The questions regarding affirmative action, its motives, and its consequences have been circulating since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Affirmative action, as defined by Encyclopedia Britannica is, “ …an active effort to improve employment or educational opportunities for members of minority groups and for women,” (Taylor). Pertaining to the rat race of college admissions, which have been incredibly challenging for students of all races, backgrounds, and ethnicities, affirmative action has not helped their case. Rather, affirmative action may simply be viewed as a method of revenge for the historically marginalized. It is therefore not surprising that there is much opposition to the system now viewed as “reverse racism”. To outline some common criticisms of affirmative action and its recent role in the college admissions scene, we must analyze the admissions statistics for different racial/ethnic groups.
Among the list of academics who have conducted research regarding the impact of affirmative action on college acceptance rates is Thomas J. Espenshade, a sociologist at Princeton University. In one of these such studies, he discovered that, “... without affirmative action, the acceptance rate for African-American candidates at elite colleges would be likely to fall by nearly two-thirds, from 33.7 percent to 12.2 percent, while the acceptance rate for Hispanic applicants probably would be cut in half, from 26.8 percent to 12.9 percent,” (Jaschik). But these numbers alone cannot tell the full story. Surely, marginalized groups would continue to be discriminated against without the new system of affirmative action to protect them. Surely there is no academic disparity between those of different racial backgrounds. Unfortunately, the figures disprove these theories.
According to Inside Higher Ed, the 2015 median SAT scores saw Black testers score 431 for Critical Reading, 428 for Mathematics, and 418 for Writing, while Hispanics scored 449, 457, and 439 in those same three categories respectively. This is a major contrast to the scores of White testers, who earned marks of 529, 534, and 513 as well as Asian testers who scored 525, 598, and 531, (Jaschik).
Overall, from a solely numerical standpoint, affirmative action has contributed to the admittance of countless underqualified college applicants for factors outside of their control, while simply discarding the remaining applications from “privileged” applicants, regardless of their true qualifications. However, the narrative that affirmative action only negatively affects Caucasian Americans who have enjoyed racial privilege throughout history is simply false.
Despite popular belief, it’s not only conservative educational outsiders who are criticizing these woke perspectives. Published in the Stanford Magazine, the arguments against affirmative action provided by two Stanford alumni, PayPal co-founder and attorney Peter Thiel and former Yammer CEO David Sacks, cite the observations of, “...the Hoover Institution's Thomas Sowell… [which show that affirmative action]... primarily benefit[s] minority applicants from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. At the same time, because admissions are a zero-sum game, preferences hurt poor whites and even many Asians (who meet admissions standards in disproportionate numbers),” (Sacks and Thiel). Therefore, affirmative action doesn’t simply give minority applicants a “small plus”, they kick down the door for the “underprivileged” by forcing admissions officers to turn a blind eye to the numbers, including the “...SAT disparity between Stanford's African-American and white admittees, [which] reached 171 points in 1992,” (Sacks and Thiel). Despite all of these additional advantages for the historically disadvantaged classes in American society, these educational institutions fail to conceal the drastic repercussions of these affirmative action admittance practices.
Just ask Stephen Cole and Elinor Barber, authors of the research book, Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High-Achieving Minority Students. Cole and Barber conducted extensive research on, “7,612 high-achieving undergraduates at 34 colleges and universities,” before declaring… ‘that in virtually all selective schools...where racial preferences in admission is practiced, the majority of African American students end up in the lower quarter of their class,” (Heriot). Additionally, “[l]ower grades sap the academic self-confidence of African-American students at elite schools… which in turn causes them to abandon their freshman interests in academic careers,” (Heriot). Therefore, affirmative action discriminates on the basis of race, an opinion supported by the Supreme Court, “[which] rul[ed that] race-based affirmative action programmes in higher education violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment…,” (The Week). Furthermore, despite its initially altruistic motives, affirmative action only serves to further disenfranchise minority students by widening the economic class divide and lowering the self-esteem and confidence of a vast majority of those whom it supposedly benefits.
Overall, affirmative action is really a part of the larger network of modern-day woke culture that has weathered intense controversy amongst the right-wing of American politics. The fundamental ideas and principles that woke social justice activists advocate for are the same ones that make up the affirmative action system. To conclude, I would like to include a quotation from the Cato Institute regarding wokeness that supports the above mentioned idea. “Take, for instance, public school lessons that ask students to ‘map’ their various identities and classify those identities as either having ‘power’ or as ‘marginalized.’ Or proposed curricula in some progressive states and cities that try to inject ‘social justice’ ideology into many classes including math and science, so that students are asked to ponder how ‘whiteness’ or ‘power’ operates in math. Or ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ workplace programs that many corporations now admit promote more polarization, bitterness and blame than understanding,” (Young).
At the end of the day, affirmative action only seems to funnel into the greater woke culture philosophy. Although it seems to work flawlessly on paper, it ultimately disenfranchises students from all ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds. In light of all this, it’s time for us to recognize affirmative action for what it truly is: Racism, but this time without the reverse.
Works Cited
Heriot, Gail. “The Sad Irony of Affirmative Action.” National Affairs, 2013, https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-sad-irony-of-affirmative-action . Accessed 20 May 2024.
Jaschik, Scott. “A look at the data and arguments about Asian-Americans and admissions at elite colleges.” Inside Higher Ed, 6 August 2017, https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/08/07/look-data-and-arguments-about-asian-americans-and-admissions-elite . Accessed 20 May 2024.
Sacks, David, and Peter Thiel. “The Case Against Affirmative Action.” STANFORD magazine, 1996, https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-case-against-affirmative-action . Accessed 20 May 2024.
Taylor, Hobart. “Affirmative action | Definition, History, & Cases.” Britannica, 12 April 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/affirmative-action . Accessed 19 May 2024.
The Week. “Pros and cons of affirmative action.” The Week, 5 July 2023, https://theweek.com/news/society/958504/pros-and-cons-of-affirmative-action . Accessed 20 May 2024.
Young, Cathy. “The Pushback against 'Wokeness' Is Legitimate.” Cato Institute, 8 June 2023, https://www.cato.org/commentary/pushback-against-wokeness-legitimate . Accessed 21 May 2024.
I appreciate your take on this issue. Great work.
Nice job, Ethan.