If you've been following some of my comments, then you know that I'm against Affirmative Action. I've gotten both criticisms and praises for my stance. I don't mind the criticisms but I am frustrated by the fact that almost all of the criticisms are hinged on points completely irrelevant to my argument: They say because I'm Asian, I must be just pissed off; that I'm white-washed; or that I'm just a racist asshole who doesn't want racial inequality. How awful and untrue things to say. Even if they were true, which they are not, they do not invalidate any of my points because they have absolutely nothing to do with my arguments. As a matter of fact, many of my points against AA are extensions of points made by an African-American man by the name of Thomas Sowell.
Improving education and equal access to education has always been something I feel passionate about. So, I'd like to have an honest and constructive discussion on the topic of Affirmative Action. I'll be making the case both FOR and AGAINST AA below. I'll also add some potential counter-arguments for each of the points. Feel free to add on and have civil discourse.
- The Case for Affirmative Action:
1) Affirmative Action allows people to interact with diverse group of people, which teaches you perspectives: Learning more about other people and expanding our perspectives can never be bad. We grow more empathetic and learn variety of crucial soft skills by interacting with different people.
-> Counter-argument: This would be true only if we actually got to interact with diverse group of people. People are cliquey. Race-based admission only aggravates this cliquey-ness.
2) Affirmative Action improves social mobility:
-> Counter-argument: Social mobility has stronger causal relationships with the abilities of the individual, than where he/she went to college. There also are a lot of evidence that AA has been detrimental for social mobility.
3) While we work on improving our education, only way to allow more access to education for underprivileged people, in the meantime, is through AA
-> Counter-argument: This is what financial aid and merit-based scholarships are good for. Why can't we figure out ways to expand those programs? Being underprivileged is not a race specific thing. While quotas in general are not a good idea, a quota or quota-adjacent programs based on socio-economic standing would be far better than a race based one.
4) AA helps achieve racial makeup of colleges closer to that of the national demographics
-> Counter-argument: This is the weakest of them all. Racial makeup should represent the demographics of the applicants not the nation. We should be focusing more on having more qualified applicants from underprivileged backgrounds.
- The Case Against Affirmative Action:
1) Affirmative Action is a discriminatory and racist practice that disadvantages non-Black and non-Hispanic racial groups: By definition, this is true. Because of AA, acceptance rates for Black and Hispanic applicants are far higher than that of other racial groups. This is not a matter of opinion. This is a cold-hearted fact according to the very definition of discrimination.
2) Affirmative Action is ineffective at its intended purposes: There is good amount of evidence that AA is actually hurting "underprivileged minority groups" because many who would have succeeded at a slightly lower tier institution ends up falling through the cracks, which in turn impacts their career outlooks.
-> Counter-argument: Perhaps such cases are on the individuals themselves. Or perhaps such cases are only a small fraction.
3) Affirmative Action is economically sub-optimal: This is what quotas do. You are more likely to get less qualified students than you would have without AA.
-> Counter-argument: This sub-optimality is trivial and/or highly subjective.
4) Affirmative Action increases racial tensions & prejudice: We all have this biased perception that "a Black kid from Harvard is not as smart as a Jewish kid from Harvard" or the likes. Many people view the world through this lens even when it's not always true. If race wasn't a factor considered in admissions, this prejudice wouldn't exist in the first place. Moreover, there definitely is some race-based resentment on Black and Hispanic people from some Asian, Indian, and white Americans.
-> Counter-argument: If you live with more diverse group of people, then you get to understand them better and gain perspectives. This is the same as point 1 in the Case For AA.
5) Affirmative Action attempts to treat the symptoms while ignoring the disease: AA is viewed as some cure-all that will somehow magically get rid of inequality in education levels across different races. The truth is that it hasn't for decades. Why? Because we never bothered actually improving education and resource availability for "underprivileged" racial groups.
-> Counter-argument: I cannot think of one. Feel free to fill in the gaps.
All I will say is that they should really go off income instead of skin color if they really cared about disadvantaged people but they don't.
I've first hand seen messages go back and forth between a campus recruiter and HR saying to look our for colored students for the reason being they needed to "get their yearly numbers up."
That was more than enough for me to be against AA.
It baffles me why this is so difficult for many people to accept or even grasp it. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
you guys have this tired ass conversation literally every week on here.
Hopefully this ends it all. So people don't post biased and poorly backed opinions.
Let’s be honest about who benefits from affirmative action for a second. How many inner city kids do you see get into HPY’s with scholarships, and what has the general impact on black and brown communities been? Now ask yourself how many kids of college educated black and brown families, who’ve been through a similar upbringing as white and asian kids get into all 8 ivies and more with above average grades and decent-at-best accomplishments.
Fact of the matter is: AA is not income based because equality is not its actual intended purpose. Its a piece of racist legislation that leverages the greater political representation of larger racial groups to advantage their own privileged sub-communities at the expense of smaller racial minorities with fewer political representatives. All the while exploiting the trauma and oppression of poor black and brown communities by using them as “poster children” and disguising their self-serving ambitions under a facade of racial equity which conveniently and automatically invalidates counter opinions as racist.
Amen.
More racial inequality in the name of ending racial inequality. Ironic and quite frankly disgusting.
Not everything is about getting into HYP. Affirmative action also helps smart URM kids from middle-class, lower income backgrounds go to a top 50 college vs one outside the top 100.
This is by itself a problem. If they aren't qualified to go to top 50, then why don't they attend top 100?
There are overwhelming evidence that lot of students who "benefit" from AA fall through the cracks with their career prospects damaged, because they simply can't succeed in colleges they end up at.
