// essays //
Fall 2014
Moving Nowhere:
The Case Against Affirmative Action
Michael Lunzer
Fall 2014
Moving Nowhere:
The Case Against Affirmative Action
Michael Lunzer
Law schools today unfortunately seem to only care about three numbers. Your grade point average and LSAT score are the most likely indicators of your chances at admission, but there is a third, almost more important number: the percentage of racial minorities attending their school. Due to diversity requirements for law schools across the country, skin color has now become one of the major factors in determining how competitive each candidate is for admission to law school. Skin color is, actually, more important than the personal statement, the letters of recommendation, and resume combined.
Underrepresented minorities (URM’s) are a hot commodity at the moment, and not just for law schools. Ph.D programs, medical schools, and MBA programs, all want to enroll more URM’s, and are doing so at the expense of everyone else. Standard practice for graduate pro- grams has become to institute admission policies that involve applying higher standards to over-represented groups who apply, a tendency that is markedly stronger in the more selective institutions. In top-ranked law schools, being an underrepresented minority (URM) is equivalent to a ten-point increase on the LSAT. In medical schools it is equivalent to an 8 or 9 point increase on the MCAT. The same holds true for applicants taking the GRE or the GMAT. Overall, schools may be as much as 30% more likely to offer admission to URMs over similarly qualified overrepresented groups.
This is probably not surprising to most—we have come to expect this kind of treatment for URMs. We have been sold on the idea that policies are instituted to help minorities who face greater obstacles when applying to schools. The problem, however, is the fact that these poli- cies are passively accepted. On the contrary, we should be surprised, and disturbed, about the implications of affirmative action—not least of which is the dehumanization of the people it is supposedly helping.
There is no concrete affirmative action policy to which these graduate programs adhere. Instead, each school has a general interest in diversity on campus. So in order to maintain a proper color scheme (because that’s what this diversity requirement amounts to,) graduate schools ease the requirements for any member of a race that is underrepresented at their school. If this does not yet bother you, think about the term used: ‘underrepresented minority.’ It’s not ‘disadvantaged minority’ or ‘underprivileged minority.’ This process does not care about, nor take into account, personal obstacles. It is purely about the color of one’s skin and their level of representation—the more underrepresented one is, the better one’s chances of gaining accep- tance. That race should have so much sway over the admission process is wrong.
Worse, it’s insulting. It’s insulting not just because the schools are telling the URM’s who are applying that they can’t make it without help, but also because the universities don’t actually care how much being a minority erodes one’s chances of being accepted into their school. If they did, there would be studies done to determine the effects of race on GPA, standardized test scores, and other factors that go into applying for graduate school and then they would adjust the admissions requirements accordingly. But they aren’t doing that. Instead they have a one size fits all URM profile in order to keep their student population in keeping with diversity requirements.
While people labeled as URMs have a history of suffering from discrimination, there is rea- son to believe that these issues are not being fixed by affirmative action. An article published recently by The New York Times regarding the increased acceptance of black students into Harvard noted that many of the black alumni were either from the West Indies or children of biracial couples—very few were full descendants of slaves and black families affected by the Jim Crow laws. Even proponents of affirmative action must admit that the diversity achieved at Harvard is not the kind that affirmative action originally envisioned. In truth, we have conflated the idea of diversity with the idea of affirmative action: graduate schools have found a way to circumvent helping those that are truly underprivileged, at the same time developing a color palette that allows them to claim diversity without actually working on the deep fundamental notions of what being a diverse population truly is.
A perfect example of the failure of this policy can be seen in Asian-American communities. At pretty much every level of higher education there has been a major influx of Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, and other people of Eastern descent— and this has become so prevalent that being Asian, no matter one’s personal status, is detrimental towards getting into graduate school. While many of the people applying are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, it is because of this background that they have a more difficult time getting into schools than Caucasians do. Looking at the acceptance rate for medical schools from the AAMC shows that the disparity between being Asian-American (50%) as opposed to being African-American (91%), assuming the applicants to be of similar quality, is so far apart that one has to wonder how this could possibly be fair.
The diversity requirement was probably intended to right years of harmful discrimination: but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The fact remains that today an African- American from an upper middle class family has a significantly better chance of getting ac- cepted to any graduate school than a first generation Korean-American from a poverty stricken family. Whatever this measure was originally meant to accomplish, it is unlikely that such a blatantly racist outcome was a part of it. Whether or not this failing is inherent to all affirmative action policies, or is unique to the way graduate schools implemented their version of it, noth- ing can be viable long term if the outcomes it forces are inherently discriminatory against the eventual success of the people it purports to help.
