Affirmative Action is a Joke
Three minutes.
Thousands of students sit nervously in front of their computer, counting down the time. In minutes, the decisions to hundreds of colleges will be released through their respective online portals. On the other side of the screen, four outcomes typically await these students: accepted, deferred, waitlisted, and denied.
Two minutes.
For some, the decision merely conveys how and where the student will spend the next four years of his or her life. For others, it’s a judgement of self worth. Counselors and teachers communicate the contrary. “Where you go to college doesn’t determine who you are as a person.”, they say. Unfortunately, this is a difficult concept for 18 year olds to grasp. It’s every student’s biggest fear, watching all of your friends get accepted to prestigious colleges while you don’t.
One minute.
Sixty seconds will mark the beginning of the end. The culmination of four years of hard work. Four years of carrying textbooks that are too thick in backpacks that are too heavy. Four years of making sure the pencil marks fit inside the scantron bubbles. Four years of adrenaline rushes caused by submitting assignments seconds before the deadline. All the questions of “what if” or “am I good enough” will be answered in seconds.
Three.
Two.
One.
Zero.
Amidst the flurry of simultaneous mouse clicks is a system administrator hoping that the website can support the overwhelming surge in traffic. At this point, one of two emotions is present — euphoria or disappointment. Soon, (some take longer than others) the student comes to acceptance and the
feeling begins to dissolve. Nevertheless, the student deserves whatever outcome he or she received, as college decisions are a purely the result of the student’s academic and extracurricular efforts, right?
Wrong.
There was a day and age when if you studied hard enough and your grades were high enough, you would gain admission to a top tier university. Nowadays, that’s not nearly not enough. First come the academic factors — the GPA (used to determine academic performance in the context of one’s school) and SAT/ACT (used to compare one’s performance relative to that of students across the country). The next tier is comprised of what I like to call personality factors — extracurricular involvement, letters of recommendation, and essays. The last tier is comprised of predetermined factors — gender, geographic location, and ethnicity.
It frustrates me to share that predetermined factors even play a role in determining college admission. After all, these factors don’t represent the academic merits or the personality of the candidate. The reality is that their significance becomes relevant when colleges try to maintain balances of gender, geographic distribution, and race. Of these, the factor of race ties into a much larger system, the system of affirmative action.
For those unfamiliar with affirmative action in the context of education, its objective is to promote the educational opportunities of defined disadvantaged or minority groups (please note that disadvantaged and minority are not interchangeable). Sounds good, right? Sadly, that’s not the case. Affirmative action is a prime example of something that sounds good on paper, but when executed, fails to do its job.
The main premise of higher education is to specialize and gain in depth knowledge of an academic area of study. By that assertion, the selectivity of an academic institution should be based purely on academic standards.
So, why are we using skin color as a determinant for post-secondary admission?
The purpose of affirmative action is to equalize the playing field and assist the economically disadvantaged.
Last I checked, skin color is not equal to economic status.
Yes, there are certain correlations, but there are still economic disparities within each race. Should a rich minority benefit from affirmative action while a poor Caucasian doesn’t? So once again I ask the question, why are we using skin color as a determinant for post-secondary admission?
To answer this question, it’s important to investigate the origins of affirmative action. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in 1965, only five percent of undergraduate students, one percent of law students, and two percent of medical students in the country were African American. To combat this disparity, LBJ passed an executive order that mandated that government contractors adopt affirmative action in regards to hiring practices. Colleges and universities quickly followed suit and enrollment rates for minorities were higher than ever.
Today, the situation is much different. In 2014, The University of California system admitted more Latino students (29%) than white students (27%). Furthermore, the number of Hispanics enrolled in college tripled over the past decade and for the first time in 2012, their college enrollment rate was higher than that of Whites (49% compared to 47%). Additionally, colleges are admitting and enrolling more Blacks than before (up 9% to 14%). While this 5% jump is not an incredible feat in itself, African American students are on pace to meet the number of white students that attend college directly after graduating high school (66% for Blacks, 70% for Whites).
There is no question that the demographics of students in the United States are changing. That being said, it’s critical to ask whether a rule that was implemented in a vastly different socio-economic context is still relevant in this day and age.
We always talk about how affirmative action helps specific individuals or groups. But what if I told you that it hurts those not aided by affirmative action? Would you believe me if I went as far as to say that affirmative action can also hurt the people it’s intended to help?
I present to you two cases:
Case 1: Michael Wang vs. Kwasi Enin
Meet Michael.
Michael is an Asian-American student who graduated 2nd in his class with a 4.67 weighted GPA, perfect 36 ACT and a portfolio of extra curriculars ranging from singing at Obama’s inauguration to competing in national debate competitions. Michael was rejected by every single Ivy League school he applied to except for one.
Now let’s take a look at the polar opposite, the case of Kwasi Enin. Kwasi is a Black student who graduated 11th in his class, scored a 2250 on his SAT, was a varsity athlete, sang acapella, and volunteered at his local hospital. Kwasi was accepted to all eight Ivies.
There’s no question that both worked hard. There’s no question that both were qualified to be accepted to Ivy league schools. Both had their respective strengths and weaknesses. So why did Michael and Kwasi have such opposite outcomes?
My point isn’t to portray Michael as a victim and Kwasi as someone who doesn’t deserve his success, but to ask why two students with similar backgrounds and equally impressive resumes ended up with such drastically different results. Jerry’s story provides a glimpse into a situation Asian students all across the country are facing today.
