Contradictory elements of old admissions support inequality

Nguyen is a first-year women’s studies student.

By Tina Nguyen

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m all for equality and
equal opportunities, but I don’t see how affirmative action
can fulfill those objectives. Affirmative action, in truth, I
believe, is racist, exclusive and unjust. A lot of people refuse to
see the whole picture of affirmative action; they are blind to the
weaknesses and contradictions of affirmative action.

Yeah, I’m like everybody else who wants to see a world
without racism and discrimination. Yet, affirmative action is a
vehicle of racism. Instead of putting society forward in drive, it
goes into reverse. Just what exactly fuels racism? Preferential
treatment based on race, that’s what. Certain groups benefit
because they are of a certain color while others are deprived of
rights and opportunities because they happened to be of the wrong
race.

To be in a world where racism does not exist means to be
unconscious of race. But, affirmative action causes everybody to be
consciously aware of race. It takes race into account in hiring and
acceptance practices. In other words, it ranks ethnic groups in
order of priority and importance, very much like the practices a
couple of decades ago where whites were regarded superior to other
races. How can everybody be equal if certain groups are valued over
others? How can all races get along when they are purposely being
pitted against each other? As long as affirmative action continues
to be race-based, no equality will occur.

Proponents of affirmative action claim that it doesn’t
hire or accept solely on race, that race is a mere factor in the
decision-making process. OK, then I’d like to bring up a
contradictory point. UCLA has experienced a 35 percent drop in the
number of under-represented minorities admitted since 1997.
I’m sure the proponents would like to blame the
implementation of Proposition 209 as the cause of the drop. When
they do this, they are exactly proving what I suspected a fault of
affirmative action in the first place. The truth is, affirmative
action does make its decisions based solely on race.

If race was truly a minute concern in the admissions process,
then there would not have been such a dramatic drop in admittance.
Once again, the practices of affirmative action are racist. It is
abominable and unjust to admit people based on their race. After
all, wasn’t it Martin Luther King, Jr., a champion of
equality, who said “I have a dream that my four little
children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their
character”?

This brings me to another point that I find alarming. With the
drastic decline in admittance of under-represented minorities, this
implies that we were admitting solely based on race without taking
merit into much consideration. In other words, we were accepting
applicants who were not nearly as qualified but still got in
because of their color.

Think about it. If these groups had the qualifications and were
accepted based on merit as they were supposed to, then Prop. 209
would not have affected them. It’s time to face reality and
concede that we were opening the doors to people who did not have
the proper qualifications to begin with.

In addition, it is unjust to accept applicants who don’t
have the skills to succeed at an institution. It’s not fair
for them to waste a year away in remedial classes because they did
not enter with proficient skills. Ironically, the people who are
supposed to be the beneficiaries of affirmative action become the
victims. Affirmative action is like a swimming instructor who
tosses a first-time student into the deep end of the pool and lets
him or her thrash around in the water for dear life.

I understand that the purpose of affirmative action is to make
reparations for past injustices and discrimination incurred on
certain groups. It offers opportunities once denied. These are
admirable goals, but it falls short of them because it is, in all
actuality, exclusionary.

We all know that African Americans and Latinos are labeled as
under-represented minorities but what about Asian Americans? Asian
Americans are grouped in a shady category. On one hand, there is a
huge population of them on college campuses which do not make them
under-represented but on the other hand, Asian Americans are the
smallest minority group in the nation.

In a lot of cases, affirmative action policies rarely apply to
people of Asian descent and overlook them as racial minorities. I
can’t tell you the countless times I did not qualify for
minority scholarships because my kind (Asian American) was not
considered “under-represented.”

Paradoxically, I believe Asian Americans are the one of the only
racial groups in recent history to have suffered from
government-imposed racism. History books rarely ever mention the
Japanese Internment during World War II, the exclusion acts that
restricted immigration to the United States, challenges to
citizenship, etc. You’d think that with what Asian Americans
have put up with, they too would benefit from protective actions,
but no. Affirmative action refuses to make reparations to Asian
Americans.

If anything, affirmative action should be economically based,
not race based. After all, if you’re poor, you don’t
have the same opportunities as someone who is wealthy. You
don’t have the means to pay for computers, expensive SAT
classes to inflate your scores, materials for extra-curricular
activities, etc. Plus, under economics, all races will be
incorporated into affirmative action. No racial group will be
favored over another. And, we already have an example of
economically based affirmative action that actually works: the
federal Pell Grant Program. Thus, affirmative action would
certainly be more effective under this system.