With the recent fever dream of an election exacerbating bitter divides in the nation, racial issues have come to the forefront of our national conscience. Yet as we look into an uncertain future, we must be sure to preserve what has proved one of our country’s most successful policies in the past: affirmative action.
To be clear, we should understand what affirmative action is, and what it is not. Let’s start with the latter. Affirmative action is not a race-based quota system. Schools do not fill X percent of freshman ranks with a minority, nor do they hold X number of slots for a minority.
Affirmative action is, rather, the policy and practice of considering an applicant’s race as one factor in the myriad of considerations of a student’s application. It is a valid part of the holistic review of what students might be admitted. No one gets into a competitive college “because they are black” or “because they are Native American.” A school might offer admission to an otherwise qualified African-American over a similarly qualified Asian-American for a number of reasons: what is best for the school, what is best for the student, and what is best for American society writ large. In other words, if a school already has ample representation of racial group A in its incoming class, wouldn’t the student body be enriched by choosing a student from underrepresented group B for its campus? If group B is historically underrepresented in higher education for reasons not of its own making — and suffers because of it — shouldn’t society bend toward rectifying that? And isn’t the individual member of group B where we should start?
“If affirmative action didn’t exist, it’s just a fact that the number of underrepresented minorities in selective institutions would go down,” Patrick Salas, a senior who has researched the subject, said.
“And you would see much less representation throughout not only colleges, but these colleges are producing successful people. And then successful people would not be as much represented by black people, Latinos, Native Americans.”
Affirmative action goes beyond helping just underrepresented minorities: college is for expanding horizons and getting to listen to different perspectives. The benefits of a diverse school are concrete and far-reaching. In 2003, a conservative Supreme Court ruled in favor of affirmative action, Grutter v Bollinger, noting its benefits.
“The skills needed in today’s increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, culture, ideas, and viewpoints,” Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote.
Sitting in the racial equivalent of an echo chamber doesn’t help any student. If we dismiss diversity as a purely aesthetic measure, if we indulge this fantasy of a sinister college admission officer in pursuit of a perfect human rainbow to plaster over his pamphlets, we miss the point.
Chief Justice Rehnquist’s reasoning goes to two points: what is good for the student, and what is good for the larger society.
But there is a third point that is equally uncomfortable for many to consider. And that is compensatory justice, the duty to correct a past or ongoing wrong. Many Americans struggle to confront is the harsh reality that our country would not exist and be prosperous today if not for the government systematically stealing from, exploiting and persecuting especially underrepresented minorities.
“[Underrepresented] minorities are on average poorer than whites and Asians, and that’s created because of the oppression of the past,” Salas said.
“Black people used to be enslaved, and there weren’t any sort of reparations paid.”
Rather, at the end of America’s slavery era, African-Americans were just turned out of their homes, or forced into indentured labor, or arrested and forced into penal labor. They had yet another 100 years ahead to fight even for the right to vote and access to education. The crimes committed against African-Americans echoed down through the generations and reverberate today to disadvantage the group.
Affirmative action by no means rights these and many other egregious wrongs committed against any number of persecuted groups, but it was partly put into place to serve as a first step in beginning to heal a nation scarred by discrimination.
This is all to say: the existence of affirmative action is justified and necessary. Of course there is a natural inclination when something doesn’t go right to turn around and look for someone to blame, and college rejections are no different: yet too often, the scapegoat is the collective of underrepresented minorities.
“People don’t value underrepresented acceptances as much. It’s like, they only got in because they’re Mexican, or they only got in because they’re black,” Salas said.
Minority students, many having fought a system tilted against them, too often arrive on their campuses to pursue their deserved education in a cloud of whispered doubts and blame. To criticise the existence of affirmative action and undervalue the acceptances of minorities that benefit from it only serves to further marginalize students of color from a larger narrative that is enriched by their inclusion.
Opponents of affirmative action often propose replacing race-conscious admission by instead pushing ‘economic diversity,’ which has been proven again and again not to be an adequate substitute. One study done by the University of California, Los Angeles Law School showed that admission that considered economic status in the place of race meant that the enrollment of Native and African-American students toppled by 70%. The fact of the matter is, the only tangible correlation to race is race.
Ignoring a problem is not a means of solving a problem, and race and racism are no exceptions. Neglecting to consider race in college admissions solves America’s race problems like neglecting an oil light fixes a car’s engine.
This is not to say that students should be reduced solely to the ‘race’ box they tick on the Common App; it is rather to affirm race does play a significant part in shaping the worldview of minority students and does merit consideration. Selective institutions are producing the country’s best and brightest leaders: all students — those that belong to underrepresented groups and those that do not — benefit from the broad-minded perspective affirmative action brings about through diverse representation.
