Image Credits: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
In 1961, President Kennedy laid down the path for modern day affirmative action programs today. His executive order established affirmative action’s purpose to “ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” While the term “affirmative action” is an umbrella term to policies such as recruiting or hiring minorities and promoting diversity, affirmative action in higher education has been taking the spotlight in recent politics. When evaluating the benefits and disadvantages of these practices, there is one word that is brought up over and over again: fairness. In the case of comparing low-income, black, public school students with other higher-income, white students, the college admissions system would obviously seem wholly unfair. Therefore, in order to overcome the systemic barriers some students face, affirmative action programs help to level the playing field. Because affirmative action ensures minority and low-income students are evaluated on a level playing field, it ought to stay as a part of the college admissions process.
The goal for affirmative action, summarized by associate Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayer, was “to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run.” Affirmative action simply cannot be talked about on its own without being tied to the American black experience. For the majority of American history, higher education has had its doors slammed shut on black people. Despite these doors now being open, black students still carry heavy chains of systemic oppression. Using the analogy of a race, it is much more burdensome and challenging for a person to finish a race when they are battered and starting late. However, due to college integration efforts, enrollment of black students is on the rise, although there is still a significant chasm between black high school graduates and black undergraduates. For example, according to EdSource’s analytics of CSU and UC, despite “the number of Black high school graduates [increasing] from about 21,000 in 1997 to 25,000 in 2018,” the number of black students at CSU has halved to 4% due to affirmative action bans. Whether from social barriers or from economic barriers, black students are still underrepresented on college campuses and banning affirmative action only exacerbates this issue.
Because affirmative action, in its essence, gives an advantage to certain individuals, many critics claim that students who are admitted through affirmative action programs are undeserving of their spots. In the SFFA v. Harvard case, Jason Xu, the president of the Silicon Valley Chinese Association Foundation, argued that Asian-American students were being passed up for admissions despite their higher test scores. However, Justice Sonia Sotomayer explains that “there are reasons for [students getting lower test scores] – there are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action to try to balance out those effects.” Justice Sotomayer goes on to share her own story, saying that despite her test scores not being comparable to her classmates at Princeton and Yale, she wasn’t so far off that she couldn’t succeed at those institutions. Sotomayer’s experiences show that numerical indicators such as test scores fail to acknowledge the impacts of systemic racism, and amplify the inequalities students of color face.
Additionally, the claim that Asian students are far more qualified than their black peers shows a lack of understanding of the processes of affirmative action. In “Affirmative Action: Linking Research, Policy, and Implementation” (Volume 52, Issue 4), Scott Plous explains that preferential treatment can be separated into four categories: selection among equally qualified candidates, comparable candidates, unequal candidates, and selection among qualified and unqualified candidates. The mildest form of affirmative action is when a minority student is selected from a pool of equally qualified candidates. The logic behind preferential treatment of comparable candidates is that the difference in test scores or applications is so close that it becomes negligible. The last two types of selection are ones that commonly get spun into “affirmative action.” The reality is that “the selection of unqualified candidates is not permitted under federal affirmative action guidelines and should not be equated with legal forms of affirmative action” (Plous). However, even with preferential treatment, statistics show that white students still hold a significant advantage over their black counterparts. Not only are white students more likely to receive admissions advice, they also apply to more schools. Therefore, the claim that affirmative action tips the scales wildly in the unqualified, black student’s favor is again debunked.
Lastly, in the political debate around affirmative action, the term “reverse racism” has been thrown around. Reverse racism is a myth and does not exist. Racism involves power dynamics between groups of people and is always systemic. In “A Working Definition of Racism: Revised 7/88,” Ricky Sherover-Mercuse argues that it is inaccurate to call affirmative action reverse racism because, “Affirmative action programs are attempts to repair the results of institutionalized racism by setting guidelines and establishing procedures for finding qualified applicants from all segments of the population” (p. 2). Reverse racism can be chalked up to simply racial prejudice, which is defined as “a set of discriminatory or derogatory attitudes based on assumptions derived from perceptions about race and/or skin colour,” by the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre (ACLRC). When people use the term “reverse racism” in affirmative action debates, they are refusing to acknowledge the need for affirmative action due to institutionalized racism.
