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The Controversy Of Banning Affirmative Action In Public Universities

1640 Words7 Pages

Affirmative action consists of laws, policies, guidelines, or administrative practices that give special consideration to ethnic and racial groups that have been historically discriminated against, such as minorities, in relation to public education. President John F. Kennedy first explored this idea during his presidency in 1961 through Executive Order 10925. This order made sure that all employment practices and hiring did not have any bias based on race. In addition, Executive Order 11246 by President Lyndon B. Johnson made sure that affirmative action was taken by businesses to try to employ underrepresented applicants whenever possible. Affirmative action has been highly controversial in regards to education. In the Supreme Court landmark …show more content…

Affirmative action in regards to public universities has been banned in eight states through public voting: California, Washington, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, and Oklahoma. There is clear evidence stemming from research that banning affirmative action has a negative effect on admissions for public universities, lowering diversity. “A 2013 University of Washington study found that minority students have a harder time being accepted to public research universities in states that have banned affirmative action” (Munguia). Affirmative action would have a drastic and negative effect on the diversity in schools if it was banned. Since diversity is comprised of both many different ethnicities and races, a loss for the minorities would mean that the balance of diversity tips and turns into uniformity. Subsequently, already-overrepresented races such as whites would be represented in an even more disproportionate manner. This is not ideal because as in today’s modern world, all races are equal, but this disproportionality undermines that characteristic. Affirmative action helps colleges and universities work towards true diversity, which would be equal representation of all racial groups. However, while that would be a challenging task to accomplish in a short period of time, affirmative action helps jumpstart the journey by providing a means to slowly introduce more diversity on college campuses. Affirmative action is not an end-all solution, but it helps improve the lack of diversity present in colleges and universities today, an issue that needs to be tackled to fulfill the idea that all racial groups should be equal, including in education. In addition, there is more to a lower admission rate for minorities than simply a lower number. Students often look at admission rates while considering what colleges to

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In “Net (Race) Neutral: An Essay on How GPA + (reweighted) SAT - Race = Diversity,” Christine Goodman illustrates the opposing viewpoints in regards to the racial discriminatory efforts by the college institutions to help diversify the incoming freshman class. With this, Goodman provides statistics and opinions of experts on the matter, which includes comparison of such discriminatory acts against other institutions. To begin, she brings up an enlightening, yet controversial court case decision: Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (2013). This court case demonstrates significance to this topic because it counteracts a previous court case, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which, “upheld diversity as a compelling interest that would justify narrowly

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Analyzing The Supreme Court Case Against The Lawfulness Of Affirmative Action

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Affirmative action was designed by the federal government and seemed to be a strong tactic but there are many imperfections in this policy. For example, California vs Bakke is a famous court case based off of reverse discrimination. A white male by the name Allan Bakke was denied admission to The University of California medical school. Instead of picking Bakke the school accepted a less qualified black male because the school must accept at least 16 minorities out of 100 into the medical program. The university uses race as an aid to admit minorities and increase diversity instead of accepting well qualified individuals.

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Supreme Court Case Regents Of The University Of California V. Allan Bakke

721 Words | 3 Pages

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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Grutter V. Bollinger Essay

1526 Words | 7 Pages

Is affirmative action still necessary for guaranteeing equal access to educational opportunities at elite universities and graduate schools? Should admissions decisions be based solely on academic criteria and merit? Key Words: affirmative action, Grutter V. Bollinger, and diversity. Grutter V. Bollinger Research Paper 3 Affirmative Action in Education Affirmative action was formed more than fifty years ago.

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The Truth About Holistic College Admissions By Sara Harberson

1802 Words | 8 Pages

In the article, “The Truth about ‘holistic College Admissions”, Sara Harberson expresses how universities that are not allowed to use racial preferences on college admissions, are still devising strategies to work around the laws to produce the same result. Harberson states how the institutions are using what is called “holistic admissions”, which allows a college to factor in a student's background, race and income. By filtering out the minority groups, they are creating a less-diverse community, preventing students of certain backgrounds from a proper education, and taking away opportunities from students based on their ethnicity. Colleges are using racial segregation in the admission process so that they can have a white-favoring campus

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'Affirmative Action Policy Is Unconstitutional' By Daniel Hung

480 Words | 2 Pages

This law also ensures diversity on campus, and on top of that affirmative action is still used for the remaining students that are not at the top 10% of their class (Hung). Evidently, race plays a crucial role in the admission decisions. Hung claims that race shouldn’t play such a big role in the admission process because it is considered discrimination. He supports this argument by comparing the average GPA and SAT scores of those students that were granted admission but were not in the top 10 percent of their class. African Americans had the lowest averaged scores, followed by Hispanics, then whites, and then Asian Americans.

