The question is, should we have this equity over equality? It's easy to find many pros for affirmative action, mainly because it promotes diversity. However, there are some people who disagree with this method and think that colleges shouldn't use race as a factor for college admissions. People like Fisher in the Fisher V University of Texas case. The problem with this is, if they don't use race, what can they use? Many people think income should be used instead but income doesn't necessarily cover all the struggles some minorities go through in their academic journey. According to the Washington Post, black students are much more likely to be suspended or expelled and even arrested than other students. Also, according to Sage Journals, students of color are also less likely to be accepted into gifted programs even with the same grades and test scores.
Overall, I think that we should keep affirmative action because it increases diversity and gives people who wouldn't normally have as good of a chance a better opportunity for success. One thing that would help with the controversy would be to give students of color and of all incomes equal education from the start so that way everyone would have an equal chance of getting into college without the factors of race and income and we wouldn't need affirmative action in the college admissions process. However, that is not very probable and hard to enact.
Sources: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/racial-disparities-in-school-discipline-are-growing-federal-data-shows/2018/04/24/67b5d2b8-47e4-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858415622175
Sources: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/racial-disparities-in-school-discipline-are-growing-federal-data-shows/2018/04/24/67b5d2b8-47e4-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858415622175
I agree that if colleges are not allowed to use affirmative action, they need some kind of alternative. In my opinion one way to promote diversity is to make the SAT test optional or to stop accepting it. For my AP lang speech I had to research the SAT and I found black students and minority/low income students tend to do much worse on the SAT than their white and asian peers. (https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/09/24/minority-and-first-generation-sat-scores-fall-behind) Removing the SAT caused Hampshire's diversity (percent of applicants and accepted students) to increase by almost 30%. Becoming test optional might be a good way for colleges to even the playing field without having to discriminate against asian and white applicants.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your analysis on affirmative action. While many people who are being harmed by affirmitive action view it as unfair, the point of affirmative action is not equality; it's equity. Historically, African Americans have been forced to live in poorer areas, are more likely to have less educated parents (therefore leading to their own struggles in school), and are more likely to have underfunded school districts (therefore limiting the extracurricular on their school application). Yet it is up to our society to help create greater diversity in schools and chose the most capable students, looking at their environment for context. Race is a part of this, as our society unfortunately still deals with racism - whether conscious or unconscious. Until this issue has been fixed, affirmative action is a good way of helping close race gaps we have historically created.
ReplyDeleteSources: https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/12/us/affirmative-action-fast-facts/index.html
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/affirmative_action
I agree with your points in this great blog post. Affirmative action certainly provides benefits to minorities that otherwise are at a large disadvantage in our society. Like Mr. Stewart said, it completely depends what side of the issue you are on, if you are a minority and get in, you likely have no problem with affirmative action. But if you are white and don't get in, you likely see a problem with the system.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting and thought provoking post that is so relevant to our lives – especially now during senior year. I completely agree with your assessment of affirmative action: something like it is necessary to provide true equity(not just equality) among a system that has been intrinsically set against certain groups of people. When reading the post, it reminded me of the book we are reading in English Lit right now, The Invisible Man. One of the main themes of the novel is that in order to create true equality, those on top of the social hierarchy must sacrifice some of their power. I think this is part of the reason that affirmative action is such a difficult topic; depending on the situation, people are more or less likely to support it. Many people claim that they believe in equity, but complain when their own power/privilege is taken away by affirmative action. I think that in order to truly fix the larger issue – unequal opportunity for minority social groups – we each have to look at our own actions/opinions and be willing to sacrifice some of our power in the name of equity.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we should keep affirmative action in order to give all people especially those with more obstacles a better chance of getting into a college that they deserve to get into. It is a known fact that people from minorities are given less opportunities and therefore have more difficulties achieving the successes of people from different races. In the past colleges used to be largely reserved for wealthy white Americans but through affirmative action many of the issues with the American education system are eliminated. By colleges acknowledging the impacts that race can have it can help them to understand why they may not have as many extracurriculars or as good grades. While I believe a person should not have a better chance getting into a school just because of their race I think that race needs to be considered as a factor because in our society a persons race changes things.
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