Debate Against Racial Preference in College Admissions Affirmative Action Research Paper

Racial Profiling

Drachman, Edward R., Robert Langran, and Alan Shank. "Case 4: Race-Based Affirmative

Action in College Admissions: Keep It, Mend It, or End It?" You Decide: Controversial cases in American Politics. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008. 47-67. Print.

"Colleges have given three main justifications for affirmative action policies that would aid certain minority applicants, especially African-Americans and Hispanics: to compensate for long-standing practices of discrimination; to achieve diversity of the student body; and to overcome 'underrepresentation' of historically disadvantaged groups" (47).

"In California in 1995, the Board of Regents decided to stop race-based admissions, and the next year voters passed Proposition 209, which ended racial preferences in all public-sector state programs including college admissions; and laws were soon enacted in Washington State and Florida prohibiting state universities from using race-based admissions policies" (48).

"Critics of racial preference in college admission argue that:

The U.S. Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, protects individuals, not groups

The Constitution calls for equal protection under the law, and so should our laws

College admissions should be based mainly on merit as determined by grade point average and standardized test scores

Affirmative action penalizes applicants who themselves were never guilty of discrimination

Colleges at various times discriminated against unprotected groups such as Jews and Asians

By opening college doors wider to historically disadvantaged and underrepresented groups, other groups, especially white males and more recently Asian-Americans, are discriminated against

Affirmative Action benefits immigrant groups that have not been seriously discriminated against in this country

Affirmative action programs that are designed to be temporary remedies for injustice seek to achieve 'equality as a result,' a phenomenon that seems to be continuing indefinitely

Affirmative action in admissions often promotes racial friction and discord rather than harmony and understanding" (48-49).Hall, Matthew Eric Kane. "Affirmative Action in College Admissions." The Nature of Supreme

Court Power. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. 113-18. Print.

"In 1973, Allan Bakke applied to the University of California, Davis, Medical School. At the time, the school used a dual admissions process, in which regular applicants were considered separately from those who identified themselves as 'economically and/or educationally disadvantaged' applicants or members of a 'minority group.' Regular applicants were required to have a minimum undergraduate grade point average of 2.5 or higher, but applicants in the special admission program were not. These special applicants were not ranked against candidates in the general admissions process and instead competed among themselves for sixteen of the one hundred seats in the entering class. During a four-year period, no whites were admitted through the special admissions program, although many applied"….....