Artwork: Hannah Lui
Race-conscious affirmative action is one of the most contentious issues regarding higher education. As an Asian-American, I strongly believe in ensuring diversity but I believe that race-conscious admission practices do more harm than good and there are race-neutral practices to ensure diversity that should be used.
Simply put, the color of your skin shouldn’t make you more or less likely to get into college. Your merits and skills should be why you get into a certain school. As the Supreme Court wrote in the 2000 anti-AAPI discrimination in voting rights case, Rice v. Cayetano: “Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.” Fundamentally, affirmative action requires colleges to look at a person’s race and make substantive judgments about that person, which is by nature discriminatory, because it judges someone based on the color of their skin. You would not want a person offered a job because they are Asian, white, Black, or Hispanic; you would want them getting a job because they are the most qualified for the job.
When colleges admit students on the basis of race, they are treating racial groups homogenously and assume they all have similar or the same experience. Justice Clarence Thomas writes in his concurrence that an individual is and should be bigger than their race. He argues that affirmative action stereotypes POC groups: “All racial groups are heterogeneous, and blacks are no exception… Eschewing the complexity that comes with individuality may make for an uncomplicated narrative, but lumping people together and judging them based on assumed inherited or ancestral traits is nothing but stereotyping.”
Justice Thomas is accurate in his judgment here; as an Asian-American, I have not lived the same life as my other Asian peers and we can not be simply grouped because we have the same skin color. By lumping people together and grouping them because of the color of their skin, colleges are diminishing the experiences of each individual. I, as a Chinese-American, do not have the same experience as a Korean-American or an Indian-American, or a Filipino-American.
Additionally, affirmative action easily reinforces harmful stereotypes. The underlying assumption in justifying affirmative action is that certain racial groups need more help in getting into selective schools, which leads to the idea that some races are just better than others and that is why we need to be helping them. In reality, equal opportunity is offered to people of all races and this mindset only further pushes down minorities by telling them that they are in need of extra help instead of actually helping them out.
In the same vein, to ensure a fully merit-based system, we must abolish legacy and children of donor-based admissions, as both Democrats and Republicans have advocated for in the wake of the Supreme Court decision; college admissions should be based on your merits and experiences not who your parent is and how much they can donate. In a simulation conducted by Students for Fair Admissions, a world where Harvard eliminated legacy admissions and emphasized the socio-economic status of applicants resulted in increased admission rates for POC candidates.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hear Our Voices Magazine.
I’m really disappointed in this article – it is tragically underresearched and ill thought out.
The color of your skin already makes you more or less likely to get into college (and it’s called racism, not affirmative action)
No college is making “substantive judgements” about a person due to their race, that is complete hyperbole
The point about wanting the most qualified candidate to get a job shows a complete lack of understanding of not only affirmative action, but also the college admissions process in general. Schools want the people they think will contribute the most to their campus, which is why you can get rejected from a school even if someone with an SAT score 200 points lower gets in. Moreover, certain people (most notably African Americans) are not afforded the same opportunities as others in the US, which is why affirmative action exists in the first place. Black people are at a fundamental disadvantage when it comes to being “the most qualified”, as are poor people, Latinos, native Americans, and a dozen other groups. By saying you want the most qualified person to get the job, you’re really just saying you want the most affluent person to get the job.
Affirmative action in no way diminishes the experiences of an individual as the author would suggest. In case you didn’t know this, affirmative action does not just provide all Black people a blanket acceptance to Ivy League schools. These kids still have to work hard, still have to be interesting, still have to do well in the application process. Affirmative action elevates their experiences by providing them an equal opportunity to bring these diverse experiences to college campuses.
It is not stereotyping to acknowledge that some groups of people are less likely to get into college without affirmative action in play. On the contrary, it is recognizing the complex history of systemic racism, classism, misogyny, etc. in the United States. Getting rid of affirmative action actually reinforces the harmful stereotype that anyone in America can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become successful if they work hard enough at it.
I refuse to believe that the author wrote out the statement “in reality, equal opportunity is offered to people of all races” and actually believed it. I have lost all faith in humanity.
The last point about diversity being important to college campuses is completely contradictory to the rest of the article. Diversity should in fact “encompass all aspects of a student’s personhood”, and that includes their race. Considering this is a publication dedicated to the diverse experiences of Asian Americans, I am shocked this article is so reductive in its view of race.
Overall I would say I’m incredibly disappointed. I’ve been reading HOV for a long time because my stepchildren are Asian and I’m trying to gain more perspective on their lived experiences, but this article is making me reconsider whether I can really trust HOV as a source. The idea of stepping on Black people and other marginalized groups to further your own cause is disheartening to me. Please do better (starting with doing more research).
Anti affirmative action is anti black, please do better
I really take issue with the assertion “they are treating racial groups homogenously and assume they all have similar or the same experience.” Isn’t not having aa doing the same thing bc it assumes all racial groups have the same opportunities?
I usually agree with the stuff in this magazine but this is not it