Affirmative Action: An Unfair Means of Discrimination

Above: credit, wfsu

The Cornell Daily Sun’s Stand with Harvard on Affirmative Action editorial has aroused controversy and backlash, in my view, for good reason. The backlash has been so severe that the editorial board has had to publish another take, tempering some of its extreme claims while maintaining ad hominem attacks on Edward Blum.

The Daily Sun’s accusations against Mr. Blum are false. He has not “made a career challenging affirmative action rules.” He is rather a stockbroker with passion for ending injustices in the United States such as racial gerrymandering (since deemed impermissible in the Supreme Court) and affirmative action. The Daily Sun then makes the unsubstantiated and libelous claims that Mr. Blum’s real concerns are the “completion of his ideological crusade” and that he is “acting opportunistically and in bad faith”.

Secondly, the Daily Sun has made the claim that equality of opportunity does not yet exist in the United States, and that race-based consideration must be upheld. In an America where “study after study shows that people with “white-sounding” names are far more likely to receive job callbacks, leases and mortgages than people with ‘non-white sounding’ names”, the idea that further discriminating against Asians and Asian Americans through affirmative action is a misguided idea.

Alarmingly, the Daily Sun neglects the history of racial discrimination against Asians in America while arguing the necessitates for affirmative action. The Chinese Exclusion Act not only prohibited immigration on account of ethnicity but also created “bachelor societies” of old men trapped in America without their families or any prospect of dating or marriage. Chinatowns were created to protect Asians from the real physical danger to their lives of being in white neighborhoods. Jim Crow laws applied to Asian Americans as well as African Americans. The interment of Japanese Americans was a shameful chapter of American history as US citizens saw their civil rights revoked on the basis of their ethnicity in a period of fierce wartime paranoia and xenophobia. More recently, the 1992 Los Angeles Riots destroyed countless Korean-owned shops, and incited intense Anti-Asian sentiments in the United States.

Unfortunately, the problem with racial-based affirmative action is that it is a system created by those who fail to understand demographic complexities and instead opt for conveniently-named race categories. The system of affirmative action categorizes applicants into convenient categories with disregard to the specific ethnic or socioeconomic background of that individual.

One of my roommates during high school was a beneficiary of the affirmative action system in the United States. He was a transfer from one of the most prominent British Public Schools in London, had several extremely expensive clothing items including a Rolex watch, and regularly took his meals by Ubering to luxury restaurants in the area. Yet as a Spanish citizen, he was a Hispanic and therefore received preference in college admissions over other applicants, and was the only applicant from my high school accepted early decision into his Ivy League university.

Of course, this may be an extreme example, but it is not one rare anomaly. Time and time again, affirmative action’s simple dichotomy unfairly shuts out those who are unlucky enough to be born both disadvantaged and with the wrong skin color. A 2007 study by the National Center for Children in Poverty revealed that White children make up the largest percentage of America’s poor youth. Cambodian-Americans have one of the lowest high school completion rates in America. Yet at the same time, Nigerian Americans are one of the most successful ethnic groups in the United States.

Affirmative action is an unjust system of college admissions which rewards and punishes applicants based on the color of their skin. It is a chapter of American history that we will look back on with deep regret and shame. Harvard, and other universities, must eliminate affirmative action.