Why is affirmative action good?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m not looking for a debate here - I’m truly interested in hearing from those who believe that affirmative action is a good thing (however, mods, if you feel a need to move this to GD, I’ll understand). Here’s why - my cousin’s son, who is incredibly smart and talented was denied acceptance into his first choice school. This kid has a 3.7 GPA, got 1460 on his SATs, has oodles of extracurricular activities, and REALLY wanted to go to this school. He’s been devastated since finding out on Saturday. He was even more devastated today when he found out that two of his friends who have lower GPAs and had MUCH lower scores on their SATs got into the school he so badly wanted to go to. Both are minorities.

I’m not saying that they should have been denied - they still have excellent GPAs and got decent scores on their SATs. I think EVERYONE who works hard should have the opportunity to go to the college of their choice. I’m just saying that my cousin should have been accepted as well, based on their academic and extracurricular careers.

So for those who truly believe in affirmative action - please tell me why you believe in it. What makes it worthwhile? I know it benefits minorities and I think that’s a good thing - I know that many people have been denied the chance to attend college, and I’m glad that’s turning around. But as a society, does it benefit us? I honestly don’t know enough about affirmative action to make a judgment either way - all I know right now is that there’s a devastated seventeen-year-old in my family and my emotions are running high for him.

(And yes, I’m upset right now for my cousin, so I truly hope that I’m not coming across as critical of minorites - I’m questioning the system right now, not anyone’s right to go to college. My cousin has been accepted at another school that he wanted to go to, and I’m going to talk to him about my alma mater because he’s expressed interest in them, and their application date hasn’t passed, so he will still be going to college, but he’s truly upset and feels like the hard work he’s done in his high school career has been for nothing. And what seems like a strange twist is that my family is actually part Native American, but because we no longer have a link to our tribal papers - when my grandmother died, they disappeared - none of us ever put it on any sort of application or survey. I can’t help but wonder if he’d have been accepted if he had checked the ‘American Indian’ box on his college application…).

Ava

2

It is obviously bad if it causes you to lose out.
It’s good if you win and can’t afford college.
I guess those cancel each other out if one isn’t personally effected.
It’s good in that it is good for children of color to see adults of color in positions of responsibility; teachers and business people for example.

3

I think you’re absolutely right about that - positive role models are needed for all kids, and we need more for minority kids. I’m all for everyone advancing to their fullest potential regardless of class or income. Isn’t that how they do it in the UK? There are places reserved in university for those who graduate with certain credentials? They just need to come up with the fees?

And I know I’m seeing this with a bias at the moment because I’m upset for my cousin, so I’m not exactly objective at the moment. And I have a feeling if I were looking at this from an objective viewpoint, I would have few problems with affirmative action. And the two kids who got accepted are definitely smart and deserved their acceptances.

I don’t know. That’s why I asked for thoughts on why it’s good. It just seems like in order to further a goal, other people get screwed.

Ava

4

Let me establish my “credentials” by saying that there are some aspects of AA that I really have a problem with.

But:

There are some people who have been given so little opportunity that giving them one real chance doesn’t really sound that bad.

Ex: I sent two kids to Gifted testing while teaching 4th grade. Neither of them made it, because no matter what they call it, intelligence tests are really current ability tests. Anything that can be done better can be learned, and learning is only done through practice at that kind of activity, which these two hadn’t gotten in their crummy (and I mean BAD) school district.

One of them was the type whom I hope ended up tearing up his high school (this was ten years ago). Seeing his level compared to the other kids who had been taught the same way, I would be open to the idea of giving him perferential treatment in something like college acceptence.

Which is why the UC chancellor a few years ago promised that the top 4% of every high school class could go to a UC campus (even if it might be Davis or Santa Cruz).

But I have to go and say that assuming that people are “disadvantaged” inherently because of the light meter reading off theri skin is one of those things that makes me go :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

5

I’ve taught at the university level for over 20 years, and I’ve seen a lot of affirmative action, almost all of it done right.

First of all, note that the media loves to point out the bad cases and ignore the good ones. So most people’s perception of what is AA has nothing to do with what it really is. It rarely works the way talk radio hosts claim it does.

Secondly, SAT scores are a horrible way to evaluate potential students. Absolutely horrible. The correlation between SAT scores and later performance is lousy. Think of them having an error range of 200-300 points. Many minority groups do poorly on SATs but very well in college. If you went just by SAT scores, racial discrimination at colleges would skyrocket. People think that multiple choice questions are “fair” and all that, but that doesn’t matter. Suceeding in college has very little to do with multiple choice questions. (Many schools are dropping SAT scores as application info, so that’s why essays and such are being added to SATs. I.e., economic reasons to preserve customer base.)

