Affirmative
action was created to level the playing field for people who have faced
discrimination in the past such as minorities and women. To explain the reason for the need for
affirmative action, Lyndon Johnson said “you do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and
liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are
free to compete with all the others, and still just believe that you have been
completely fair” (http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/affirmaction.html). Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 race has
been something to be considered in relation to hiring practices and college
admissions decisions.
Affirmative action in college applications has changed from a quest for
equality to the need to fill quotas to receive government funding. Many colleges accept students based solely
off of the race that they categorize themselves as on their applications and
not solely on their credentials. This
has been found more throughout Ivy League schools than in many other lower
tiered schools. The need to fill quotas
has turned away many qualified applicants just because they are not
minorities.
Lol I kinda hate
Affirmative Action because when I get in to college I'm gonna kill someone when
they tell me I only got in because Im black
The application process has changed largely over time. The original reason that the application was
redesigned to include the applicant’s religion, father’s name and birthplace, photo,
and a personal interview was to prevent Jews from being accepted into
colleges. These questions now, instead
of preventing minorities from entering colleges have begun to prevent the
majority from attending the schools of their choice.
Race and ethnicity are culturally defined and often are looked at to
determine the treatment of people not considered in the same racial or ethnic
group. The entire reason that
affirmative action was added into the admissions process is because people have
decided to try to break down the barriers that were put up in the past. These barriers are only being broken down in
the admissions process in an attempt to even the playing field after the people
in minority groups have been living in uneven playing fields for 18 years or so
prior to them applying to college. The
challenges minorities have faced such as discrimination, different expectations
and often having to live in lower socioeconomic classes than the majority of
the population have lead to them being disadvantaged in more than just applying
to college.
Can we just admit that
ending affirmative action won't solve anything when the REAL discrimination in
college admissions is against the POOR
Affirmative action has become such an
important factor when considering college applicants that many states have
actually banned the use of race as a factor for admission to a certain
college. What has happened as a result
of this is less students from minorities have been admitted to colleges in the
areas where affirmative action is no longer in effect. The result hasn’t been an exponential drop
but for the most part there has been a decline or the rates have remained the
same. This interactive New York Times
article distinctly shows the differences in admissions before and after the ban
and after affirmative action was reinstated.
(http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/24/us/affirmative-action-bans.html)
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