The ill effects of Affirmative Action

Posted on November 21, 2006 - Filed Under Punch Forum |

Ms. Ric
21 Nov 2006


November is the month when parents start downloading information on scholarships and FAFSA (financial aid). That $20,000 a year additional college expense can make any parent start thinking about a second job, a second mortgage, and even downsizing. But more importantly, November is the month when college bound students start panicking over SAT scores, those grades, those letters of recommendation, those admission packets that seem to get bigger and bigger each year. They sit in front of their computers and fill out those dreaded questions: Name, address, social security, then they get to ethnicity: White, Black, Hispanic, American Indian, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese… other. Other?

Up until the mid-nineties it was a prevalent practice in colleges and universities all over the US to use race as a factor in their admission process. And if a candidate even had a great-great-great uncle who was non- White, his ethnicity was exploited. Administrators made sure that their campuses were a mix of Whites, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, etc. They racially profiled their campuses blatantly much to the chagrin of the Caucasian population.

For example, an incoming Hispanic Female Freshman had an edge over her White counterpart who had the same grade point average or sometimes even higher. The supporters of this plan maintained that it’s the only way to level the playing field because minorities have it rougher, that they were coming from inner city communities, that their parents were not college educated, and to ensure that minorities were not discriminated upon in the screening process.

However, this plan backfired, not in the face of the supporters or lawmakers, but to the very same population they were trying to help. There was a backlash of “reverse discrimination” if you must. Their white counterparts did not take it sitting down. They went to the media and in California, prop. 209, dubbed the “civil right’s initiative” – a counter measure to affirmative action, was enacted. It won by a 4% margin in 1996.

Affirmative action may have its merits, but ten years later, it is still being challenged in the courts, and some of us are still feeling its ill effects. To working men and women professionals out there who happen to be non-White – they will always have that need to prove themselves. Affirmative action may have opened doors, but have you heard what all that shushing is all about?

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