addition, Part IV asserts that the Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence should be fundamentally altered because it fails to adequately guide lower courts, legislatures, and litigants concerning the permissible scope of affirmative action policies. As discussed in Part IV, a more effective—and honest—approach would be to acknowledge that: (1) diversity is an essential part of ensuring inclusion in higher education and the workplace; (2) remedying past discrimination is a compelling state interest; and (3) in limited circumstances race may be a dispositive factor in the admissions or hiring process. The Court’s current framework, although well-intentioned, ignores these realities and tries to quantify the role of race in admissions – a task that is impossible and

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Thus, often without realizing it, the United States has practiced what, in effect, was white affirmative action on a highly generous and widespread basis, followed by a much more modest program of black affirmative action. By understanding this history, we can come to terms with the widening gap between blacks and whites noted by Lyndon Johnson and with the incapacity of many blacks to be able to make good this gap in the following four decades (Katznelson,

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'Affirmative Action Policy Is Unconstitutional' By Daniel Hung

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This law also ensures diversity on campus, and on top of that affirmative action is still used for the remaining students that are not at the top 10% of their class (Hung). Evidently, race plays a crucial role in the admission decisions. Hung claims that race shouldn’t play such a big role in the admission process because it is considered discrimination. He supports this argument by comparing the average GPA and SAT scores of those students that were granted admission but were not in the top 10 percent of their class. African Americans had the lowest averaged scores, followed by Hispanics, then whites, and then Asian Americans.

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Essay On Brown Vs Board Of Education

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After the Brown decision, many institutions of higher education began to desegregate, although the process was slow and uneven. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent legislation further strengthened the legal basis for desegregation in higher education. While affirmative action has been a controversial topic, with some arguing that it is reverse discrimination, others argue that it is necessary to address historical inequalities and create a more diverse and inclusive society (History.com,

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Race Should Not Be A Factor In College Admissions Essay

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Many supporters of race-conscious admissions argue that without considering race as a factor, many groups of underrepresented minorities won’t have the chance to continue onto higher education because of their lack of resources, as compared to the wealthy and privileged white applicants. However, this is based on stereotypes. In “The Atlantic” article, “The Affirmative Action That Colleges Really Need”, the author states, “The current framework of race-based preferences…disproportionately helps upper-middle-class students of color, and pits working-class people of different races against one another…Research by the economist Raj Chetty shows that…Seventy-one percent of Black, Latino, and Native American students at Harvard come from college-educated homes with incomes above the national median; such students are in roughly the most advantaged fifth of families of their own race,” (Kahlenberg). What this shows is that in reality, there are families that come from underrepresented backgrounds who are still just as privileged because of their social class. Stereotypes create flaws in the system by giving minority students the boost they do not need instead of giving it to the lower class students that actually do, which includes minorities and the majorities alike.

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1152 Words | 5 Pages

Due to Affirmative Action, institutions have to reach certain quotas to gain funding. However, once quotas are reached, there are many people of color who do not benefit. Timing is very important in whether or not a person of color can benefit from the government policy. Therefore, it benefits people by the situation and not as a whole. As diversity is very important to colleges and universities, their actions in the scholarship and admittance processes say otherwise.

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Standardized Testing Bias

1523 Words | 7 Pages

Another thing that places students of color at a disadvantage in college admissions is the persisting cultural bias in high-stakes testing. “High-stakes” tests are those that are tied to major consequences, such as admission to college, or even high school graduation. Fair education reform advocates have long been citing an extensive record of standardized testing concerns, many of which relate to racial bias and discrimination. As researcher and author Harold Berlak explains in the journal Rethinking Education: Standardized testing perpetuates institutionalized racism and contributes to the achievement gap between whites and minorities. For instance, the deeply embedded stereotype that African Americans perform poorly on standardized tests

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According to the dominant theory the affirmative action was firstly introduced to deal with two types of social disruption in the 1960s as campus protests and urban riots in the North. However, this article is based on different theory as dominant theory's empirical evidence is limited. It examines the initial reason for advent of race-conscious affirmative action in 17 undergraduate institutions in the United States. And according to the research this article concludes that there were two waves that contributed to affirmative action: 1) first wave in the early 1960s introduced by northern college administrators 2) second wave in the late 1960s introduced as a response to the protests of campus-based students. This article will help me to establish the main reasons for introduction of race-conscious affirmative action in undergraduate

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Throughout many of the affirmative action legal cases, one of the main arguments from proponents is that it is necessary in order to right the wrongs of past racial discrimination. Some say that affirmative action is justified because even though white applicants may be more qualified, this is only because they did not face the same hardships as their minority counterparts (Rachels, Ethics, 1973).  Many argue if we do not integrate disadvantaged minorities into mainstream social institutions, they will continue to suffer the discrimination that has plagued our country for centuries and that this is detrimental to not only the minorities but also society as a whole (Anderson, 2002, 1270–71). However, the debate has recently shifted to the benefits of diversity in the classroom which the Supreme Court has affirmed as being a positive thing

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