Argumentative Essay on Affirmative Action
The fact that white people are not admitted, due to extra points that black students received by affirmative action's rule, represents a reverse discrimination because white students also are entitled to equal treatment, based on meritocracy. Theoretically, affirmative action was introduced in order to overcome past discrimination and make the society more equal. Even though, removing racial and ethnic considerations from the admission process would have a devastating impact on the number of African-American students who would be admitted to university, and above all to the law schools, the combination of admission test scores and grade point averages, supplemented by consideration of race, is a discriminatory method for deciding whether or not to admit a student and, above all for evaluating his knowledge. The criteria for admission should be based on merit, on who really deserves to be admitted.
Affirmative action implicates constitutional rights. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares that states must give all people “equal protection of the laws” makes race an impermissible factor in state university selection practices. How can we conciliate the reality of affirmative action as it is actually practiced with the version that it is a race-based preference, which was introduced in order to overcome past discrimination? When minority and under qualified groups are preferred it represents a discrimination and, in particular, a reverse discrimination against white people. In fact, the argument that the plaintiff's attorney who represented the white students (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger) in the Michigan's law school case said his clients have a “personal right” not to have their race count against them.
There are educational and cultural diversities that influence the pedagogical benefits. The admission policies based on affirmative action has his impact not only in the office of admission, but in all students' environment. Even though American society is a multiethnic reality, we have to realize that different cultures in the same classroom not always can produce a high educational value if there is not the same level of knowledge. In fact, the racial balance we find in work world is the result of a positive economic process, and it is not a result of a pre-fixed quota as in university admission, which could negatively impact the pedagogical purpose. It is not the affirmative action the way for contributing to the entire community's future, but the way is to allow only people with the same intellectual background to contribute together to a better society. For example, in the case that both white and black students are admitted, affirmative action does not always represent a real help during the black student's university career. In fact could be very hard for the minority applicants to fill the gap with other students due to different educational background of knowledge. It is a frustrating situation because minorities realize how hard is to be in a class where the level of students' learning it is different, and where there are students who waist their time to wait for the others that need more time to understand, due to their different cultures. As a result, theoretical equal opportunities do not mean racial integration, and as soon as students have the possibility they prefer to have dinner, to sleep, to live with people of his race.
Moreover, a generic racial preference could be considered discrimination too. It is doubtful that affirmative action can ever be justified as compensation, because compensation is a matter of individual, not group, entitlement, and allowing black applicants to have preference now cannot compensate generations of blacks who suffered injustice in the past. We have to rejected preferences designed to compensate for the effects of unspecified historic or social discrimination. To remedy past discrimination, a state must identify with "particularity" the discrimination to be remedied, and design the preference to benefit only those persons who were discriminated against and only to the degree necessary to counteract the effect of the discrimination.
American Universities give the students the opportunity to receive a high education, but on the other hand these universities are the most expensive. If the purpose were to increase the intellectual level of people and to give a competitive education for the benefit of the whole community, the race-preference would not be very helpful. The tuition still remains extremely expensive, and a more objective system could be based on the parent's income. Students, whites or blacks, who have the same capacities, could be admitted at university, and their tuition would be in percentage on their parent's income, without any relevance of their race.
Everyone would like to be successful in his life, but that it is a result of a huge hard work. It is a reverse discrimination to give to the minorities groups more possibilities than other people to succeed in their lives. The argument that race no longer matters is a signal that it is time to change to a more objective method of university admission. Therefore, the system that most American universities use to screen candidates for admission demands to be changed and affirmative action should be ended in university admission. If university really wants to give equal opportunities why does it not decide the amount of tuition based on the parents' income, in order to allow that even the poorer student, white or black does not matter, could study, instead of using affirmative action.
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