ipl-logo

The Pros And Cons Of Affirmative Action

498 Words2 Pages

Affirmative action advocates prioritize the issues of some minorities, such as African-American, Chicano and Latino face. As such, affirmative action fails to consider the fast rate at which Asian-American population is growing. According to the book “The Admission Dispute”, written by Sun, it states that "The system (affirmative action) did not foresee the surge of UC- qualified Asian Americans nor prepare a fair policy for the educational effort of any ethnic group"(Sun). The 1965 Act of Immigration led an unprecedented influx of immigrants from African, Mexico, and many more from Asia. Sun states that these immigrants are hardly treated as “Americans”. Additionally, Sun illustrates that
“Asian immigrants have never sought special treatment …show more content…

Subsequently, California witnessed how the affirmative action could create inequities in university admission system for Asian Americans. According the news article “Asians at UC: the New Jews” published by Fresno Bee in 1987, the author Dan Walters criticizes the UC system for discriminating Asian college applicants. “Most discrimination against Jews, including that of the quota variety, has disappeared in the U.S. But there's another ethnic group that is undergoing something similar: Asians.”(Dan 1) This is a comparison of the current experiences of Asians with the past experiences of Jews that is meant to paint the true nature of affirmative action as a mistake. It is well-acknowledged that; Asian students spend much more effort studying compared to other ethnic groups. Therefore, even though Asians constituted less than 10 percent of the state’s population, the admission rate for Asian Americans grows dramatically each year before the enforcement of affirmative action. In 1983, the proportion of Asian students has attained 34 percent of the entire freshman class in UC Irvine. However, this number declined greatly in 1984. “The college officials, who are sensitive to demands from black and Hispanic groups to admit more students from those ethnic groups, are consciously holding down Asian enrollment.”(Dan) Clearly, Asians were the victims of affirmative action as a result of unjust admission process in the

Open Document