affirmative action

Affirmative action has always been contentious, but the debate has only intensified after Trump administration officials reported that President Trump's executive plan to crack down on race-based affirmative action in college admissions is in the works and will be put into motion soon. With one side arguing that certain groups of people need a leg up in college admissions because of their long histories with institutional racism and the other side arguing that discrimination against one group cannot be fought with discrimination against another, discourse surrounding affirmative action has long been impassioned. And while I initially called myself ambivalent toward affirmative action, as I researched more and more about the topic, I realized that would be a lie — I vehemently oppose it.

African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders, among other beneficiaries of affirmative action, have been systematically disenfranchised; this discrimination has engendered something of a racial achievement gap that’s left students belonging to these groups underrepresented in the highest echelons of American undergraduate education. To put it another way, systemic racism is real. My rationale for being anti-affirmative action is not rooted in a refusal to acknowledge the existence of systemic racism — a concept I've never missed a chance to help educate another person on — but rather in my belief that affirmative action, while viewed as an artificial means of empowering the marginalized, does little to achieve that. I’m not going to controvert the fact that institutional racism is an unfortunate reality, nor the scientifically proven idea that being surrounded by racial diversity is intrinsic to a strong educational experience.

Here's what I think: college admissions should be, for the most part, meritocratic. It doesn’t sit right with me that a student of one race should be held to higher standards than a student of another to earn admission into the same university. Affirmative action is, frankly speaking, highly reminiscent of the racial quota system, which the United States has had a troubled history with. Furthermore, affirmative action is premised on generalizations, rather than precise statistics, about the socioeconomic status of certain racial groups. There exist wealth disparities even among only Asian-Americans, the highest-paid race in the U.S. overall. The average household income for an Indian-American family stands at $110,026, the highest of any ethnic group in the U.S., while the average household income for a Burmese-American family stands at $35,016. Lumping Burmese-Americans into the same group as other, more well-off Asian communities — simply because they would all check the “Asian” box on a form — seems to me to be more than a little absurd. Not all Asian-American students are privileged overachievers whose tiger parents’ six- and seven-figure incomes buy them expensive SAT prep courses and college counseling — the same way not all African-American students are Bronxites who grew up sleeping on park benches and serving as their family’s primary breadwinner.

However, I would say that most of the plaintiffs that have brought affirmative action cases to court have little credence, and come off as disgruntled white students whose rosy perspective on college admissions led them to believe their 29 on the ACT and 2 hours of community service would have been irresistible to Harvard. And while it’s true that a lot of the research undermining affirmative action rests on more superficial indicators, like GPA and test scores, they’re still all we have to objectively assess a student’s academic merit — and besides, College Board research from 2015 also found a correlation between test scores and college success, upholding the validity of such research.

Asian-Americans typically perform better in school than their African-American and Latino counterparts, yes. What’s more, when the Trump administration follows through in dismantling affirmative action, the racial makeup of the most prestigious universities will shift in favor of Asian-Americans. Caltech and the UCs serve as empirical evidence of that. Other research brings forward the "mismatch" hypothesis, which suggests that students whose academic abilities are not aligned with those of the average student at the school they attend will be disadvantaged. If a student's GPA and test scores are significantly lower than their college's average, irrespective of their race or socioeconomic background, they will struggle and be more likely to drop out. Affirmative action could be the reason that a student is admitted to a school they aren't fit for in its zeal to artificially augment diversity — which could set him or her up for difficulty and preclude the student from being successful in college and beyond. Thus, holding certain students to lower standards than others on the basis of race verges on discrimination and could have a detrimental impact on even those viewed as positively affected. The perpetuation of that practice and the idea that it’s acceptable are simply appalling to me.

So what's an alternative to race-based affirmative action that could genuinely help underprivileged students? Wealth-based affirmative action. Sure, some students grow up lacking resources other, more privileged students have access to, but that disadvantage knows no race. "Low-income" and "non-Asian person of color" should never be treated as interchangeable. Both forms of affirmative action would have disadvantages; for example, when it comes to wealth-based affirmative action, the "mismatch" hypothesis could still hold true, but when the pros and cons are weighed out, it does seem to be the more equitable system. Affirmative action based only on a student's income level and not their race could help ensure that students whose high school achievements are extraordinary relative to their family's financial circumstances have a shot at admission to top schools, truly breaking the cycle of poverty and inequality.