Affirmative Action is Fair

I'll address each paragraph of my opponent's last post and add anything else I'd like to end off on. Whether or not Affirmative Action can be successful or not is irrelevant to the topic of this debate. The debate is discussing whether or not it's fair. Regardless though, I'll address how even though it worked well for Stomayor Affirmative Action can potentially harm minorities. It's due to a process called the "mismatch". Because more students are being accepted from inferior schools when they find themselves at a higher level university or college than they'd normally be at, it often leads to high dropout rates. (1) For example, although more African Americans tend to pursue science/engineering majors than Caucasians, African Americans dropout of the fields at twice the rate of Caucasians. (1) African Americans are also twice as likely to stop pursing a doctorate if they go to a school where they've been mismatched. (1) African Americans tend to rank in the bottom 20% of their classes. (1) Finally, African Americans tend to rank in the bottom 10% of their classes in law school and African American law school grads are 4 time more likely to fail their bar exams (I'll address this again later). (1) For all these students who are going to schools they may not normally go to, this is unfair to them because they may have had great success elsewhere. I'm not saying that universities shouldn't accept those who come from low income areas, but they shouldn't be expected to accept a certain amount of racial minorities and only accept those that have the greatest chance of succeeding (like Sotomayor), which can determined from personal essays and to a lesser degree SAT scores (should be at least somewhat close to the average for their institution). This is why so many schools accept African Americans from higher income areas, so they are following Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action not taking into account economic status and an example of a poor Asian American being rejected for a rich African American are related, because it shows how Affirmative Action isn't really meeting its goal of balancing the playing field, because if they accounted more for economic status the Asian American would be accepted (even though there will be more people at a top school of his race than the African American). UMC was just one example of a law school that has that policy, as I mentioned in my previous post most law schools follow this. The cited source made mention of that. This would explain why African Americans tend to finish low in their classes for law school and are much more likely to fail the Bar Exam. The "strongly imply" was more of a technicality, that was pretty much exactly what it was. Anyways, yes, they take into account economic status, but the fact remains schools want to take in the best candidates possible, while still following the Affirmative Action, so they will try to find richer blacks if they can. Like my opponent said though, they still take into account economic status which make involving race just seem completely unfair and unnecessary. The facts are that universities are expected to even out the races at their institutions to be similar to the federal population and/or state population. At high end schools, this will almost always hurt Asian Americans. This ultimately why Asian Americans are not being accepted as much. To use another country with very similar culture, Canada, they do not focus in on race as much as American schools do. The result is that they often have lots of Asians on campus. In fact, at one of Canada's top universities, the University of British Columbia, people have joked for a long time that UBC stands for the "University of a Billion Chinese". (2) Canadian universities will have very similar application processes to US Universities, accept they don't have to account for race. Also, yes, Canada has a higher percentage of Asians than the US, but the amount of Canadian universities (especially in engineering/science departments) will be much higher than the total percentage. To end off on this point, even though Asian parents may be known for having their kids to study a lot, they also install a really strong work ethic in them that universities crave for. Yes, Asians are known for being smart. But the reason people thinks they're smart is because they think they study all the time and do nothing else. This can act as a hindrance, because like my opponent mentioned, universities like to have individualized personalities, and that is not what many people think of Asian Americans. Like I mentioned earlier too, is it not discrimination for an Asian American who otherwise would have been accepted to be rejected, because there are too many of his/her race (something he/she cannot control) attending the school? Overall, I believe Affirmative Action is unfair because it focuses on race, which can negatively affect someone based on a factor they cannot control. To end off, I'd like to thank my opponent for accepting and participating in this debate. 1-http://www.theatlantic.com... 2-http://syruptrap.ca...