Racial Segregation in College - Essay Example

Alex R. Frazier Justin Wert P SC 1113-038 23 April In the United s’ perennial quest to forge an equitable and fair social order, numerous of corrective measures have been and continue to be employed; moreover, most of these national policies follow a general pattern that can accurately be described as a pendulum swing.Branded as one of the most conversional policies, affirmative action is a civil rights policy originally designed and expected to address the severe racial disparities that have continuously plagued our nation’s past. Moore (75) points out that affirmative action concept was actually put in place prior to the emergence of the civil rights movements in the country. According to Yeakey and Henderson the implementation of affirmative action in higher education was meant to increase the number of minority students accessing a college education (725-726). However, according to Professor John Fobanjong, the use of race preferential policies within selective schools issignificantly expanding the racial divide as opposed to narrowing it (2). As a result, in regards to higher education, affirmative action creates more detrimental effects than positive outcomes; therefore, these policies should not be incorporated into the admission process. According to Dr.Jamillah Moore, affirmative action should not be framed as a policy that is primarily geared towards discriminatory practices against whites or any other race (12). However, since our nation’s foundation is drenched in racial inequality, race often tends to come into the picture. Affirmative action was intended to provide opportunities, redress inequalities and improve access for the underrepresented minority groups. Education is widely believed to function as an important gateway to opportunity, andmany students aggressively compete to be accepted into the elite institutions each year. Due to the rapid increase in population, access to employment, resources, and education are quickly becoming limited necessities. Thus, when more and more students are being denied admission to lesser qualified candidates, these race preferential policies (such as affirmative action) are being attacked from multiple angles as highlighted by Fobanjong (24-28). While affirmative action was initially established to ensure that fair admission practices are conducted, in order to rectify the long period of severe racial discrimination, the policy is now grossly outdated and hypocritical. According to Tim Wise, these policies fight discrimination with discrimination. By favoring one group over another based on racial preference, instead of academic achievement, universities are generating a rather extreme form of reverse discrimination (69). Many people fear that minority groups will face differential treatment and stigmatization within their environments. Fellow peers and victims of reverse discrimination might harbor the conception that the success of minority students in higher education institutions is unearned. In the college admission process, there are many critical factors that a college should take into consideration. When considering applicants, Winkle-Wagner and Locks argue that selective institutions should take into account these aspects: test scores, extra-curricular activities, leadership achievements, grades, and community involvement (42-43). Since a person’s racial status is an uncontrollable aspect, academic institutions should eliminate race as a justifiable factor in the admission process. Also, when attempting to make competent admission decisions, it is impossible and illogical for any college to reflect on every aspect of a particular student’s background. In the United States Constitution, under the Fourteenth Amendment, an Equal Protection Clause was established to prohibit states from denying any person equal rights. Critics of affirmative action pointed out that the practice of race preferential policies conflicts with the Fourteenth Amendment. Also, Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits certain features that are associated with affirmative action policies. According to Carol Yeakey and Ronald Henderson, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is understood to outlawdiscrimination based on national origin, color, and race by the various recipients of any form of federal financial assistance (726). Clearly, affirmative action policies directly clash with the two previously mentioned laws. While diversity of opinion is considered to be important to an academic community, racial diversity should always be an afterthought to the academic institution’s mission: to foster the advancement and education of students. Affirmative action wrongly provides an advantage to some peoplebased on racial ethnicity which should be regarded asirrelevant to a college’s academic mission. A number of various factors can be determined as constituting a student’s perspective, but affirmative action provides preferential treatment purely due to an external characteristic. Moreover, many minority groups think the idea of preferential treatment represents quite a condescending notion. Affirmative action policies suggest that the majority of underrepresented groups would not succeed in obtaining higher education without the utilization of unequal treatment. In most cases, affirmative action does not achieve the goal of providing disadvantaged minority groups with educational opportunities; instead, it is perceived to perpetuate a number of socioeconomic inequalities. Model (9) points out that the racial minorities that hail from more privileged backgrounds, they are granted the same preferential treatment as their peers; therefore, upper class individuals easily