Unbelievable. The University of Chicago Law School hosts a message board for all law school applicants. A few days ago I posted on the site talking about the need for Affirmative Action but in a different way. Today, another poster on the board referenced my post directly (as in see AlfDaBruin's post) when making his argument. Anyways, here was my post:
Hi,
I'm a Chinese American who quite frankly has been more the victim of Affirmative Action than an actual beneficiary. My background is that I am an alumni of the San Francisco Public School system. Granted, I went to a magnet school but that shouldn't count for anything. I then went on to graduate from UCLA. In the past 15 years of my life, I've seen why affirmative action is indeed necessary today even though it clearly discriminates against Chinese Americans (in general, Chinese Americans get high scores). At my high school, there was quite a bit of diversity as we got bright kids from all over the city and all walks of life. There were Chinese high school kids who live in one bedroom apartments that housed a family of four. They went to school on public transportation that was riddled with graffiti where gang members would sit in the back and harrass them for their lunch money, and they worked after school to make some money to support themselves. They worked hard, they did ok in school, but clearly, they didn't have the opportunity to truly excel. I've also seen rich caucasian kids, whose parents would pick them up after school, drive them to a private tutor ($50/hour), and they would perhaps volunteer at a local hospital or pursue lacrosse, varsity football, or some other great extracurricular activities. As a result, these privileged kids would quite frankly do better than the former kids in their classes resulting in far better numbers. Now based purely on merit, it would appear that the privileged students would be better but in reality, the poorer kids probably deserve the spots at an academic institution more even though they are less prepared than the privileged kids. Granted, affirmative action is not a perfect solution. In fact, in a perfect world, the merit system would be the best system but we live in a place that is far from perfect. So instead, we can only strive for an imperfect way creating equality. When Affirmative Action was struck down at UCLA, admissions for Asian-Americans increased significantly while admissions for African-Americans decreased drastically. However, one key reason for this was that African-American application numbers declined even more significantly than their admittance numbers. The elimination of affirmative action created the impression to African American high school students that they could not get into UCLA based upon their scores and they thus, did not even bother to apply. The mere fact that affirmative action existed gave them motivation to apply for better opportunity. Without affirmative action (in some form or another), kids that already have had to struggle because they did not come from privilege would be severely disadvantaged. In some way, we must find a way to level the playing fields for low income Asian and White students who cannot take advantage of Affirmative Action and in fact, are it's victims. However, Affirmative Action, though imperfect, must be kept, because without it, there would be no vehicle for change and the wealthy and well-off with access to far greater educational resources will have an insurmountable advantage over the youth from poor backgrounds.
AlfDaBruin
Followed by this post by a fellow law student:
I believe that your use of the preamble strengthens Brian's case. The GENERAL WELFARE of many is being compromised by a policy that discriminates based on ethnicity. Like I said earlier, affirmative action goes further to disenfranchise certain groups -Asians, Jews, whites (read the earlier post from AlfDaBruin)- than it does to promote racially equality.
I know it's an ego trip but darnit, I'm allowed one once in awhile.
Hi,
I'm a Chinese American who quite frankly has been more the victim of Affirmative Action than an actual beneficiary. My background is that I am an alumni of the San Francisco Public School system. Granted, I went to a magnet school but that shouldn't count for anything. I then went on to graduate from UCLA. In the past 15 years of my life, I've seen why affirmative action is indeed necessary today even though it clearly discriminates against Chinese Americans (in general, Chinese Americans get high scores). At my high school, there was quite a bit of diversity as we got bright kids from all over the city and all walks of life. There were Chinese high school kids who live in one bedroom apartments that housed a family of four. They went to school on public transportation that was riddled with graffiti where gang members would sit in the back and harrass them for their lunch money, and they worked after school to make some money to support themselves. They worked hard, they did ok in school, but clearly, they didn't have the opportunity to truly excel. I've also seen rich caucasian kids, whose parents would pick them up after school, drive them to a private tutor ($50/hour), and they would perhaps volunteer at a local hospital or pursue lacrosse, varsity football, or some other great extracurricular activities. As a result, these privileged kids would quite frankly do better than the former kids in their classes resulting in far better numbers. Now based purely on merit, it would appear that the privileged students would be better but in reality, the poorer kids probably deserve the spots at an academic institution more even though they are less prepared than the privileged kids. Granted, affirmative action is not a perfect solution. In fact, in a perfect world, the merit system would be the best system but we live in a place that is far from perfect. So instead, we can only strive for an imperfect way creating equality. When Affirmative Action was struck down at UCLA, admissions for Asian-Americans increased significantly while admissions for African-Americans decreased drastically. However, one key reason for this was that African-American application numbers declined even more significantly than their admittance numbers. The elimination of affirmative action created the impression to African American high school students that they could not get into UCLA based upon their scores and they thus, did not even bother to apply. The mere fact that affirmative action existed gave them motivation to apply for better opportunity. Without affirmative action (in some form or another), kids that already have had to struggle because they did not come from privilege would be severely disadvantaged. In some way, we must find a way to level the playing fields for low income Asian and White students who cannot take advantage of Affirmative Action and in fact, are it's victims. However, Affirmative Action, though imperfect, must be kept, because without it, there would be no vehicle for change and the wealthy and well-off with access to far greater educational resources will have an insurmountable advantage over the youth from poor backgrounds.
AlfDaBruin
Followed by this post by a fellow law student:
I believe that your use of the preamble strengthens Brian's case. The GENERAL WELFARE of many is being compromised by a policy that discriminates based on ethnicity. Like I said earlier, affirmative action goes further to disenfranchise certain groups -Asians, Jews, whites (read the earlier post from AlfDaBruin)- than it does to promote racially equality.
I know it's an ego trip but darnit, I'm allowed one once in awhile.
posted by AlfDaBruin at 1:38 AM
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