For a long 61 years, affirmative action was used to recruit “qualified” minorities into jobs and colleges. Recently this has changed as the supreme court has ruled that race can no longer be a factor in college acceptance or job applications, yet many argue to keep affirmative action in place. According to NBC, some individuals state, “If affirmative action is ended … race-neutral policies aimed at achieving diversity will often fail, leading to a decline in Black and Hispanic enrollment.” They argue that not only does affirmative action help enroll more minorities, but it also increases racial diversity on campuses which is crucial in approaching equality in education. CBS states that supporters of affirmative action also claim, “They are important because they allow for holistic evaluation of potential candidates and ensure underrepresented groups have equal access to those institutions. As proponents note, the programs have a documented track record of increasing diversity in schools.”
While the claims that there has been an improvement in the diversity among college applicants and accepted students have been proven to be true, the downsides of affirmative action completely disregard all the progress in racial equality. Affirmative action may have been a progressive leap towards impartial decisions and equality when it was first established, but now it has only perpetuated negative racial stereotypes. With affirmative action providing little to no help for Asian-American applicants, it had huge benefits for African Americans. Even though the support for African Americans is strong, as they make up a very low percentage of college applications compared to others, the ones who benefit from affirmative action are typically students who live in a high-income household who do not need an extra boost for their college applications. According to Stanford, “There [is] claim that racial preferences help the ‘disadvantaged.’ In reality, as the Hoover Institution’s Thomas Sowell has observed, preferences primarily benefit minority applicants from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. At the same time, because admissions are a zero-sum game, preferences hurt poor whites and even many Asians (who meet admissions standards in disproportionate numbers). If preferences were truly meant to remedy disadvantage, they would be given on the basis of disadvantage, not on the basis of race.” This completely disregards many other races who, even if they have the same GPA, SAT scores, volunteering, and so on, would not be accepted into college.
The curse of affirmative action does not only harm those who are underprivileged economically though. Asian Americans who typically have a higher application rate are not given as much help from affirmative action. According to NPR “By bolstering the idea that Asian Americans—like her—don’t benefit from race conscious policies or practice, ‘it insinuates that Asian Americans are not affected by racism in this country.’” This lack of help for Asian Americans reinforces the model minority myth that they are smarter and work harder.
With affirmative action not only increasing the racism in this country, it also does not truly benefit the races it was put in place to help in the first place. So, instead of reinstating this flawed system, the U.S. should go solely off income and assets or other circumstances that is subjective to race. This focus on tangible issues will have a much larger effect on helping society.