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Affirmative Action Vs Libertarianism

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Thus, often without realizing it, the United States has practiced what, in effect, was white affirmative action on a highly generous and widespread basis, followed by a much more modest program of black affirmative action. By understanding this history, we can come to terms with the widening gap between blacks and whites noted by Lyndon Johnson and with the incapacity of many blacks to be able to make good this gap in the following four decades (Katznelson,

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What Are The Effects Of Brown V. Board Of Education Related To The Civil Rights Movement

863 Words | 4 Pages

A large number of legal arguments in Alabama have stated that a high number of African-American students were placed in special education programs, created supposedly just for physically and mentally challenged students with special needs. Another unintended effect made by the Brown decision was on that of higher education. Plans were created to ensure that education among minorities was equal. But those plans have deteriorated the quality of admission standards that are so critical to education equality. The federal guidelines had sought out the increase of minority enrollment, but instead have resulted in the establishment of a quota system.

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Summary Of Why America Is Self-Segregating By Danah Boyd

749 Words | 3 Pages

Race preferences in college admissions are mandated by the government. Certain race quotes must be met, or federal funding is reduced. The trend of government mandated quotas does not end there. We now are starting to see forced diversity quota hires/admissions with LGBT persons. In Canada compelled speech is forcibly enforced, so that one must call people by their preferred pronouns, even if they are biologically incorrect.

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Standardized Testing Bias

1523 Words | 7 Pages

At least four Supreme Court justices believe that affirmative action is unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts has said that “the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”. This viewpoint offers no differentiation between “race consciousness” and “racism”, but is a quite common opinion. This sort of viewpoint is what may drive America towards class-based rather than race-based affirmative action. Because of the disparities in income and wealth, minorities are as likely as whites to benefit under a class-based policy.

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Affirmative Action In America

1318 Words | 6 Pages

Affirmative action is defined as; the policy of favoring members of a disadvantaged group who suffer from discrimination within a culture. History in America has always had the reoccurring theme of racism. Throughout history there has traditionally been a universal feel of oppression to minorities. Blacks and Latinos specifically have been stereotyped as underprivileged and not able to have equal opportunity in America. Statistics back these claims up as well; America boasts 64% of the American workforce is considered Non-Hispanic White, 16% Hispanic, and a mere 12% for African Americans.

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1152 Words | 5 Pages

Every student is an investment, so logically it would make more sense to give aid or admittance to those who are not of color. People of color are more likely to drop out of college because of financial difficulty or other factors. Therefore, educational institutions take insurance policies to make sure their investment was the right one. Even though a student of color might be a much better candidate for an educational opportunity, universities might not give them those chances. Colleges can only offer so much financial aid in a year, therefore, universities are more likely to give that aid to a student who is more likely to spend more time and money at the institution instead of someone who is more statistically and stereotypically prone to drop out.

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514 Words | 3 Pages

Pros: In most standard classroom settings, a populace of students are presented a series of data, and required to comprehend and find application to aforementioned data. In cases that affirmative action fights for, it simply lets the students speak for themselves based on already lived, real-life applications. These additives to diversity can lend great amounts of knowledge into any discussion, and provides many with other viewpoints for overall considerations for any given topic of conversation. ‘…what some students say in random conversations in and outside campus classrooms might be so insightful, and so unlikely and difficult to be learned in any other way besides these random conversations, that it is worth denying admission to some white and Asian American students because of their race so that other white and Asian American students

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Shackled Runner Thesis

1028 Words | 5 Pages

According to the dominant theory the affirmative action was firstly introduced to deal with two types of social disruption in the 1960s as campus protests and urban riots in the North. However, this article is based on different theory as dominant theory's empirical evidence is limited. It examines the initial reason for advent of race-conscious affirmative action in 17 undergraduate institutions in the United States. And according to the research this article concludes that there were two waves that contributed to affirmative action: 1) first wave in the early 1960s introduced by northern college administrators 2) second wave in the late 1960s introduced as a response to the protests of campus-based students. This article will help me to establish the main reasons for introduction of race-conscious affirmative action in undergraduate

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Argumentative Essay On Racial Equality

1734 Words | 7 Pages

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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