Earlier this May, 64 Asian American groups filed a lawsuit against Harvard claiming that it uses discriminatory practices against Asian students in its admissions processes. While the number of Asian applicants to Ivy League schools has almost tripled since 1992, the number of Asian students actually accepted is lower than that of 1992. Furthermore, the National Study of College Experience discovered that an Asian student with a 2350 SAT is viewed in equal regard as a Latino student with a 2030 and a Black student with a 1900.
This is one reason why many Asian students choose not to disclose their race when applying to university. Jodi Balfe, Amalia Halikias, and Lanya Olmstead are three current Ivy League students with a mixed race background. Although each has an ethnicity of 50% Asian, they all opted to identify themselves to colleges with the other half of their race, white. The justification behind this was fear that they would be included in the Ivy League Asian quota. This quota proposes the idea that Ivy League colleges only admit a certain number of Asian students, regardless of how high their caliber may be. The existence of the quota may be speculation, but numbers don’t lie.
Based on the first graph, the Asian student makeup in respect to the student body seems to hover around 17% -20% at every single Ivy League as depicted by the graphs. Is this simply a coincidence? I wouldn’t put my money on it.
The takeaway from this argument is that Asians aren’t considered in the context of all the applicants to the school, but are considered in the context of all the other high performing Asians at the school. Is it fair that a high performing student who worked hard is rejected simply because he or she is Asian?
There’s the common saying that, “if affirmative actions didn’t exist, colleges would be filled with Asians.” The argument against admitting so many Asians is that diversity would be reduced at colleges. But is it ethical to deny the dreams of a capable student who has worked to achieve his goals simply due to the excuse of maintaining diversity?
Although Asians are minorities in terms of population, they don’t seem to be treated as such when it comes to college admissions.
There’s a much more serious reason why Asian quotas are a big deal. It’s known that Ivy League colleges are pipelines to positions of influence in many arenas, one in particular being politics. Hence, quotas limit the number Asians begin accepted into Ivy League colleges, thereby limiting the number of Asians that hold positions of political influence. The biggest difference between Asians and other minority groups is that Asians have little to no political voice or influence in this country, and that’s unacceptable.
Case 2: The case of Leonard Galmon
Meet Leonard Galmon.
Leonard looks like your typical teenager, but he’s experienced troubles we hope to never experience in our lives. Leonard was the first of six children to a 13 year old mother. His father, a drug dealer, was murdered. To top it off, Leonard attended one of the worst schools in New Orleans. Today, Leonard is a student at Yale. I see this as one of the successes of affirmative action, as it took a student from severely disadvantaged circumstances and gave him an opportunity at a quality education, but it makes me think of the long term effects.
Leonard scored 28 on his ACT. While this was the highest in his high school, it puts him significantly below the bottom 25th percentile cutoff of 31 at Yale. The consequences of this can be serious. There is no guarantee that a student from a low performing environment will be able to continue his or her success in a high performing environment, especially when Ivy Leagues are known for their rigor and competitiveness. Almost every student at Yale was the cream of the crop; will students like Leonard keep up or will they fall behind?
When students are admitted to colleges that they are not academically prepared for, consequences that quickly follow are low graduation rates, a dip in academic self confidence, becoming academically disengaged, and withdrawing from tough majors according to Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, authors of Mismatch. Sander went on to publish a finding that showed that Black law students who were admitted through affirmative action had first year GPAs in the bottom 10% of their class. However, Black students who had the same credentials as White students at the time of admission performed the same when they competed against each other.
Observations like these aren’t isolated. Journalist Elliot Barber launched an investigation into why minorities are not attracted to careers in academia, and pointed to race-preferential admissions as the reason. Dartmouth psychologist Rogers Elliot found that students who pursued a STEM degree in a college where they were more academically qualified are more likely to finish their degree than if they attended an elite school in which they were not qualified to attend.
Perhaps a combination of these reasons is why Clarence Thomas, the only Black Supreme Court Justice, doesn’t support affirmative action. More importantly, Thomas claims that affirmative action hurts minority students who were actually qualified to attend elite schools. In his own experiences, Thomas claims that once he started attending Yale, he felt that he was there solely because of his race. He subsequently took on challenging subjects to prove that he was not inferior to his white classmates, but says that his effort was futile. In addition, he goes on to assert that employers failed to take his degree seriously, as they all believed the only reason he got into Yale was because of his race, not his qualifications and work ethic. As a whole, Yale’s race preference admissions process robbed Thomas of the value of his degree.
I know what you’re thinking — I’m just a bitter Asian student who didn’t get into the colleges I wanted to. Fortunately, that’s not true. I’m writing this after witnessing affluent minorities benefit from a system they shouldn’t be benefiting from. I’m writing this for the Asian or White student who comes from a poor economic background but still can’t benefit from Affirmative Action. My point isn’t to say that affirmative action must be abolished altogether. My point is that affirmative action doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do and it’s time for major reform.
Let’s help those who need help instead of generalizing by race
There there is still a need for a mechanism that assists the economically disadvantaged, but we need to stop equating race to economic status. There are both rich minorities and poor Caucasians. In my opinion, the section for ethnicity should be removed all together.Why does it matter what race the applicant is, if he or she has an unfortunate background?
In the title, I put that affirmative action is joke because I find it hilarious how we try to solve discrimination with even more discrimination.