obtain admission into prestigious institutions at the expense of the lower class individuals (the true disadvantaged group in this situation). Furthermore, by incorporating affirmative action in the admission process, educational standards are significantly reduced across the board. According to Rachelle Winkle-Wagner and Angel Locks, students will become less accountable and only strive to achieve these lower requirements (42). Although affirmative action is linked to various severe drawbacks, proponents argue that the purpose is supported by the respectable intention to increase the admission rates for underrepresented and minority groups into institutions of higher education. The underrepresentation of these groups has been attributed to many social factors that according to Wise (12) include: students residing in poorly educated families; students becoming victims to poorly funded public schools; and students unfamiliar with proper English. First of all, when individuals are surrounded by uneducated people, the importance of education becomes a mute issue. Secondly, students from poorly funded schools produce poor performances on standardized tests. Thirdly, when students live in non-English speaking communities, they are often at a substantial disadvantage in writing and reading.However, affirmative action policies do not eliminate an individual’s socially disadvantaged background; instead, these policies attempt to treat a massive head wound with a band aide. In addition to perpetuating the stereotype that members of these minority groups are forced to rely on the aid of preferential treatment, the pro-affirmative action argument suggest that certain preferences are necessary due to past circumstances. Nevertheless, academic environments should chose applicants solely on the basis of their innate ability to thrive in an academic environment regardless of their actual background. Another pro-affirmative action argument, in regards to college admissions, is that a large portion of learning transpires outside of the traditional academic resources (professors and textbooks). Students can potentially learn from their fellow peers but only if the institution’s student body contains representatives from a wide range of backgrounds. Most colleges expend an immense amount of effort to guarantee that their student bodies contain political activists, musicians, and athletes; therefore, each individual student brings a different perspective into the community. The use of affirmative action helps to ensure that members of all the different ethnic groups are well represented within the academic institution. However, according to Karen Inkelas, this postulation is countered by arguments that racial diversity does not lead to a diversity of opinion (110). By lowering admission standards for certain minority groups within an institution, affirmative action is frequentlyadvertised as being able to counterbalance the various academic disadvantages that are perceived to face and affect these groups. Individual students that benefit from affirmative action must be able to achieve a high level of academic excellence relative to the other students with similar backgrounds. In this respect, affirmative action greatly helps in the creation of a student body having a tremendous degree of academic potential. It has been argued that affirmative action tends to lower the quality of a student body. The main debate on the use of affirmative action in the college admission process is that its opponents point out that students should equally compete against each other based on merit. Affirmative action often tends to cause colleges and universities to accept under qualified students simply because they wish to try and diversify the student body both ethnically and racially. Opponents of affirmative action point out that most college admission officers often tend to seek out students from certain minority groups regardless of the academic merit that they might have attained. Although affirmative action has greatly helped college campuses in growing their diversity over the years, it has been shown that the policy does not always help the more vulnerable segments of underrepresented groups. This is seen in the case of Harvard which has increasingly come under a considerable amount of fire in recent years due to the fact that a large percentage of the black students on campus are found to either be immigrants or the children of immigrants. Two thirds of its students are from Africa and the Caribbean (Model 9). As such, black minorities in the United States that for generations have had to endure segregation, slavery and numerous other barriers are seen to not be reaping the benefits of affirmative action it is because of this and other such factors that affirmative action should not be practiced in college admission. Works Cited Fobanjong John.Understanding the backlash against affirmative action.New York : Nova Science Publishers. 2003. Print. Inkelas Karen. Racial Attitudes and Asian Pacific Americans: Demystifying the Model Minority. Taylor & Francis. 2006. Print. Model Suzanne. West Indian immigrants: a black success story? Ne.wYork : Russell Sage Foundation 2008. Print. Moore Jamillah.Race and college admissions.Jefferson, N.C. ; London : McFarland & Co., cop. 2005. Print. Winkle-Wagner Rachelle and Locks Angel. Diversity and Inclusion on Campus: Supporting Racially and Ethnically Underrepresented Students. Routledge. 2013. Print. Wise Tim.Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White. Routledge. 2012. Print. Yeakey Carol and Henderson Ronald.Surmounting all odds : education, opportunity, and society in the new millennium. Greenwich, Conn. : Information Age Pub. 2000. Print. Read More