Minority Student's Arguments Against Affirmative Action

Those who are against Affirmative Action do not argue against the values for which its proponents stand; in actuality, members of all sides of the academic spectrum hold the same values to be true. The argument at hand is not with the values, but with the methods and potential negative results of Affirmative Action. It had been suggested that colleges which institute Affirmative Action implement their admissions systems so that minority students are more likely to be accepted that non-minority students. In his model, Professor Qiang Fu demonstrates that college systems are designed to “favor the minority [student] and allow the admissions not to be awarded to the [non-minority] [student]” (Fu 424). Potentially, this can be viewed as a form

With knowledge about America’s extensive history of racial tensions, discrimination, and segregation, however, this appears to be an appropriate method of academic assistance and equality in regards to college admissions. The nationwide affirmative action program based on race appears to be a fair and reliable method of college admittance; however, there remain slight discrepancies, like a potential for reverse discrimination, which cannot be ignored. Proponents on all sides of the academic spectrum agree that using a different criteria for college admissions, socioeconomic status, could prove to be the better option in keeping with the promotion of diversity while establishing reasonable boundaries for the number of admitted students (“Socioeconomic Status” 79). Similarly to how Affirmative Action in college admissions currently gives advantage to students of ethnic minority, affirmative action will begin to give advantage to students who live in families of low socioeconomic status. Additionally, this new criteria will serve the core values of promoting diversity, equal opportunity, fairness, and the elimination of discrimination in college admissions. The majority of students who are currently assisted by racially-driven affirmative action programs will continue to be serviced under the standard of socioeconomic status. Texas State University professor Bryan Nankervis states that the majority of minority groups are already in the bottom two-thirds percentile of the Unites States, when taking into consideration yearly salary; therefore, the minority groups in the United States which would be assisted by race-based Affirmative Action according to current criteria would also be helped by economic-based Affirmative Action (7). The goal behind socioeconomic status-based admissions (SES) is to utilize the established “correlation between race and income in order to construct a racially diverse class of