Affirmative Action
... of government, business, or educational systems to guarantee equal outcomes or favor one group over another (Morin, 1995).” It is illogical to believe that a level playing field can be created through unfair methods. If an employer can not refuse to hire a person based on their ethnicity or sex, the employer should also be expected not to hire a person based on these factors. Whether or not one gets the job should not be dependent in anyway on the anything other than skill. At present, this is usually the case in the workplace. There is the occasional instance where a person is hired based solely on ethnicity or sex, but in general it is not so. Affirmative action in higher education has become quite another problem however. Colleges, the source of innovative and radical thinking, yield to affirmative action as well. In order to create “a more diverse campus life,” colleges look at ethnicity, sex, and geographical location in addition to academic performance and test scores when admitting students. The University of Michigan’s admissions criteria involves a 100 point system that allots 20 points for simply belonging to a minority (Mears, 2002). In contrast, a students personal achieve (which is allotted 5pts at the national level and one point at the state level) and their SAT/ACT scores (which are worth 12 points) combined are not equal the points that students belonging to minorities automatically receive (Mears, 2002). Theoretically any student with adequate scores (and enough money) can attend any school he or she wants, but often times affirmative action puts the students belonging to minorities above students not belonging to minorities regardless of test scores and personal achievement, denying them there right to attend the school. The use of affirmative action in higher education has been under fire for years. Currently, the Supreme Court ruled on two parallel lawsuits against the University of Michigan. The first of which was given a 5-4 decision in favor of the university, but the second, Gratz v. Bollinger was ruled 6-3 against the university. The case involved Jennifer Gratz, a student who was denied undergraduate admission. She stated that the university admitted students belonging to minorities who had the same qualifications as she did, and yet she was denied based on the university’s desire for a diverse campus (Mears, 2002). As a result of the Gratz decision, the University of Michigan has been required to revamp its admissions criteria. University of California at Berkeley (and the rest of the UC system) has also been asked to eliminate affirmative action from its admissions criteria. UC Berkeley is famous for its diversity and the amount of effort that has been put forth to accomplish that diversity. Recently, the UC Board of Regents approved a ban on affirmative action in the admissions process. As a result, Berkeley has to look at different more effective ways of promoting diversity in the university. The University started a multimillion-dollar program called the “Berkeley Pledge” which supplies much needed resources to public school systems in the hopes of increasing the quality of public education to minorities and so giving then equal chance to be academically qualified for admission (Sanchez, 1996). Studies following the success of the “Berkeley Pledge” programs show that over four years, the number of African American students at El Cerrito High School has increased three fold (Gilmore, 1999). Another study showed that second grade students at Washington Elementary School in Richmond, California scoring in the 70th percentile increased from 12 percent to 47 percent in less than two years (Gilmore, 1999). Programs like the ones those that Berkeley has put into action, as alternatives to affirmative action are more beneficial than affirmative action itself. By providing children (minorities or not) with a strong education early on can prevent them from losing interest in school later as well as helping create productive students who, in turn, become productive in the society. Putting resources into the public schools is also less discriminatory, it is advantageous to all the students attending the school whether they are a minority or not, affirmative action is only beneficial to minorities and women. Some university systems have adopted what has been termed the “x%” policy. Essentially, these policies guarantee admission to students in the top x percent of their high school graduating class. Opponents to these policies argue that they are not solutions to racial discrimination in the school systems because the policies rely on the segregation of the schools during secondary education to provide diversity to the universities. The University of Texas has developed one such “x%” policy. Texas legislation passed what is called the Ten Percent Solution which allows that all students in the top ten percent of their class are automatically granted acceptance to Texas public universities (Hockstader, 2002). Washington Post writer, Lee Hockstader stated in his article for the Post, “As long as neighborhoods and the state’s 1800 or so high schools [remain] largely segregated by race, significant numbers of African American and Hispanic students [will] be guaranteed places at public universities.” A similar program exists in Florida called the “Talented 20" plan in which students in the top twenty percent of their high school class are granted admission to at least one of the public state universities, and in California called the “Four Percent” plan in which the top four percent of the high school graduating class is automatically granted admission to public universities. There is a lot of controversy over these programs, but in light of recent involvement by legislators to produce advantages to affirmative action, it is refreshing to see them trying. Affirmative action in higher education is a hypocritical idea. Colleges and universities build an environment stimulating ideas for innovation and civil societies, but still rely on prejudices to promote diversity on their inspirational campuses. It is true that we are not yet a truly civil society, there still exists racism and prejudices in our world, but equality and true diversity will never occur when one person, ethnic group, or sex is given advantage over another. Discrimination and racism was founded on the advantages that were denied to minorities and it will not be remedied by granting advantages to those who were once denied and taking advantages from those who once had them. Those in favor of affirmative action feel that the white majority is now getting a taste of what the minorities went through in the past. It is true, if the saying “you get what you give” holds any validity, b...