Take A Famous Tech School In the SE. They admit many students whose SATs are not that great. They track these students. The “special admits” do better on average than the regular admits!

Repeat: These students do better than the “more qualified” students.

This data is kept secret. I know it because I was a prof there. If it were made public you would get hit from both sides:

  1. “Hey, you’re discriminating against “better” students.” Says who?
  2. “Hey, you should have more “special admits” since they are clearly better than your other students.”

avabeth, you only have a valid complaint if the ones you think are “better” turn out to actually be better. But a long history of tracking such things strongly suggests otherwise.

First and foremost: Forget about SATs meaning a lot.

6

I would feel a lot better about affirmative action if it were based on class rather than race. Poor kids tend to have worse educations than rich kids, regardless of the colors of their skin.

7

The original idea was to enable those whose socioeconomic/ethnic history deprived them of the underpinnings that allowed success in a new, theoretically unbiased society. Originally the plan was to arrange a temporary bias to allow the disadvantaged to “catch up.”

Was it a good idea? Well, the theoretically new, unbiased society (1964) was not unbiased, and affirmative action sought not to remove bias, really, but rather to achieve some kind of elusive results based parity by introducing yet another bias to the mix. As pointed out by the Bakke suit a quarter of a century ago, its end result has been to effect yet another tier of discrimination.

Forty years ago it may have seemed like a good idea. Simple though hindsight always seems, at that point I’m sure most who embraced it did envision it as a catapault offering the previously disenfranchised a method by which to bring their numbers up in the middle and upper socioeconomic classes. I think they truly did not appreciate that it would become an entrenched entitlement that would outlive its purpose and introduce permanent (as long as it persists) negative effects for its intended beneficiaries, those being, most prominently, the common perceptions that a.) a professional of the beneficiary group did not have to meet the same standards as his contemporaries and b.) a form of unarguably racial/ethnic discrimination has now become institutionalized and federally protected.

Glad I am that this is in IMHO - I personally believe that a person of any gender/ethnicity/cultural-you-name-it can do well in our society at this point in time. The rise of the black middle class is testimony to this. Any kid can, eventually in my case, get his (OK, or her) shit together and stream along.

We’re beyond making opportunity available - that’s already there, and has been for a long time. Opportunity is poorly measured by outcome, as the population to whom opportunity is offered must meet the challenge.

And there’s where we leave it. Offering opportunity to the permanent underclass effects little or nothing, as they generally have not sufficient desire or motivation to deal with the changes that must occur to realize the opportunity. Ethnic minority families are hardly included in this group as a generality, because those who have triumphed over adversity pass that on, and their family grows in prosperity.

Whole boatloads of whites are amongst the permanent underclass, as are many blacks and other minorities. In this country, I’d suspect whites are the largest component of that group.

The point is that, while Affirmative Action had some justifications in its beginnings, the initially poorly percieved flaws are both pernicious and, ultimately, counter-productive. It had its day; it’s shot its wad; it has nothing but misery for all to offer in the future.

It needs to be abandoned for the benefit of all.

8

hear, hear.

I support affirmative action if it is used to level the playing field and give people a chance to succeed on merit, but race is not a fair way to go about it.

Unfortunately, if it wasn’t targeted at minorities would ingrained conscious or unconscious prejudices lead to affirmative action helping poor white folk to the exclusion of others? The honest part of me says probably. Because of that intangible, I support affirmative action even though it isn’t fair as implemented.

9

I have no strong opinions for or against AA, but I think that it’s up to the school to determine its own student body, not the applicants. You could be the President’s daughter with a 4.1GPA and a 1600 SAT, but if the school doesn’t want you, you’re not entitled to admittance.

10

The effect of the system in place before AA was to virtually guarantee that minority folks were excluded from the better educational and employment opportunities. The thought is that our society as a whole benefits from a more equitable distribution of those opportunities. As with any redistribution plan, some get more than before, some get less than before. Those who get less typically aren’t too happy about that.

I’m sorry about your relative’s disappointment. Would he be happier if he got into that particular school AND no minority folks could? Without AA, that would likely be the case.

11

I so need to go on to bed. I read the OP as “Why is God for affirmative action?” and initially thought, why would He need to be since He’s responsible for it everything being the way it all is anyhow.

I mean, come on God, just do the right thing and this won’t be necessary.

Gah. :stuck_out_tongue:

12

Tell the kid “It’s not all about you.”

