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By Lisa Guo
Co-Ads Manager
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SAT, GPA, essays and extracurricular activities - all are necessary to attend a prestigious
university. This opportunity is awarded to students after years of hard work and determination. So where does affirmative action come into play? Affirmative action was
originally designed as redress for African Americans for centuries of slavery and racism. In
1977, the Supreme Court upheld the use of race as a basis for acceptance of college applicants. However, admission based on race is an inherently unfair process.
Supporters define affirmative action as a way to ensure that colleges admit qualified
minorities and women. As with many well-meaning reforms, however, the reality stands in
stark contrast to the ideal. Even the term itself is a euphemistic phrase concealing what
"affirmative" action really does: deny those more qualified their deserved place in the name of equality.
Although admissions officers are not supposed to give unqualified applicants an unfair
advantage or use quotas, this is often what happens. Admissions are by nature a zero-sum
situation; there are only so many freshman spots at any given university. As a hypothetical
situation, if one minority group had five qualified candidates that applied but represented only
two percent of the population (assuming the total number of applicants selected is 100),
should the university admit all five? Would this constitute bias of one minority over another?
After all, the admission officers must be careful not to over-represent any particular group. Clearly, any kind of preferential treatment is an arbitrary process.
One argument for affirmative action is that some minorities have no opportunities for a
quality education, and hence, they deserve some leniency in the application process. The
people that get hurt in this situation are underprivileged non-minorities that are conveniently
ignored. Additionally, the solution is not consistent with the proposed problem. A race-blind
scholarship selection process would work just as well, if not better. It would give
opportunities to disadvantaged applicants regardless of their race, sex, hair color or preferred soft drink.
Affirmative action can also hurt the people it was meant to benefit. At schools that
practice affirmative action, it is often difficult to tell which people were admitted based solely
on their own merit. People would perceive all minorities, whether affirmative action was a
factor in their admission or not, as undeserving of their place. This situation devalues the
talents and hard work of the people that are not just there because the college was lacking
minority students. Such unjust perception results from a system that is designed supposedly to prevent discrimination.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is about a society in which all people
ignore race. Affirmative action flagrantly violates this concept through the use of preferential
treatment. Like many well-intentioned ideas, the reality is a far cry from the principle.
Affirmative action has become a condescendingly racist system in which colleges care more
about the racial and ethnic composition of their student body than their students' unique talents and qualifications. |
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