Affirmative Action

Reading Rich's xanga page reminded me of the political blog I wrote a while back on Affirmative Action. I never posted it, because it's about as long as my Iraq Political Blog and I get tired myself just from skimming through it. So I'll write a shorter (but still long) "abridged" version here.

I believe that we do need some extent of affirmative action in this country, but I also feel that it is already being enforced too much right now. The reason we need it is because by human nature, the majority always tends to discriminate against the minority. Without affirmative action, there is little to no incentive for the establishment to change, and incorporate minorities.

So if we use the concept correctly, it would hopefully work to balance out some of the inequalities due to racism and prejudice. But if we use too much, it puts unqualified people in the wrong positions and hurts our country as a whole.

Now, I think most of us who have been through college have witnessed some form of affirmative action at one point or another. In the college admissions process alone, there are many opportunities available to "underrepresented minorities" that are not out there for the rest. In scholarships, in applying for TA positions, student government boards, pretty much anything, affirmative action is already quite present. This is something I can attest to and if you don't know what I'm talking about, you could ask me to share with you some specific stories.

Colleges can deny all they want that affirmative action hurts anyone, but here's a question I have for them: if there was one spot open in the U of I Engineering school, and two applicants with the exact same credentials (GPA, test scores, etc) were being considered, would they choose the White Male or Black Female? If you were Mr. White Male and you got rejected for no other reason than not being a part of an "underrepresented minority", would you agree that affirmative action doesn't hurt anyone?

The thing is, we want there to be equal opportunity for everyone to succeed, which does not necessarily always translate a uniform distribution of demographics in all aspects of society. Currently, colleges and most employers already drool over any underrepresented minority applicants who have decent credentials. I'm pretty confident in saying that there is no lack of opportunity for these people to succeed.

Unfortunately in many cases, there is an excess of affirmative action that ends up taking away jobs or opportunities from people who have earned them, and giving them to those less deserving. An analogy I would think of is the NFL. What if GMs were forced to draft more Asians to balance out the league, like each team needs at least 5 Chinese guys? If this were to happen, the quality of competition in the league would be greatly diminished, not to mention it's pretty insulting to the 5 token Chinks on each team, wouldn't you say? No, the NFL drafts people based purely on skill and qualifications, the way it should be.

But let's put this in more serious terms. If you were having triple bypass surgery, would you want a surgeon who was the best in his/her field, or one that got through medical school being helped along because he/she was an underrepresented minority? Or, would you rather be driving on a bridge designed by Black, White, Pink, or Yellow engineers? The reality is, you definitely wouldn't want race to matter at all, you would always want the one who is best qualified for his/her job.

I have another question to pose, that might end up getting me flamed. But I have to ask, do white people choose to discriminate against Black people, Hispanic people, Native Americans, and women, more than they discriminate against Asians or Jews? The reason I ask is because most of the first-generation Asians came here with little more than a few bucks in their pocket. Many of them were not particularly well-educated, nor did they speak good English.

But for some reason, you see that there is a disproportionately large amount of Asians in top universities and high class jobs today. I'm quite sure that opportunities were not equal for my own mom and dad when they immigrated here, but they still managed to achieve a respectable amount of success. Whether they opened a restaurant or started a dry cleaning shop, Asians have ended up being among the tops in per-capita income and enjoy a relatively high standard of living in this country.

Without going any further and making people sick with my AZN pride (no forks in the house chopsticks only...), the point I'm trying to make is that I think opportunities have been there for minorities to succeed, and they are more present today than ever. And that's all you can really ask for, is an opportunity, a decent shot at making it in life.

So if there's already opportunity for all of us, any of the cries for more affirmative action is a counterproductive cause. I think it's to the point right now where people point to the lack of affirmative action as a convenient excuse for failure. Maybe if the whiners would transfer the energy they spend complaining about lack of affirmative action and focus their efforts on working hard, saving money for education, etc., we wouldn't need it to begin with. That's the attitude we should all have, to work hard and take care of your own biznass before pointing fingers elsewhere. It would definitely solve a lot of problems, I must say.