The great force driving affirmative action is the want to equalize people of all races. We want to make up to the black people for all of their suffering, allow latinos into high-end schools to receive similar educations to their Catholic-school raised white peers, and simply provide for equality of outcome. However, how equal have we actually made the outcome?
Affirmative action in colleges is a joke--not only does it harm students by a "misfit" (note: Claremont McKenna actually uses "good fit" as a criterion to admit students), but it encourages students to lie to gain an advantage (I have a friend who claimed Puerto Rican blood. This is a lie.) It also discourages students from being proud of their race--either they are guilty for being admitted into schools that their non-minority white peers were denied from (I have friends in this situation) or they find their heritage to be a novelty which boosted them forward (Hah! Sweet, I am an Alaskan Native!)
So what do we do?
Consider this situation: when I was a freshman in high school I took a debate course. The boy who sat next to me was black, relaxed, and a pretty big slacker but was a smart guy nevertheless. Once, someone asked me who sat next to me. I responded "well, he has curly black hair, normally wears Sean John and Rockawear and that sort of thing. He likes debate but is not a big fan of the sciences. He's a junior." Not until I said "he is black" was my friend recognized.
Perhaps we need to rely on ourselves as individuals to halt the misery of poor racial relations and attempts to find atonement for the past. Forget government or social programs. In agreement with the essential American motto, we need to take it upon ourselves as individuals in small communities to bolster the self esteem and love of learning in minority children (community service! Mentor people, mentor!) and set the same high standards of performance for all employees, students, and citizens as a whole.
p.s. Everyone should have a fun little looksee at this puppy right here. Maybe if we weren't so caught up in perfection at all times we could be more effective in our academic pursuits and enhance our virtues.
10 comments:
Affirmative action is clearly a controversial issue to which we each have our own opinions. If AA were simply and undeniably "harmful," the issue would not be controversial. Even considering empirical data, much can be argued for either side.
Hey, I am just filling a quota here, and it relates to the reading. Do not shoot the messenger, my ideas (like everyone else's) are not originals.
Affirmative action is simply and undeniably harmful; it remains controversial because some people just don't realize it. It hurts the (hypothetical) white man who is more qualified for a position than the black man, and it hurts qualified black people in general because people doubt whether they earned their positions. Clarence Thomas, in his recent interview with 60 minutes, spoke about how his Yale law school diploma was "worth fifteen cents" as a result of affirmative action because nobody would hire him.
Olga I like to think that I come up with one or two original ideas every once in a while.
Also, Richard E. Sander of UCLA Law has written elegantly about the mismatch effect. The theory, being that students who are poorly prepared for whatever school they enter, will either graduate in the lower half of their class or fail to graduate at all.
I would love to hear a cogent argument for Affirmative Action given that we know it hurts Asians (who get 50 points deducted off their SAT scores), encourages racial bulkanization, and fails to address the needs it so clearly tries to fulfill. It's a simple question of citizenship. I believe the Constitution means what it says and that it is race-blind.
OK so I was trying to be diplomatic...
I agree-- affirmative action as is currently practiced is not the best system. I was talking about the concept of affirmative action, not the current modus operandi.
Even so, dismissing or throwing the system away without proposing a viable solution isn't constructive (and may be harmful).
Charles, as for the "50 points" argument for Asians, I don't think that study took enough data (or had the ability to do so) into consideration for it to be considered scientifically sound. Additionally, I'd like to see more than a study by a researcher who may have been looking for certain results in his statistical analysis before jumping to conclusions. (I say 23.4% of statistics are made up and 97% of statistics are manipulated to support a viewpoint.) If you're referring to another study, cite your sources. I'm sure there is a lot published about this.
As future job applicants and recent college applicants, we probably all have strong feelings and perhaps bitterness toward policies practiced by schools and employers. I think it's important to control ourselves and work toward solutions than to lash out or rant.
Additionally, as Jesse said to me today, it's important to focus on equal opportunity if not equal outcomes.
Thank you, Josh. I was referring to the study you linked to. I'd be very interested to hear how the study was flawed. It was peer-reviewed, after all. As promised, there is another study addressing the effects of racial preferences in law school. http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~sander/Documents/Sander%20FINAL.pdf
There are also others. They range the political spectrum.
Contra to what you state at the end, nowhere in the Constitution is there a right to equal outcomes. Until we constitutionalize it, I'll stick with what Chief Justice Roberts wrote, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." The Constitution, as Justice Harlan noted in his lone dissent in Plessy, is color blind.
Fortunately, in every state where the issue has come up to a vote significant pluralities have voted against racial preferences and for equal citizenship.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't one of those people who feels as if he was discriminated against based upon the color of his skin, but even still, the social science evidence suggests that diversity myth has got to go.
What's more, even if you accept the view put forth in Bakke by Justice Powell-- that it isn't past discrimination, but the diversity of the student body that's the compelling state interest -- you're forced to look at Putnam's latest study which shows that diversity can actually decrease social capital. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x?cookieSet=1
P.S. If someone wants to show me how to write hyperlinks, I'd be much obliged.
My comment about equal outcomes was worded badly-- I meant what you meant--- that equal outcomes should not be the focus, but equal opportunity should. Sorry for the ambiguity.
I was mostly concerned that you were taking the Princeton study out of context. Asian students do not "get 50 points deducted off their SAT scores."
As for the integrity of the study, I'm sure it is thorough and peer reviewed. However, I think it encourages people to jump to sketchy conclusions from the results (e.g. the idea that Asians automatically lose 50 points). Also, I think the study was based on data from only a couple schools, though I don't remember all my criticisms of it now, as I read it in 2005 when it came out.
In summary, I don't disagree with most of what my classmates are saying; I was just nitpicky. Nevertheless, if we're going to blog about our personal opinions, let's make sure we are careful when paraphrasing articles as backup, stating half-truths as facts, etc.
enough with affirmative action- there are more important issues at hand.
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this text links to the website when you publish this is not linked to the website anymore.
I am not sure I want to throw my hat too far into this ring, but I will briefly comment upon affirmative action.
Though Albert Shanker is often remembered for a set of firings gone tragically wrong in New York City, he had a specific ideas about affirmative action that are still of interest.
He proposed that class rather than race be used in affirmative action. There is still a strong correlation between race and class in America, so this would, perhaps, be more fairly executed than the current system. A recent piece on Slate.com by Sara Mosle explored the issue in the greater context of public schools:
"At the core of Shanker's prescience was a single, revolutionary, but astoundingly commonsensical, insight: Poverty causes bad schools rather than the other way around. As Kahlenberg points out, the highly influential Coleman Report, issued in 1966, supported Shanker's notion, but it got lost in the debate about whether spending more money on schools was effective. More recent research—much of it by Kahlenberg himself, who is the leading proponent of class-based affirmative action—has found that racial integration, and most other reforms, have little effect in schools with overwhelmingly poor populations. But change the income balance within a school, and positive change follows: When the same poor students make up a smaller proportion of a student population—thus coming in contact with middle-class attitudes that promote learning—everyone benefits. In other words, peers' economic status matters as much as, or more than, peers' race or adults in transforming educational culture."
I would not go far to throw the current system out of the window, but Shanker proposed an interesting idea.
I was reading the NY Times the other day and happened upon this article from their Sunday magazine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/magazine/30affirmative-t.html
It raises a lot of the same points (from both sides) that seem to have been discussed, and offers some interesting statistics and twists on logic. Check it out.
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