“I have a dream,” he said proudly as the crowd cheered, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking in front of hundreds of thousands of people, appealed for a country without prejudice and discrimination.
Unfortunately, discrimination, in all its forms, still persists – half a century since King’s speech. In April 22, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and reinstated Michigan’s affirmative action ban. Michigan voters passed a referendum in 2006 to amend the state Constitution and ban any consideration of race in college and university admissions. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the lead opinion and stressed that the Supreme Court’s decision is not about how the debate over affirmative action should be resolved, but about who should resolve it. This high court decision is likely to provoke more battles over affirmative action in many states. Is the ban on affirmative action the key to a fair and just college admissions? Possibly. Affirmative action has pressured universities to diversify their student body in that preferences are based on an applicant’s racial background, not in his or her academic achievement and merits. It does nothing but encourage discrimination and undermine the essence of higher learning.
Constant adjustments to the motives of affirmative action since its signing caused problems in its implementation. Allocating it today will only make things worse. The phrase “affirmative action” first appeared in 1961 in President Kennedey’s Executive Order 10925, which called for affirmative action taken to ensure people were employed “without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson stated the principles of affirmative action in his “To Fulfill These Rights” speech at Howard University. He asserted, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and say, ‘You are now free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” The 1978 Bakke case outlawed racial quotas in higher education, and under a 2003 withholding, admissions offices can only use race as a factor in a flexible, non-mechanical way as part of each applicant’s qualifications. With frequent changes in its purposes, affirmative action impedes our progress towards a fair admission process. The constant adjustments in its allocation have lead to nowhere but more complexities.
An example of allocation problem is allowing the public to vote on its implementation, such as in Michigan’s case. This can possibly increase cases of discrimination and unfair admission. Considering the changing matters of affirmative action in the last few decades, voters will most likely possess different understanding and perspectives of what they will be voting on. Eventually, educational institutions will be forced to satisfy campus diversity and ignore their applicants’ scholastic achievements, such as the case of Abigail Fisher. Having a color blind admissions process prevents racial consciousness that encourages discrimination. Furthermore, it progresses educational institution to achieve its scholastic goals without having to worry about admission policies being scrutinized by the public and bombarded with frequent mandatory changes.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor is aware of the changes affirmative action has gone in the last few decades. However, she claims herself to be a product of affirmative and publicly expresses the benefits of this law. It is no question why she dissented the ban on affirmative action in Michigan. She said in a broadcast interview, “You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.” Justice Sotomayor claims that the possibility to attend prestigious universities such as Princeton and Yale was because of affirmative action. Justice Sotomayor, whose father died when she was nine, grew up in a suburban housing in New York. Her difficult life became her inspiration to excel in school. Are we then supposed to credit her race for her tremendous success and not her hardwork and dedication? How does affirmative action want us to view student success in universities, especially the achievements of prominent people?
Race-consciousness severely undermines the essence of higher learning, and in many cases, it has tainted the reputation of many institutions. The viral “I, too, am Harvard” campaign exposed some racist and prejudiced experiences of African-American students at Harvard earlier this year. Students posed for photographs while holding boards that said, “You’re lucky to be Black… so easy to get into college,” “Surprise! My application to Harvard wasn’t just a picture of my face,” and “Don’t you wish you were white like the rest of us?” According to its tumblr page, their ‘voices go unheard,’ their ‘experiences are devalued,’ and their ‘presence is questioned.’ Ironically, Harvard will be welcoming its largest batch of accepted African-American students this fall. Harvard alum James Peter Braxton views this as an achievement of affirmative action but recognizes that, “these small victories are symbolic – at worst, they function as a mirage for real racial equality.”
Indeed, affirmative action diversified college campuses in the United States, but the stigma that came with it did not only affect students of color and ‘minorities.’ In a controversial article published by Time, Princeton student Tal Fortgang explains why he will never apologize for his white male privilege. He writes, “I do not accuse those who ‘check’ me and my perspective of overt racism… but I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.” The article generated mixed reactions, but Fortgang’s perspective is valid and true. His specific regard on his ‘male whiteness’ reflects an even deeper problem within educational institutions in which students perceive academic achievement as a result of the privileges of their race and sex, and not of their innate qualities and natural talents.
Studies support the idea that a student’s socioeconomic status, including his or her race, affects his or her academic achievement. This absolute correlation of two independent factors fuels persistent race consciousness, and it is one that tells students that a race performs better than the other. They cannot be blamed for this unconscious racism because the same matter of judgment generally has befallen onto them during their admission. Even then, it could have started from their high school campuses where in ’Asians’ get the A’s or ‘Blacks’ get the F’s. Affirmative action encourages this racial awareness on campus, making students conscious of the part of their identity that does not necessarily signify their potential and personal achievement. Mandating affirmative action will only sustain these false associations and stereotyping.
We now live in a different time, and the notion of affirmative action is one that we should have left long time ago. Affirmative action may have worked back in its earlier years, but in our present time, it is tipping the scale a little bit too much. Today, it is depriving college applicants of a fair admissions process. Mandating affirmative action pressures educational institutions to diversify students under an unfair process. It has given too much attention to the under privileged few that it has failed to protect the rights of the deserving many. Moreover, it encourages racial consciousness, and sustains bitter stereotypes that affect the performances of students and the credibility of educational institutions. Ultimately, one ought to be admitted to colleges and universities because of one’s hard work and determination to succeed in higher learning, not because of, in King’s words, ‘the color of their skin.’
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