Affirmative Action

The ultimate question when debating affirmative action, the policy that allows colleges to factor race into admissions, is whether or not colleges should sacrifice quality for the sake of diversity. While the original intent of affirmative action was to right injustices against certain minorities, I am in agreement with the opposition that the main reason for the policy in modern society is to increase diversity. The opposition has stated that colleges should not "be forced to consider the criterion of race when considering a student". However, I will go one step further and argue that colleges should not be allowed to consider race during applications in the first place, due to both the inherent unfairness and unnecessary nature of affirmative action. I, like the opposition, also believe that "diversity of some sort is ideal" for a wholesome experience in college. However, I claim that such diversity may be achieved without giving preferential treatment to certain races in admissions. When the University of California at Berkeley introduced race blind admissions, the numbers of African Americans and Latinos attending the university, while the Asian population rose a great deal. However, the percentage of Latinos in the university remained at 11%, which is only 4% below the American Population (http://www.browndailyherald.com...) . Furthermore, the percentage of African Americans in the university was 4%, which, while the state of California's population is 7% African American (http://diversity.berkeley.edu...). As such, even with race blind admissions, the college's student body was a fairly accurate simulation of the diversity in real life. To utilize affirmative action, in this case, would result in a larger percentage of minorities when compared to the actual population, giving students a false notion of how diverse real life is. The opposition claims that " [he does] not believe affirmative action should work in such a way that it allows undeserving minorities into universities simply because of their skin color." However, from the makeup of UC Berkeley's student body before and after race blind admissions, it is clear that affirmative action does just that. Once race was no longer a factor in decisions, the number of African Americans and Latinos fell (while only by a few percent, still a significant amount), and the Asians admitted to the university rose dramatically. In light of this data, it can be concluded that undeserving minorities were being admitted to the university, and worse, high achieving students were denied admission simply due to their race. These percentages indicate that there were many students that deserved to go to the university, and would have gotten admission otherwise, but were denied, their places being given to African Americans or Latinos who would, if not "simply because of their skin color", have been admitted to the university. While I do agree that diversity contributes to a positive learning environment, diversity in a college should satisfy two requirements. First, it should be an accurate representation of the diversity one will experience in real life. Otherwise, students will be given a skewed perception of what life is like, and will come to expect diversity where it does not exist. The second requirement is that the quality of students should not be sacrificed simply for the sake of diversity. As one can see from Berkeley's statistics, affirmative action fails to satisfy either one of these requirements. Even without giving preferential treatment to certain races, the makeup of the university accurately simulated real life. Furthermore, it is plain that quality was indeed being lost, as the increase in number of Asians following race blind admissions indicates. The purpose of a college goes beyond merely the education of its students. Colleges serve as a way of enhancing the skills of talented individuals, so that they may contribute to society, and better the nation as a whole. To deny a deserving student simply because preference is being given to another race defeats this purpose, and is inherently unfair. Not only does it undermine the efforts of an individual, placing more weight on the color of one's skin, but it denies society a hard working, talented worker, that did not receive the education he deserved. While diversity is important for any university, I have provided data demonstrating that it can be achieved without affirmative action, and, as such, the policy does little more than diminish the quality of a student body.