The battle for and against the Affirmative Action on American campuses continues:
Since California voters in 1996 passed an amendment to the state constitution to ban the consideration of race and ethnicity in public college admissions decisions and other state government functions, proponents of affirmative action have sought the help of federal courts to block such referendums.
Since then, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the right of public colleges to consider race and ethnicity in admissions (in some circumstances), but federal courts have been reluctant to block states from opting out of such considerations. In July, five years after Michigan voters approved such a ban, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found that the measure was unconstitutional, handing supporters of affirmative action a major victory. But on Friday, the full appeals court vacated the July decision and announced that it would reconsider the case.
I have a few things to say about Affirmative Action but, to change things around a bit, I will let my readers speak first and will express my own opinion on the matter a little later.
So what say you, esteemed readers? Should public colleges be allowed to take race and ethnicity into consideration during the college admission process? Are you in favor of or against the Affirmative Action?
Clarissa's Blog 
What problems would considering race and ethnicity solve? To me, it just seems as if such a consideration would only succeed in denying other equally or more capable students a chance to go to that college. Besides, when the students get to college, they’re all on equal ground, no matter what race or ethnicity.
Though apparently having a large number of international students is good for a college’s reputation.
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I’m against.
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Against. Race/Ethnicity should never be a factor for anything. Only individual ability.
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Affirmative action is racist and sexist, clearly.
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It isn’t used for women as a group that I’m aware of, so it can’t be sexist.
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In this case, you’re right.
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Rather than forcing affirmative action on Universities and Colleges, (which can lead to admitting students who ought not be there to meet an acceptable ratio), the focus ought to be moving towards identifying and eradicating those systemic barriers which prevent the target groups from pursing higher education in the first place.
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I am for but with this caveat: I think it’s the wrong solution to a real problem. If we take AA in terms of college admissions, you clearly have to have finished high school to benefit from it. The real problem, in my opinion, is the atrocious system of elementary and secondary school, which not surprisingly hurt minorities the most. If you really want to address inequalities, that’s where you should start.And that costs a lot of money. But until something is being done, I’d rather have an imperfect solution than none at all.
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Not surprising – you made my point better than I did. Thank you. 🙂
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You area welcome!
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I have similar views to Patrick and Spanish Prof. I support it, because I think it is necessary at this point in history due to systemic problems in the education system. However, this means it’s also a stark reminder of how much this system is failing certain minority groups. Ideally, we will work towards a point where the bandage of affirmative action will no longer be necessary because we have learned to prevent the wound it is needed to cover.
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I support affirmative action, although I realize there are times when the execution of it is far from ideal. Some affirmative action is better than no affirmative action, that’s for sure, but further standardizing the “rules” for what’s acceptable would be a good thing. And the public, in general, needs to be a little more educated on what affirmative action actually is, so we can do away with myths like the idea of “quotas” posthaste. That’d help make it all a lot less unpopular.
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I support affirmative action, but Melissa is right, an educated public is needed in order for it to work. While I was at my old college, I actually had people tell me to my face that I “had it easy” compared to them because my mother was native, meaning that I got accepted more quickly and got reduced or free tuition.
Not true on either accounts, for one thing, I’m not enrolled in my family’s tribe and put down my ethnicity as “white”, and no native students I know of receive discounted tuition there, only at sub-par tribal colleges like Salish-Kootenai do they do that. But the myths (and the resentment towards a small handful of native students) persisted.
The myths surrounding affirmative action did a lot of damage, but if those were cleared away, it would be better for everyone.
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Universities in the UK currently have discretion over their offers and all offers are (theoretically) individualised, which means an admissions tutor can decide to give a student a lower offer for a variety of reasons, varying from ‘being a recent immigrant’, ‘family upheaval,’ ‘english as another language,’ ‘illness,’ ‘exceeding their background’ and a whole other bunch of stuff. This leads to assertions that positive discrimination is in force sometimes, although there is no such actual policy. (There is an anti-discrimination policy of course.) The people moaning are usually upset because their Crispin, with his £30,000 a year public school education has been given a higher (harder to achieve) offer than Ahmed, who went to a failing inner city comprehensive. What they fail to understand (or don’t want to understand) is that admissions tutors are making decisions based on their opinion of the future potential of the student, not just on what grades they present with – because as discussed in your rising stars posts, high marks don’t mean they will do well in higher education. This wriggle room in the admissions process can have the effect of creating a minor positive discrimination effect, but to my mind it’s no bad thing – it is held in check by the desire of the universities to keep their graduation statistics as high as possible (lower offers represent risk) and to maintain their selective prestige, a partial component of which is high entry point levels.
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Affirmation action is a politically correct term for racism.
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Have you ever heard a black person say this, though?
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What’s your feeling on legacy admissions? In my opinion, if you’re against affirmative action, you have to be against legacy admissions and/or giving preference to children of wealthy donors. Neither having parents who are alums nor your race has anything do to with academic merit.
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Of course, I am absolutely against this horrible practice of “legacies.” The word even sounds horrible.
I don’t think, however, that these practices ever intersect. Affirmative Action has to do with state schools and stupid kids of rich former students are a practice of private schools.
As an educator, I can tell you that a student brought to the university has a fairly significant chance of succeeding. “A legacy” has absolutely none.
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