Brandon Bernstein 1

Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action and its Discrimination Against the Majority of Today's Youth

Brandon Bernstein

AP Literature 1

Kyle Janosch

11/30/18
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Affirmative Action and its History

If you have ever looked at a job market or college applications you will most likely have

heard the phrase “affirmative action”. Affirmative action is everywhere in our society today

trying to get those who are deemed “oppressed” or discriminated based on their race and sex into

fields that they are under-represented in. This is what many would declare as a major attempt to

diversify areas specifically specific occupations that are in the STEM field or college campuses

that are dominated by mainly white or Asian men. In tangent with trying to diversify we have

damaged the standards of our institutions and jobs with trying to push under qualified people in

fields that they do not belong. As of today, many people declare affirmative action as

discriminatory against the youth of today, as it blocks those who deserve to succeed from going

to certain institutions based on race and undermines the quality of standards of those fields.

Affirmative action was first enforced in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy as an

executive order claiming it was to ¨Ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are

treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national

origin”(“Affirmative Action | Overview¨). Lyndon B. Johnson then signed another executive

order 4 years later in 1965 requiring that government offices were to hire people at the same

standards of affirmative action of not discriminating in hiring based on sex and race, starting the

history of affirmative action.

This goes unchallenged in the legal world until the landmark case of “Bakke v. Regents

of California¨, where Allan Bakke a white applicant was denied acceptance into a medical school

twice because 16 out of 100 seats were reserved for minority applicants. Allan, however, had a

GPA and MCAT score significantly higher than a majority of the minority applicants. With this

claim, he sued the University of California in state court arguing that affirmative action violated
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the civil rights act of 1964 and the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. The state

court ruled in Bakke’s favor that “No applicant may be rejected because of his race, in favor of

another who is less qualified, as measured by standards applied without regard to

race”(McBribe). After the state courts ruling, the University of California appealed to the

supreme court who reviewed the case in 1978.

The Supreme court ruled in a 5-4 decision saying that race can be used in an applicants

admission application, as long as it is used with a variety of other factors on a case by case basis.

It was determined the use of this kind of quota system by the University of California was illegal,

as it did not meet the requirements under the 14th amendments equal protection clause because it

excluded whites for 16 of the 100 seats only by the factor of their race. This ruling is used to

support two later supreme court cases in 2003, Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger. Both

which were settled on the same day, were lawsuits against the University of Michigan’s

affirmative action. Grutter v. Bollinger challenged that affirmative action itself was

unconstitutional as it violated the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause. The court still ruled

5-4 that the policy was constitutional basing its decision from “Bakke v. Regents of California”

reaffirming that a university can use race among a number of other factors in their application

process to increase student diversity.

Gratz v. Bollinger which was decided later that day challenged the University of

Michigan’s undergraduate affirmative action program which scored applicants based on a 150-

point scale, with having 100 points almost guaranteeing admission. If the applicant had

"Attendance at a predominately minority or disadvantaged high school”(McBribe), then it would

guarantee them 20 points on the scale. It was ruled 6-3 in favor of Gratz claiming that the

program wasn’t "narrowly tailored enough"(McBribe) and was unconstitutional. These two cases
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helped strengthen the previous ruling of “Bakke v. Regents of California” that race can be used

as a factor among others when accepting applicants but cannot be a major factor that gives

people an advantage solely on race.

The Discrimination behind the Curtain

Affirmative action is what many would call an attempt to use racism or discrimination to

fight false oppression based on race. When it comes to this with lowering standards to diversify

areas, it has become very prevalent on college campuses. Currently, in the United States,

hundreds of colleges use affirmative action to “diversify” their campuses including all ivy league

schools. The most famous example of these being Harvard, who are currently and have been

sued many times for their admissions process being accused to use race as a major factor for

admissions.

According to the supreme court case ¨Bakke v. Regents of California¨, affirmative action

isn't supposed to have a major race factor but still has been shown to give applicants points based

on race. A Princeton study “Of preferential admissions at eight elite schools found that to have

such a chance, Asian-American applicants would have to score (on the “old” SAT) 140 points

higher than white applicants, 270 higher than Hispanics, and 450 higher than black applicants, all

other factors remaining the same”(Eastland). This is often called the “Asian tax” in the academic

world. Asians specifically have to fight against their own race instead of blacks or Hispanics for

seats into schools because they score so much higher on the SAT than those groups that most

can't compete. Instead of enrolling a bunch of Asians or whites that have the highest marks,

many colleges limit the amount that can enter the school for affirmative action and diversity

based off their race.

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When looking at the admissions of ivy league schools, there's always a cap on how many

Asian Americans are accepted into these schools regardless on how much better they do on

average. “Asian Americans at the nation’s most competitive universities have stayed at the same

rate – slightly under 20%” (“Ivy League”), while Caltech, a school with the same requirements

as ivy league schools that don’t use a quota system has a current Asian population of 40%. But

more noticeably so these population proportions for Asian Americans keep constant every year

never rising above 18% for the last decade for any ivy league school. In contrast, Caltech's Asian

population constantly fluctuates with a growth and decrease of a margin of 10% over the years.

