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Pros And Cons Of Affirmative Action In Colleges

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In order to access higher education, most educational institutions require applicants to list their race as a component to their admissions decision. Affirmative action established this factor to provide equality for ethnic minority students. However, since the process primarily benefits minorities, Caucasian applicants such as Allan Bakke and Abigail Fisher have challenged the ideals of affirmative action, claiming that racial components instead served as a factor for their college rejections. The consistent amount of affirmative action cases has motivated some educational institutions to question their stance on racial admission components. While certain scholars argue that affirmative action promotes equality, other experts argue that it …show more content…

Rohit Joshi, who serves as a student at John Hopkins University, states in his article, “It’s Time to Change Affirmative Action in Colleges,” that affirmative action
“over­corrects” racial “bias” by providing minorities with “advantages.” Joshi’s word choice conveys his criticizing tone which enhances his idea that affirmative action does not help minorities in a fair manner. Instead of equalizing every student’s benefits, Joshi believes affirmative action provides minorities with more benefits that discriminate against non­minorities. In response to Stanford University’s consideration of re­evaluating affirmative action policies, authors of The Diversity Myth: "Multi­culturalism" and the Politics of Intolerance at
Stanford, David Sacks and Peter Thiel, state that the purpose of affirmative action was to
“redress” discrimination and develop “integration” among enrolled students. However, Sacks and Thiel utilize the observations of Thomas Sowell to dispute the positive outlooks …show more content…

Based on these reasons, Sacks and Thiel believe that instead of accomplishing its purpose of putting an end to discrimination, affirmative action has instead promoted discrimination and unequal rights to certain students.
In order to solve the issues of affirmative action, the authors suggest that the “sole criterion” for admissions should revolve around personal “achievements” which race can not be categorized into since they describe it as a personal “trait.” By focusing solely on merit, colleges would be evaluating students based on aspects that are considered to be non­discriminative.
Therefore, colleges would not have to endure any questioning regarding the admission of any of its enrolled students.
In the end, the decision to continue affirmative action has served its purpose for African
American writers such as Neblett and is utilized as the primary method for aiding disadvantaged minorities achieve equal educational benefits to non­minorities. However, other critics declare that affirmative action discriminates against non­minority races, and it does not primarily

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The Supreme Court made a mistake when they decided with the University of Texas; no college should take in race as a factor when selecting applications of students. In 2007, two female high school students applied to the University of Texas; one of the girls being Miss Abigail N. Fisher. Abigail was a caucasian, in the top 12% of her school at Stephen Austin High School, but she was denied by the University of Texas along with a friend of her’s. However,

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The U.S. Supreme Court Case Regents of the University of California v. Allan Bakke was officially decided June 28, 1978. The case addressed the issue of use of affirmative action in university admissions processes. Affirmative action, also referred to as positive discrimination, was a result of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and was intended to ensure equal entry to educational institutions or employment entities to certain groups that “have historically suffered invidious discrimination” (Janda et al., 477). However, sometimes this method causes discrimination of other groups, through establishment of racial quotas. University of California employed the process of affirmative action and instituted racial quotas in its admissions

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Throughout many of the affirmative action legal cases, one of the main arguments from proponents is that it is necessary in order to right the wrongs of past racial discrimination. Some say that affirmative action is justified because even though white applicants may be more qualified, this is only because they did not face the same hardships as their minority counterparts (Rachels, Ethics, 1973).  Many argue if we do not integrate disadvantaged minorities into mainstream social institutions, they will continue to suffer the discrimination that has plagued our country for centuries and that this is detrimental to not only the minorities but also society as a whole (Anderson, 2002, 1270–71). However, the debate has recently shifted to the benefits of diversity in the classroom which the Supreme Court has affirmed as being a positive thing

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