On one side of the coin, people argue that the best way to stop racial discrimination is just to be race-blind, while others believe that directly addressing it through preferential treatment is better. The reality is that every student is different, and if one applicant had come from great disadvantage, admissions should account for said disadvantage to better evaluate the student’s ability and potential. Although affirmative action has leveled the playing field of opportunity a little bit, there is still much work to be done in combating systemic racism. As Barack Obama once said, “Affirmative action is not going to be a long-term solution to the race problems in America.” In the status quo, African-American, Latino, and Hispanic kids are still the most likely to not receive their high school diploma. However, despite the fact that affirmative action programs most definitely do not solve the American education gap, it’s absolutely one step in the right direction.
Works Cited:
Adams, Susan. “White Students Have An Advantage In College Admissions, Says New Survey.” Forbes, 6 Dec. 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2021/12/06/white-students-have-an-advantage-in-college-admissions-says-new-survey/?sh=34773cdc2e46. Accessed 28 June 2022.
“History of Affirmative Action – American Association for Access Equity and Diversity.” AAAED, https://www.aaaed.org/aaaed/History_of_Affirmative_Action.asp. Accessed 28 June 2022.
Ingram, Noble, and Stacy Teicher Khadaroo. “Behind Affirmative Action Divide, a Common Disdain for Discrimination.” The Christian Science Monitor, 25 Oct. 2018, https://www.csmonitor.com/EqualEd/2018/1025/Behind-affirmative-action-divide-a-common-disdain-for-discrimination. Accessed 28 June 2022.
Liptak, Adam, and Anemona Hartocollis. “Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Affirmative Action at Harvard and U.N.C.” The New York Times, 24 Jan. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/us/politics/supreme-court-affirmative-action-harvard-unc.html. Accessed 28 June 2022.
Massie, Victoria M. “White Women Benefit Most from Affirmative Action — and Are among Its Fiercest Opponents.” Vox, 25 May 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11682950/fisher-supreme-court-white-women-affirmative-action. Accessed 28 June 2022.
Maxwell, Garcia, Connor, Sara. “5 Reasons to Support Affirmative Action in College Admissions.” Center for American Progress, 1 Oct. 2019, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-reasons-support-affirmative-action-college-admissions/. Accessed 28 June 2022.
Menand, Louis. “The Changing Meaning of Affirmative Action.” The New Yorker, 9 Jan. 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/20/have-we-outgrown-the-need-for-affirmative-action. Accessed 28 June 2022.
“Myth of Reverse Racism — Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre.” Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre, https://www.aclrc.com/myth-of-reverse-racism. Accessed 28 June 2022.
Peele, Thomas. “Dropping Affirmative Action Had Huge Impact on California’s Public Universities.” EdSource, 29 Oct. 2020, https://edsource.org/2020/dropping-affirmative-action-had-huge-impact-on-californias-public-universities/642437. Accessed 28 June 2022.
Plous, Scott. “Affirmative Action: Linking Research, Policy, and Implementation.” Journal of Social Issues, vol. 52, no. 4, Jan. 1996, pp. 3–18, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1996.tb01844.x.
Quilantan, Bianca. “An Anti-Affirmative Action Group Is Trying to Erase Race from College Admissions.” POLITICO, 1 Dec. 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/01/affirmative-action-race-college-admissions-441475. Accessed 28 June 2022.
Thank you for reading this submitted op-ed by guest writer Angel Liang. She is a rising junior at Sharon High School in Massachusetts. She enjoys writing poetry that speaks to her passions in mental health, feminism, and AAPI equity. In her free time, she spends time volunteering at the local Chinese school and playing video games! If you would like to submit writing for our newsmagazine or literary magazine, you can do so here.