We don’t get everything we want in life. So he has to go to a different school. So what? The school’s interest in a diverse student body and their conviction that such diversity is important to a well-rounded educational experience is far more important than letting some people into their first choice school instead of their second. Schools make choices all the time which people don’t think are “fair”. Athletes, legacy admissions, where’s the outcry about them? Many thing SAT scores are inherently unfair. And GPAs are pretty meaningless, IMHO, because standards vary widly from school to school. I don’t see why people single out one admission standard and say “this is arbitrary and unfair” and thing every single other admission standard is fair and just.

13

Affirmative Action is not good, but it’s necessary, until we get a society where everyone truly has an equal opportunity regardless of their race, gender, or class.

I wish it wasn’t necessary. Heck, I wish it worked better. But it beats having nothing, IMO.

14

Every time a person loses out because of the color of his skin, an injustice has been done. The same for gender or religion or any other factor you can think of that’s independent of ability.

I’d guess that the OP’s child wasn’t necessary denied because he’s white, but that his friends got extra points for being minorities. I think that’s a distinction worth noting. Or maybe they just didn’t like his essays (or any other arbitrary factor).

In any case, your cousin needs to stop feeling bad for himself, make sure he doesn’t resent his friends, and start looking at second choices.

Good luck.

15

This is IMHO, so here’s an opinion: I think that by benefiting minorities, it does benefit society. There simply aren’t enough positions at the top to accomodate everyone who is qualified. Until recently, the problem has been solved in the US by simply granting access to those positions only to white males. The fact that so many of the underprivileged have historically been minorities has adversely affected society, by increasing the anger and resentment felt by the minorities and by perpetuating the belief among some that those minorities aren’t fit for anything more than manual labor or crime. If and when the day comes that a significant portion of society ceases to view minorities in that light, Affirmative Action will no longer be needed.

I’m a white male, but I grew up poor. My father didn’t finish high school, and my mother barely did. I was never taught the value of education, mostly because my parents never knew the value of education. When I finally went to college at age 24, I worked hard, borrowed money, got some grants and scholarships, and graduated with a GPA of 3.855. No one was more surprised than I was. I did even better in my MA program–finished with a perfect 4.0. When I applied to a PhD program that suited my goals, I was turned down; when I asked why, the department chair told me that Affirmative Action had more than a little to do with it. The line I remember best from the letter said, “I do not recommend that you reapply, so long as you remain white and male.”

At first, I was hurt, probably much like your cousin’s son. As I thought more about it, though, I realized that it made some sense. Large-scale policies like that can’t take every individual’s case into account perfectly. Though imperfect, ethnicity is a fairly accurate indicator of who has been denied opportunity and who hasn’t. In my case, it missed–there are plenty of us white males who never got what they deserved. Still, I believe that society will benefit more from having a black man, or an Indian woman, or a Latino or whatever in that position that I was hoping for (university English professor, probably) than it would from having me in that position. I hope that whoever got the job that I had dreamed of will have children who will grow up thinking that they need not sell crack on the boulevard, pump gas or wash dishes for a living. I hope that somewhere, somebody’s kids will grow up thinking that they can do well in life, whereas they might not have thought so otherwise. I came to feel strongly enough about this that I put my money where my mouth was, and dropped out of the PhD program I was already in. (It wasn’t the one I really wanted, but I was in a pretty respectable program when I applied for the one that turned me down.)

I don’t think of this as much of a sacrifice; I just think of it as the right thing. I’m not critical of white males who aim high, exactly, but when I view the thing from a larger cultural and historical perspective, I do think that we need fewer white males on the top rungs of society, and more minorities. And I don’t think that it will help just the minorities. I think it will help everyone. Well, almost. It won’t help me, because I won’t be here when (and if) this level of equality is realized. But I think it might someday make a tiny speck of difference, positive difference, in the world of the future. Hey, I can’t invent a cure for cancer or put an end to war, and I can’t end discrimination, racial, economic, or otherwise. I can’t even make much of a dent in any of these things. But if stepping aside and renouncing some of the privilege that I might have had (though poor, I still had it a lot better than a lot of poor minorities) might help in even the most immeasurably tiny way, I’m willing to do it.

I managed to get enough education; I doubt that I’ll ever stand on an assembly line or clean public restrooms again. I hope your cousin’s son does better still, and never has to do that stuff at all. But I also hope that he isn’t overly angry about this, and that he doesn’t regret not cashing in on his Native American heritage. (Here I’m assuming that while he is part Native American, it hasn’t contributed significantly to his suffering.) From what I’ve read here, he seems like a smart, hard-working guy, and I imagine he’ll do well. Like you said, he’s still going to college. With luck, he’ll live in a better world than we do now, and this stuff won’t be necessary forever.

16

Affirmative action was sold as a way to break generational poverty and discrimination.