If you actually read the OP, you might have caught that.
What is this site’s obsession with affirmative action? Jesus Christ. I didn’t even read your post because I’ve seen it here a hundred times before. Find something more important to worry about in your life.
This post is intended to end all the shitty takes, by actually providing sensible arguments from both sides.
Or maybe I'm just trying to destroy some "libtards".
All you’re doing is adding fuel to the fire of a low quality discussion topic that’s riddled with prejudices, biases and ad hominem attacks, and that ultimately achieves nothing. Threads like this one lower the quality of the forum.
This is basically a risk free post. Most WSO participants are opposed to affirmative because they think that less qualified people are getting hired over them or accepted into schools over them. If you create a topic that is anti affirmative action, you will get lots of SBs
Don’t be mad at diversity quotas Just learn your shit, add value to wherever you work, and pray that next time you get reincarnated as a black female at Philips Exeter
LOL.
Funny thing is that when I was applying to colleges, I was an international. International students have their own pool they need to compete with, so AA didn't even hurt me.
Actually, competition is worse for internationals.
Wait wait wait... It’s almost like a guaranteed way to be unhappy... is obsessing over situations that you can’t control...
But I love having conversations like this. It's a drug that I can't quit, it's part of my life. It's like doing blow but it's actually good for my brain.
Surely good old Lloyd can relate
go get laid or something my friend
Let’s be honest about who is really benefiting off AA. How many inner city kids do you see going to HYP’s with scholarships and appropriate aid packages? What has been the actual impact on underprivileged black and brown communities as a whole? Now ask yourself how many children of college educated black and brown parents - kids who’ve been raised and brought up in a similar environment and socio-economic background as upper middle class white and Asian kids - get into all 8 ivies and more with above average grades and decent-at-best accomplishments?
The truth of the matter is that AA ignores income inequality and focuses on race because equality is not the intended purpose. AA is a piece of legislation that leverages the greater voting power and political representation of larger racial groups to advance their own privileged sub-communities at the expense of smaller racial minorities with fewer political representatives. All the while exploiting the trauma and oppression of poor black and brown communities by using them as poster children to justify their own ambitions and labeling diverging opinions as racist.
I’m not salty tho.
Personally think AA should be more of a holistic approach taking into account both socio-economic standing and historical connections to systematic oppression. That way, if you're white but poor, you still get AA "points". But if you're poor and come from a historically opressed background you might get a few more points.
A truly diverse class should have legitmately wealthy, upper middle class, middle class and poor contingents of all racial backgrounds (including those from either historically oppressed or non-historically oppressed backgrounds). It shouldn't just be a bunch of upper middle class or legitmately wealthy kids that went to the same wealthy schools and grew up in the same wealthy areas with professional (or independently wealthy) parents with the only difference separating them being their level of melanin content or skin-deep facial features.
Something like ~70% of the affirmative action admits at top schools come from upper middle class backgrounds - how is that "diverse" in any way? It doesn't achieve anything except make it easier for kids who otherwise will be successful in life anyway to reap the rewards of affirmative action (even ithough they've experienced little to no adverse prejudice).
Source on the ~70% number?
I was being tongue-in-cheek by saying AA admits and admittedly it's only from the Harvard lawsuit (but realistically the same should be true at most elite schools) but it's actually: "71 percent of African American and Latino students at Harvard come from wealthy backgrounds" - if the percentage is that high it should follow that the Affirmative Action (i.e. lower than average stats for the school) contingent of that group is roughly a similar make-up.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/harvard-should-use-socio-ec…
A poor white kid and a poor black kid both face the exact same disparities. They have similar crime rates, actually some studies conclude that crime rates in poor white communities are higher. We no longer have any deliberately racist practices protected under the eyes of law.
Getting additional points for things that happened to your ancestors just doesn't make sense to me.
I don’t agree that a poor black kid and a poor white kid face the same struggles in life. It’s too generalizing to put it either way, but chances are a poor black kid has his own set of issues independent of the set of problems that affect poor white people.
Having said that, AA that serves a socio-economically underprivileged populous would help them both in all the ways that are meaningful and relevant. The fact that it focuses on race makes it racist. It’s just racism that serves the large minority groups - so it’s not a conversation people are ready to have.
>We should acknowledge that oppression
Sure, by overcorrecting the damage and loss of opportunity caused by that very same oppression to get back to some steady state of parity.
You don't just "magically" forget about 400 years worth of oppression (not even oppression, full on outright subjugation - think being born and immediately knowing that your children, grand children and great grandchildren are destined to be slaves). We aren't even that far removed from Jim Crow era policies. The ~60 years or so of "true" freedom these oppresed groups have had pales in comparison to the lingering wider systematic biases and prejudices that still play out today.
If you want to help course correct things, you have to give a bit of slack here and there to afford people the opportunity to start succeeding and setting a point to future generations that they can do the same. It's completely unfathomable that kids growing up in non-historically oppressed communities (including black recent immigrants like Nigerian Americans or Ghanaian Americans) have the same opportunity set as those from historically oppressed communities - they don't, and they won't for a long time.
Kids who grow up in these communities dream of being rappers or basketball players because that's the only success that people they see people like them have achieved. That alone is a deeply saddening reality and one that will have to change in order for there to be any progress. Affirmative action (alongside better education policies and a real grassroots effort to build these communities ambitions' up) is the least the american public could do to help give these communities a kickstart.
Not sure about the 70% number but hiring minorities from the upper middle class still enhances diversity. Hiring managers usually prefer to hire people who are very similar to themselves and their clients, which is one of the reasons black people have been shut out of jobs