Affirmative Action is Fair

I do agree with my opponent that the ability to rise above poverty is in many cases more of an accomplishment than having high marks and lots of extra-curricular activities. In reference to Sonia Sotomayer's quote, "many of the gaps in my knowledge and understanding were simply limits of class and cultural background, not lack of aptitude or application as I feared". My opponent says that this could apply to anyone in Affirmative Action. However, that's simply not true. For example, most law schools will almost always admit the top LSAT scores and GPAs from each racial group. (1) However, this does not account for economic status whatsoever. For example, University of Missouri at Columbia Law School (who score all applicants out of an index of 100 [based on LSAT scores and GPAs]) in the 2006/07 admission cycles, only accepted 18/259 Caucasian applicants with an index score of less than 58, but accepted every African American applicant, but one with an index higher than 44. That is incredibly unfair as a Caucasian who scored a 50 would have almost no chance, but an African American who scored a 50 would almost be guaranteed admission. (1) One may argue that African Americans don't have as much opportunity, so you can assume that UMC was helping out those with less opportunity, but there are still many African Americans who come from wealth and Caucasians who live in poverty and since that index only accounts for marks, the poor Caucasian will have less odds than the wealthy African American. Law schools aren't the only ones doing this. For example, although Harvard is admitting more black students, it was found that the majority of them were West Indian or African immigrants or their children and biracial children. (2) This strongly suggests that these schools do not account for economic status nearly as much as one would hope, because although still higher than Caucasians, black immigrants do have fairly significant lower levels of poverty and unemployment than American born blacks. (3) This is why Affirmative Action is inherently unfair, as it tries to balance the playing field by race, even though class is the main dividing line in the US, not race. (4) Back to the point I mentioned in my previous post about poor Asian Americans being rejected for rich African Americans, my opponent suggested that they may be being rejected due to lack of extra-curricular activities and personal essay statements. Regarding the extra-curricular activities, Asian Americans were shown participate in more sports than Hispanic Americans, more performance groups than Hispanic and African Americans, more leadership groups than Hispanic, European, and African Americans, and more clubs than Hispanic, European, and African Americans. (5) Also, my opponent mentions discrimination which unfortunately many Hispanic and African Americans have to endure. However, Asian Americans are also a minority and face discrimination as well. (6) Perhaps they do not at the same level as African and Hispanic Americans, but definitely more than European Americans. Yet Affirmative Action still favours European Americans over Asian Americans for most universities. Also, rejected an Asian American (or European American) because many of his/her race are already attending a school, is that not discrimination? 1-http://www.law.du.edu... 2-http://www.nytimes.com... 3-http://epi.3cdn.net... 4-http://www.newyorker.com... 5-http://plaza.ufl.edu... 6-http://www.zakkeith.com...