As some readers might know, I have a weekly column titled “The Death of Education” in which I recently published an article defending the Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw affirmative action in college admissions. A few days later, the Daily published a Letter to the Editor that responded to my argument. The letter argued that affirmative action was still important to help underprivileged students catch up to more well-off students who might not suffer from the same social disadvantages. Since receiving criticism and having a healthy debate is important, I decided to write this response to address some of the points brought up and expand upon my original argument.
Firstly, my support of the Supreme Court’s decision only pertains to the elimination of race-based affirmative action. I continue to support affirmative action based on financial status. It is of vital interest to the American nation that we continue to open more pathways for economic mobility through which children of underprivileged backgrounds can change their lives by attending universities. It is more important to help disadvantaged students get into universities, rather than to spend years debating whether a sliver of students should get bonus points when applying to so-called “elite schools.” It has been shown that those with a bachelor’s degree potentially earn nearly 60% more than those with only a high school diploma. To this point, we can look at the state of California, which banned the use of affirmative action in public college admissions in 1996. Despite this, California’s public colleges enroll far more students of lower family income compared to other universities that still use affirmative action. A New York Times analysis from 2017 shows that the University of California, Berkeley had 29.7% of students from the bottom 60% of the income bracket while only 3.8% of students were from the top 1%. The University of California, Los Angeles had 33.5% compared to 4.1%. Meanwhile, Harvard had 20.4% of students from the bottom 60% with 15.1% from the top 1%. At Tufts, the percentage was 11.8% compared to 18.6%. So, which group of universities is the most fair? The schools that employ affirmative action but have more students from the top 1%, or the schools without affirmative action yet more students from the bottom 60% of family earnings?
Secondly, I agree that debates on affirmative action often lack the necessary context. I argued in my column that we need to invest in education in low income communities, which would help to close the race gap in college admissions. The responding author responded by saying that teachers like himself are still faced with significant problems such as behavioral issues that stem from instabilities at home. While this is true, it is also important to acknowledge that schools in minority communities are still facing severe funding issues. A study this year found that African-American students are “twice as likely as white students to be in districts with funding below estimated adequate levels, and 3.5 times more likely to be in ‘chronically underfunded’ districts.” This means that for every student being taught with adequate resources, there are many more students out there studying while hungry or without necessary materials. This is an issue that could be addressed with proper funding while longer plans for community stability are implemented.
The response also points out that instabilities at home often lead to behavioral problems at school. This is accurate because it has been shown that impoverished students are more likely to have disruptive behavior, mental health issues and be absent from school. However, I fail to see how race-based affirmative action helps alleviate this issue. Students in these situations are likely already far behind their wealthier peers and a few extra points during the college application process is not going to help them. We need to increase investment in mental health, housing and anti-poverty programs in these communities. This extends far beyond an educational issue and is becoming a societal issue that America has shamefully not yet addressed. While it takes a village to raise a child, this is much harder to do when the village is in disarray.
Lastly, many people who study the issue argue that race-based affirmative action has little to no effect and worse, does damage to the minority groups that it seeks to help. Black economist Thomas Sowell argues that affirmative action has done relatively little for the Black community. Another article in the Atlantic argues that with affirmative action, “the largest, most aggressive preferences are usually reserved for upper-middle-class minorities on many of whom they inflict significant academic harm.” While the program does little to help underprivileged students, it does take up a lot of policymakers’ time. So if a fraction of the time spent on debating this topic by lawyers and experts were used on addressing some of the broader societal issues, I feel that would be much more helpful for American students.
I could never understand the struggles faced by the author of the response and the many other teachers like him. This is why it is important to listen to teachers on the front lines when discussing issues such as these. However, I could not help but disagree on the issue of affirmative action. This policy creates little to no actual benefits for underprivileged students and distracts from actual policies that could actually help disenfranchised students.
I do not accept that to help Black kids we need Havard to discriminate against Asians.
I do not accept that the debate around affirmative action creates “the caricatured image of a dumb Black kid who takes a spot at Harvard from a brilliant Asian kid.”
I certainly do not accept that spending more time debating this topic, which has already been struck down by the Supreme Court, does disadvantaged students in this country any good.