My grandfather came to America as a penniless, illiterate Italian immigrant, in an era when Italians faced significant discrimination. He worked most of his life as a laborer.

His children, all nine, were high-school or college educated, and work in a number of jobs. None are wealthy, but most did pretty well.

His grandchildren, though, did very well. This generation of the family is mostly college educated, includes many professional people, and has incomes solidly in the middle class or upper middle class range.

This is one family’s climb up from poverty. No affirmative action was involved.

I see no reason, especially with racism a diminishing force in this country, to continue a model that, at best, has shown mixed results. Either switch to a class-based affirmative action plan, or scrap the whole discriminatory mess altogether.

17

I have two daughters, one who graduated two years ago, and one graduating this spring, both of whom attended inner city schools for the past five years. In both of their situations, they were a minority population (a small number of caucasian students in a high african american population–even the “asian” and “hispanci” students outnumbered the caucasian students). When they were applying for college and scholarships, I told them that under their current circumstances, they qualified as “minority” status. My oldest applied for a local scholarship marketed towards “minority” students–and won based on her essay, which centered on being a “minority” student, even though she did not fit the idea of a typical minority student.

My youngest daughter applied for a major univeristy, and was accepted, but at a smaller satellite campus (not the main campus, where she really wanted to be). Two of her fellow students (both african americans) were accepted at the main campus, even though my daughters grades were higher, more extra cirricular activities, and her admittance essay was “better” (and opinion of two english teachers who assisted the students with proofing their essays). My daughter feels that she was shuttled to the satellite campus because she’s caucasian, and I’ve tried to tell her that there may have been other reasons, but sometimes I’m not so sure.

18

I did want to clarify that I do not think that race should have a factor at all in the acceptance, or denial, of college. I grew up poor, very, very poor, and had less advantages socially than other kids with whom I went to school–including the african american kids and the hispanic kids. I don’t want anyone to be penalized for their race, but I also don’t think anyone should receive extra points for it either.

I’m a woman, but there is no way I’d want a job position based on the fact that I’m a woman. either I can do the job, or I can’t, but don’t give it to me based on the fact of my chromosomes. I find it difficult to imagine that some of my “minority” friends and aquaintences would want to be awarded something based solely on their race.

19

Again, I must point out that nearly response posted so far contains a fundamental misunderstanding of how AA actually works in college admissions. How and why it is done is not the same as what the media portrays it.

If the data available to colleges is already biased, then corrections have to be made to make it less biased. Due to fears of bad publicity, a large amount of bias against some minorities still exists even after some AA is applied.

The issue is not what your SAT scores are, the issue is how well are you going to do in college.

In no way shape or form are majority group members being excluded by “less qualified” minorities when AA is done right. (And it almost always is.)

Note that many colleges also accept a limited number of applicants from a given high school, a given state, and so on. Highly qualified students are routinely denied admission in favor of less qualified people of the same background. Obviously, to compain that some poor little majority kid wasn’t admitted because a minority kid was, all the time ignoring the other truly less qualified majority kid that was admitted, would be racist.

You have to ask yourself: “Of all the other kids that were admitted instead, why am I only worrying about the minority ones?” Think real hard about that one.

In particular, avabeth, why aren’t you bothered by these other majority kids that were placed ahead of your relative???

20

Put me in the camp with people who would support class or income based affirmative action. My husband comes from a very poor area of Wisconsin – many, if not most, of his nieces or nephews will not be going on to college. Out of 7 siblings, Kevin is the only one who has a college degree (one that he got as an adult in the workforce, BTW). In fact, out of the 7, three dropped out of high school – although two of them (my husband and his youngest sister) did get their GEDs. Counting Kevin’s siblings, there are something like 60 first cousins in his family – 6 of them have college degrees. 10 of them dropped out of high school and perhaps half of those eventually got GEDs. About a dozen of the cousins have managed to achieve a middle class or above lifestyle. The rest are working class or below, with 5 or 6 actually living at or below the poverty level.

My husband and I live in a middle class area in a fairly well-off county in Virginia. Our kids have a number of minority friends, all of whom are significantly better off than most of my husband’s family. One of my daughter’s classmates is a girl of mixed race with a father who is a doctor and mother who is a lawyer. One of my son’s good friend’s is a kid whose father – except for race – is a mirror image of my husband: a recently retired military officer now working as a Defense Consultant. I know for a certainty that he makes about as much as my husband does (in the very low 6 figures) – plus his wife works (as a teacher), while I am a housewife. To me it seems unconscionable that these privileged kids should get preference points over my children’s cousins – so many of whom are genuinely poor and disadvantaged.