Source: psmag.com
As a high school senior currently dealing with the stress of college application season, I thought it would be fitting this week to take a look at an issue that have caused controversy in the college admissions field for decades: affirmative action policies.
Affirmative action, a policy
designed to account for the inequality that minorities deal with in a
competitive admissions environment, was first installed by President John F.
Kennedy In 1961 via Executive
Order 10925. The exact wording of the document instructed federal
contractors to take “affirmative action to ensure
that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion,
sex, or national origin.” The policy itself was a huge step forward for the Civil
Rights movement and one of the first major policies designed to fight
inequality in the competitive job market, but many fear that in the college
admissions environment, the policy has simply become about filling quotas.
While there are many angles and
perspectives to address about this issue, I, of course, would like to examine
it from an ethical one.
Those supportive affirmative action
policies argue ardently that the policies are necessary in order to help
correct the effects of decades of inequality that has existed in the country.
They assert that although racism has lessened in this country and laws have
become more equal, minorities are still suffering the aftereffects of past inequalities
especially in terms of educational disadvantages. They assert it would be unethical
to ignore the disadvantages that these minorities are still confronting, and
that not taking action via a policy the promotes minorities to be educated
would be an unequal approach that would fuel the disadvantaged trend that
minorities are trying to shake off even today.
However, there are many who argue
that affirmative action’s policies are not effective in helping disadvantaged minorities,
and in fact, are highly unfair to non-minorities. Opponents assert that the
ones being helped by these policies are not the minorities that come from truly
disadvantaged backgrounds, but privileged individuals who just happen to be of
a certain race. Therefore, they argue, affirmative action is not making the
college admissions process a more equal playing ground. Further, they are that
it is unethical to force non-minority students (namely white males) to bear the
burden of decades of inequality by being purposely disadvantaged themselves.
In the end, no one is arguing that
affirmative action is a perfect policy. Even supporters admit that it does a
flawed job of helping to bring inequality to the truly disadvantaged groups of
students. However, the foundation of the argument comes down to whether or not
affirmative action does more good than harm--the core of any good ethical
dilemma.
I think it's interesting how a level playing field doesn't necessarily mean that people have unrestricted opportunities, but more so that everybody's opportunities are restricted to relatively the same degree. Would it be great if admissions offices didn't consider applicants' ethnicity/gender/religion/level of discrimination? Of course, but obviously this isn't the case, so they're faced with the task of creating a system where they have equal justification for denying any applicant. Instead of asking themselves, "what are we looking for in a good applicant?" it almost seems like they're thinking more along the lines of, "and if we get an applicant like this, on what basis are we ready to reject them?" Obviously this could be an exaggeration, but it does raise an interesting idea about the modern definition of equality. In any case, I'd say that this is indeed a "good ethical dilemma," and until we find a better way to justify certain peoples' rejection, it would seem like Affirmative Action will be around for a while.
ReplyDeleteAt first, I was angry when I heard about the college process when it comes to race. I felt offended and angered by the fact that my race could be seen as a negative factor in my application just because I am part of the majority. I thought that while minorities deserved to get a thorough application examination so did majorities and race should never be a factor. After giving the issue much thought, I realized that despite its drawbacks, affirmative action is needed. If I have the same grades as an African American student in the South Side of Chicago, the African American student probably deserves more credit due to the various setbacks that his environment and school have. However, if an African American student attends a rich suburban high school, then he should get the same ethnical evaluation that I do. Therefore, I think environment, not school, plays a greater role in determining an individual's capabilities. Hopefully, college admission officers look into the applicant's setting as well as his race. Thanks for such an informative blog post, Katy!
ReplyDeleteI really like how Alice brought up the issue of environment versus race. I hadn't really thought about it before, I definitely agree that most of the obstacles that would make doing well in high school have to do with environment, rather than race. GBN and GBS have both proven to be very high achieving in academics, despite the fact that GBS has a larger amount of minority students, just because Glenview and Northbrook are such great environments. Therefore, I think using environment as a factor in college admissions could make the process more fair to all. Thanks so much for your thought provoking post, Katy!
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