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Pros And Cons Of Affirmative Action

1672 Words7 Pages

What is affirmative action? If you’ve listened to the news recently it is a hot topic. But does you fully understand its true meaning? Affirmative action refers to the favoring of minorities in certain areas, in this case college admissions. Most schools require applying students to fill out their race on admission applications. What do colleges do with this information? The admissions office at a school looks over the applications and determines which are accepted or rejected. The problem arises when a student at the lower end for test scores or GPA and is a minority, and therefore has a greater chance of being accepted than a caucasian student in the same situation. If we continue to enforce affirmative action within the admissions process …show more content…

One of the most debatable aspects is the evidence backing up the harm caused by affirmative action. Many believe that affirmative action does nothing in regards to the success of students and schools and deny the idea of the mismatch effect. “...Proposition 209 led to an improved “fit” between minority students and colleges in the University of California system, which resulted in improved graduation rates.” (brookings.com). People also believe in the undermatch effect, where students go to “... a school that is not demanding enough, and are less likely to graduate as a result.” (brookings.com). However, students still receive the same education as they would at a harder school (jamesgmartin.center). “The book is about the experiences of a large number of women students at Indiana University. Many of those students did poorly in their first year, owing to the sports and party dominated campus culture. But when she later transferred to less prestigious colleges, she learned far more.” (jamesgmartin.center). The women in the book still completed school and were more successful than if they had transferred schools, without any repercussions of the idea of undermatching. These women were able succeed with their education instead of struggling to keep up with the bare minimum, as what would have occurred at a more prestigious …show more content…

If the numbers don’t change or continue to worsen in regards to campus diversity or student success, we can reverse the bans and allow affirmative action once again. If we continue to enforce affirmative action within the admissions process of colleges and universities, then the success rates of students will continue to decrease. It is important for students to succeed in places of higher education for our country to continue to run successfully and affirmative action is only blocking that from

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1011 Words | 5 Pages

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1524 Words | 7 Pages

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“By integrating “preferred positions in society,” affirmative action policies undermine racist intuitions entrenched in the American Psyche---intuitions that stop people from acknowledging the full humanity of black people, in particular” (Wicks-Lim). Affirmative action principles weaken stereotypes that people have about black people. By having more colored and more Hispanic students in college, it will create more diversity and people will be more accepting of them. “Affirmative action is an important anti-racism tool, not a program to reduce inequality per se” (Wicks-Lim). Affirmative action doesn’t take away equality, and it doesn't cause racism.

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