COLUMN: Affirmative action long past its time
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION in its current form of race-based admission is wrong. Race should not be a factor in admission, qualifications should.
I am indifferent between a class that is 90 percent minorities and one that is 20 percent minorities, as long as the students are the most qualified in terms of their academic credentials, extracurricular activities, test scores, leadership roles and community involvement.
I realize that this is a sensitive topic, but I also know that many defenders of race-based admission have not considered all of the arguments.
I challenge the supporters of such policies to counter these arguments and contribute to our understanding of our different views.
My first set of arguments suggests that racial consideration should not play a role in admission. In arguing this, I will either prove that those who believe in race-based admission will have reasons not to prefer such a policy, or that defenders of race-based admission may also have to accept other policies that follow under the same logical suppositions.
My second series of arguments will show that race-based admission have undesirable effects. Many supporters of race-based admission claim that race is correlated to socioeconomic status.
If socioeconomic status is their main concern, then I have a simple solution. When applications are received, we should remove the applicant's name and race and assign them a serial number.
Admission officers are then free to consider the candidate's qualifications (previously listed) and the candidates socioeconomic status in granting admission to the university.
Supporters of race-based admission would not accept this solution, even though it would guarantee that the truly worst-off in society could benefit, regardless of race.
Here, we have to question my opponents' motivations.
Some supporters of race-based admission insist on the racial criterion because of previous stigmatization, correcting past wrongs, or insitutionalized racism.
My first argument against this is that, unlike other crimes, these crimes are difficult to correctly apply justice to, because the victim and aggressor are not apparent.
If someone is raped or robbed, it is possible to objectively identify the aggressor and the victim. In claims of race-based admission, it is hazy at best.
Many of the victims of past wrongs are dead and non-victims are beneficiaries.
Even worse, the aggressors are no longer present, and my generation is asked to pay for others' crimes.
To elucidate this point, we can look at an example of Jewish and black men from Siberia with roughly equal qualifications.
If both applied to Rice, one would receive benefits of a program and another wouldn't on the basis of race-based admission even though neither were the victim or aggressor involved in previous injustices.
In the truest sense of the word, only a racist would identify race as the delineating standard in this case. If any supporters of race-based admission remain, they should be as adament about protecting rights and avoiding punishing innocents or compensating non-victims as they are about promoting their interest if they have truly a concern for individual rights.
My second argument against the sort of "stigmatization" aguments is that supporters of "stigmatization" as the reason for race-based admission would also have to concede that we need affirmative action for "ugly" people.
Given our knowledge of social psychology and basic human nature, no one can deny that humans tend to treat highly unattractive people much differently.
I suggest that disfigured individuals are probably mistreated the most in society -- from their schooling days when teachers teach them differently all the way up to their day-to-day social interactions.
If stigmatization is an issue, then surely the highly unattractive are at least equally deserving of special considerations (at least as much as race used to be treated in admission at Rice).
Supporters of race-based affirmative action will not accept this view either.
Now that I have shown that the logic of race-based admission also commits its supporters to other views that are either highly unconventional or unacceptable, I will turn to the task of demonstrating that race-based admission has undesirable effects.
Forgetting the obvious claim of reverse discrimination, affirmative action also harms some minorities in an attempt to benefit others.
Asian-Americans, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and Jews, among others, have to compete against race-based affirmative action admission. Why? Most are under-represented.
As for Asian-Americans, when one looks into specific subgroups, such as the Filipino-Americans, they are grossly underrepresented.
Why are Hispanics and African- Americans the only protected groups? Some may claim that there is insititutional racism, but surely everyone will agree that Asian-Americans are treated very poorly in this country.
I will readily concede that discrimination is wrong, but when we consider Jim Crow laws, we also have to consider internment during World War II, etc.
Could it be that the liberal politicians who support race-based affirmative actions support it for African-Americans and Hispanics and not other minorities because these minorities are a larger percentage of the voting population?
My second argument that race-based admissions are undesirable focuses on the difficulty of delineating when we should stop affirmative action.
If a student from the inner city is let into a special high school or the basis of his race, is that enough? Imagine that he received decent grades that are not extraordinarily high.
If we then consider his race in the admission to college, is that enough? Imagine again that the student has decent grades but nothing spectacular.
Should we then consider his race in admission to medical school or law school too? What if he is not the best student in his graduate classes? Then, do we have to guarantee him a job with a great firm or practice, too?
Even supporters of affirmative action have to concede that there is a point where race should not be a consideration in admission; otherwise they would have to view social elitism of minorities (based strictly on race) as acceptable.
I always thought that America was a land of equal opportunity and not one that supports equality of condition (the former U.S.S.R).
My final, and strongest argument, is that affirmative action or race-based admission denigrates the minorities that it is supposed to benefit.
As minorities make lasting acheivements, individuals will wonder whether the acheivement is due to race or merit.
Many minorities at Rice with exceptional qualifications have already voiced their anger of others' judgements concerning their qualifications.
Individuals in the university argue that there is a lack of qualified minorities that meet the qualifications of Rice without special racial consideration.
This is an insult to every minority.
The reality of the situation is that there are more than enough qualified minorities which could attend Rice, but they choose to go somewhere else.
If qualified minorities choose to attend Yale, Harvard or Stanford instead of Rice, then Rice needs to do more to attract them, not insult them by lowering its standards.
If Rice improves as an institution and has better placement records for the good law schools, medical schools, graduate schools and businesses, then the minorities will accept Rice's offer rather than go elsewhere.
Obviously, Rice does not offer enough to attract the best of the best, yet.
Since I have demonstrated that race-based affirmative action either demands its supporters to uphold logically consistent claims with undesirable consequences or has undesirable effects, I retire with the undeniable conclusion that all race-based admissions are a tremendous injustice.
This item appeared in the Opinion section of the March 29, 1996 issue.
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