The difference affirmative action makes for applicants was very notably made when an

Asian student Vijay Chokai-Ingam faked to be black to get into medical school. After his friend

had gotten denied into medical school with much higher marks then he had, Vijay noticed that

minority applicants had gotten in with lower scores and saw his chance to reach his dream of

being a doctor. It turns out that he accidentally did a social experiment trying to get into a

medical school through affirmative action. Vijay said in an article, “While I wasn’t able to pin

down the exact number, I reasonably calculated that African-American or Hispanic applicants

had as much as a 30 to 40 percent better chance of acceptance than I”(Chokai-Ingam). With only

a 3.1 GPA and an MCAT score of 31 which is rather low standards for a medical school he was

denied when applying as an Asian, but asked to interview at 11 of the top medical schools in the

country as African American. He goes in more depth in his book “Almost Black” where it very

clearly shows an imbalance in our college application system where standards are being lowered

to accept people purely on race to promote diversity.

Colleges in our society are not the only ones to do this however when it comes to

hiring/acceptance. Under the Obama years, the FAA had made a drastic decision to alter there
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hiring process to promote diversity as a study found that women and minorities were

underrepresented. Being an air trafficker controller is one of the most competitive jobs in the

federal government, and they only pick applicants with the highest math scores in the applicant

pool. This is crucial as those who handle this job have to safely guide thousands of lives every

day in the sky, dealing with the constantly ongoing air traffic and safely landing aircraft in and

out of airports. For the job on average whites and Asians have gotten the highest scores on the

AT-SAT allowing them to secure more seats, which is statistically expected. The new policy,

however, attempted to hire people based on their race to solve an insignificant diversity issue.

This policy was challenged by the ¨Mountain States Legal Foundation¨ who ¨filed suit in 2015

on behalf of Brigida and at least 2,000 other air traffic controller applicants who had their AT-

SAT scores invalidated by the Obama administration’s diversity policies”(Bastach). This is a

case where the word diversity had been used as a cover-up for the United States government to

put one applicant ahead of another purely on the basis of race, violating the civil rights act of

1965, the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment and basic morals that people live by to

denounce racism.

What can be the solution?

Many see affirmative action as a way to help those who are not born on an equal playing

field for opportunity as other people. Though so far too many institutions have been doing this

solely on race while those who aren’t from those races have to work harder just because they

were born white or Asian. But for many the solution may seem simple, affirmative action should
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be instead based off of income. For everyone no matter if they are born white, black, Asian,

Indian, they will not be turned down from affirmative action just because of the color of their

skin and would not require the malevolent practices of lowering SAT score weights of some

races in order to accommodate others. With this system, you could have a person who grew up in

a household making $30,000 a year to have a slight edge against someone who grew up in a

household that makes $150,000 a year. As the person who does not have such a broad access to

SAT prep, good schooling or any of the other endless advantages money can buy when it comes

to studying and education would be deemed as a priority over someone who comes from a much

richer household. It would get them accepted for showing there true academic dedication even

when they are at this disadvantage.

With this plan, standards don't have to be lowered either as it would just acknowledge

that this person did just as good or better coming from a harsher background then someone. Like

this, we don’t have to alter scores to give certain people priority or increase their application rate

based on their race. This would most importantly stop the government from prioritizing money

to certain races over others in the name of diversity, along with a plan that finally follows the

civil rights act of 1965 and the 14th amendment unlike the current affirmative action that we

have today.

Works Cited

“Affirmative Action | Overview.” 2 July. 2017 Ncsl. Accessed 17 Nov. 2018

http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/affirmative-action-overview.aspx
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Bastach Michael. “Revamped Lawsuit Vows To Expose ‘Discrimination’ In Obama

Faa’s Diversity Hiring.” 6 June. 2018. The Daily Caller. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/06/06/faa-obama-diversity-hiring-air-traffic-controllers/

Chokai-Ingam, Vijay. “Why I Faked Being Black For Medical School.” 12 April. 2015.

Ny Post. Accessed 17 Nov. 2018 https://nypost.com/2015/04/12/mindy-kalings-brother-

explains-why-he-pretended-to-be-black/

EastLand, Terry, “The Balancing Game.” 8 June. 2018. Weekly Standard. Accessed 20 Nov.

2018 https://www.weeklystandard.com/terry-eastland/the-balancing-game

“Ivy League”

IvyCollegeAdmit. Accessed 22 Nov. 2018. https://www.ivycollegeadmit.com/getting-

into-the-ivy-league-for-asian-americans/

McBribe, Alex. “Regents of University of California v. Bakke (1978).”

Dec. 2006. Thirteen. Accessed 14 Nov. 2018

https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_regents.html

McBribe, Alex. “Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger (2003).”

Dec. 2006. Thirteen. Accessed 14 Nov. 2018

https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/future/landmark_grutter.html
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"New Book Exposes How An Indian American Posed As Black To Get Into Medical School."

13 Sept. 2016. PRWeb Newswire, General OneFile. Accessed 27 Nov. 2018.

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A463329014/GPS?u=nysl_me_73_shb&sid=GPS&xi

d=66a462fd.