If the goal is to help the underprivileged, a greater weight must be put on socioeconomic status over race. Conversely, if the purpose is to level the playing field for minorities, the effects of race on standardized test scores should be quantified to produce more accurate results. Whichever the case, there is an urgent need for change. Today’s policy has left URM’s treated as a quota to be filled, not individual people—and in the long run, this can only become more and more detrimental for the academic success of minority populations.
Underrepresented minorities (URM’s) are a hot commodity at the moment, and not just for law schools. Ph.D programs, medical schools, and MBA programs, all want to enroll more URM’s, and are doing so at the expense of everyone else. Standard practice for graduate pro- grams has become to institute admission policies that involve applying higher standards to over-represented groups who apply, a tendency that is markedly stronger in the more selective institutions. In top-ranked law schools, being an underrepresented minority (URM) is equivalent to a ten-point increase on the LSAT. In medical schools it is equivalent to an 8 or 9 point increase on the MCAT. The same holds true for applicants taking the GRE or the GMAT. Overall, schools may be as much as 30% more likely to offer admission to URMs over similarly qualified overrepresented groups.
This is probably not surprising to most—we have come to expect this kind of treatment for URMs. We have been sold on the idea that policies are instituted to help minorities who face greater obstacles when applying to schools. The problem, however, is the fact that these poli- cies are passively accepted. On the contrary, we should be surprised, and disturbed, about the implications of affirmative action—not least of which is the dehumanization of the people it is supposedly helping.
There is no concrete affirmative action policy to which these graduate programs adhere. Instead, each school has a general interest in diversity on campus. So in order to maintain a proper color scheme (because that’s what this diversity requirement amounts to,) graduate schools ease the requirements for any member of a race that is underrepresented at their school. If this does not yet bother you, think about the term used: ‘underrepresented minority.’ It’s not ‘disadvantaged minority’ or ‘underprivileged minority.’ This process does not care about, nor take into account, personal obstacles. It is purely about the color of one’s skin and their level of representation—the more underrepresented one is, the better one’s chances of gaining accep- tance. That race should have so much sway over the admission process is wrong.
Worse, it’s insulting. It’s insulting not just because the schools are telling the URM’s who are applying that they can’t make it without help, but also because the universities don’t actually care how much being a minority erodes one’s chances of being accepted into their school. If they did, there would be studies done to determine the effects of race on GPA, standardized test scores, and other factors that go into applying for graduate school and then they would adjust the admissions requirements accordingly. But they aren’t doing that. Instead they have a one size fits all URM profile in order to keep their student population in keeping with diversity requirements.
While people labeled as URMs have a history of suffering from discrimination, there is rea- son to believe that these issues are not being fixed by affirmative action. An article published recently by The New York Times regarding the increased acceptance of black students into Harvard noted that many of the black alumni were either from the West Indies or children of biracial couples—very few were full descendants of slaves and black families affected by the Jim Crow laws. Even proponents of affirmative action must admit that the diversity achieved at Harvard is not the kind that affirmative action originally envisioned. In truth, we have conflated the idea of diversity with the idea of affirmative action: graduate schools have found a way to circumvent helping those that are truly underprivileged, at the same time developing a color palette that allows them to claim diversity without actually working on the deep fundamental notions of what being a diverse population truly is.
A perfect example of the failure of this policy can be seen in Asian-American communities. At pretty much every level of higher education there has been a major influx of Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, and other people of Eastern descent— and this has become so prevalent that being Asian, no matter one’s personal status, is detrimental towards getting into graduate school. While many of the people applying are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, it is because of this background that they have a more difficult time getting into schools than Caucasians do. Looking at the acceptance rate for medical schools from the AAMC shows that the disparity between being Asian-American (50%) as opposed to being African-American (91%), assuming the applicants to be of similar quality, is so far apart that one has to wonder how this could possibly be fair.
The diversity requirement was probably intended to right years of harmful discrimination: but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The fact remains that today an African- American from an upper middle class family has a significantly better chance of getting ac- cepted to any graduate school than a first generation Korean-American from a poverty stricken family. Whatever this measure was originally meant to accomplish, it is unlikely that such a blatantly racist outcome was a part of it. Whether or not this failing is inherent to all affirmative action policies, or is unique to the way graduate schools implemented their version of it, noth- ing can be viable long term if the outcomes it forces are inherently discriminatory against the eventual success of the people it purports to help.
If the goal is to help the underprivileged, a greater weight must be put on socioeconomic status over race. Conversely, if the purpose is to level the playing field for minorities, the effects of race on standardized test scores should be quantified to produce more accurate results. Whichever the case, there is an urgent need for change. Today’s policy has left URM’s treated as a quota to be filled, not individual people—and in the long run, this can only become more and more detrimental for the academic success of minority populations.
// MICHAEL LUNZER is a Senior in The School of General Studies. He can be reached at mal2268@columbia.edu. Photo by Flickr user Ginny.