Affirmative Action

Con's argument depends on a narrow and discriminatory concept of "merit." The argument goes like this: people should be admitted to college because of their merits taking the SAT, but neither race nor gender could be a component of merit. Con's trick here is to define merit so narrowly -- only test scores or examination results count -- and then stigmatize any other consideration as unwarranted preference and unlawful discrimination. Think about it: merit is just a word for whatever qualifications are deemed desirable for the performance of a particular task, and there is nothing fixed about those qualifications. Some medical schools now decline certification to aspiring doctors who have proven themselves technically and academically but lack the social skills to relate with patients. When colleges admit people on the basis of other factors, they are not abandoning academic merit but forging an alternative conception of academic merit rooted in the larger social, cultural, and historical context in which college admissions take place. Consider: if may be a qualification for a policeman or policewoman in the inner city to be black or Hispanic, and that does not make the people granting blacks and Hispanics those jobs racist, it makes them pragmatists. Likewise, it may be part of the merit and qualifications of a worker in a rape crisis center that she is a woman. College admissions weigh many factors and qualifications when deciding what consitutes a particular applicant's merit. To say the only qualification is SAT scores is to completely do away with many of the qualifications that various applicants have, and as I said, many times belonging to a particular ethnic or gender group can itself be a qualification. Finally, I'd also like to point out to Con that SAT scores and GPA can themselves be racist. According to studies, "affirmative action beneficiaries have succeeded in higher education and various occupations despite not having the required test scores or GPA, therefore exposing reified concepts of merit" as "intellectually biased." [1] SAT scores may demonstrate an applicant's access to "SAT prep" that others could not afford, and allowing such examination results to dictate college admissions as a whole is the same as allowing unlawful discrimination. Affirmative actions corrects against this. I think I have addressed the issue fully. Let me now address Con's question: what is institutionalized racism, and how does it work in today's society? Institutionalized racism is the kind of racism that is institutionalized, but cannot be punished legally. I have already given one example: using SAT scores is a form of institutionalized racism, as it is well-known that SAT scores favor particular ethnic groups, and it is also well-known that SAT scores do not show a correlation with the success of the ethnic groups that the scores do not favor. A few more examples of institutionalized racism should prove the point: Blacks and Hispanics get worse public education, because the urban schools they go to don't have as much money as the schools in white suburbs. The reason this happens is because public schools are financed from local property taxes, so in communities where houses and businesses are less expensive, the schools provide worse education. This is unfair, and is a form of institutionalized discrimination. Racial profiling could be considered another form of institutional racism. Then, of course, there is institutional sexism: women are paid less than men for doing the exact same jobs and holding the exact same qualifications. That's considered unlawful discrimination, but its institutionalized in such a way that it cannot be legally penalized. Clearly, the fact that systemic racism exists, unlawful discrimination, requires that measures be taken to counter-act the effects. Affirmative action is the set of procedures that are employed to eliminate this kind of unlawful discrimination. By definition, affirmative action cannot be unlawful discrimination because its intent and effect is to eliminate unlawful discrimination.