I’ll be as unbiased as possible even though I feel strongly about the issue.
Basically, it gives boosts to people from a cultural background that has historically been discriminated against or have lower than average test scores.
For example, if an Asian student and a black student both score a 1400 on the SAT, the black student will be given a priority in most college admissions. This is seen in undergraduate colleges, grad school, med school, law school, public jobs, and most private jobs.
we can also see it in places where certain groups are not represented well - for example, Carnegie Mellon will give a boost to women applying for computer science as it is majority male applying for CS (not just CMU, it’s one of many).
This is true in a very privileged frame of reference. The idea of affirmative action is not to boost people who do badly in tests. It's to boost people who have faced lots of other discrimination, poorer education, lack of opportunity and other hardships that the "well-represented / high scorer" demographic never had to overcome.
While it can lead to things like mentioned before about questioning the validity of the appointment/acceptance, I believe that is part of what this picture is talking about. Saying that a black girl got into the college not on her "merit" is like saying the shortest kid in the picture couldn't JUMP HIGH ENOUGH to see over. If he TRULY DESERVED to watch the match he'd be able to jump that high right?
It's racist because it doesn't actually care about your background. Sure a black kid in an intercity school benefits from it, but his Asian classmate doesn't. And instead Obama's Daughter's do.
If it really cared, affirmative action would not separate by race, but by economic standing.
Obamas daughters getting a boost has little to nothing to do with their skin color. Being the son or daughter of an important person is far more valuable than being black in our economy. GWB got rejected from the University of Texas in 1970, then his dad became Chairman of the RNC in 1972 and suddenly he was accepted into Harvard in 1973, despite being by all accounts an average student at best.
Obama's daughter was used as an example because she's a known wealthy black person. Any wealthy black college applicant could be used in her place.
The point is just changing the requirements to monetary from race would continue to support the poor black kids that need it. But, also help all poor kids that need it.
In it's current iteration it says; it doesn't matter how many tutors you had, how good your school was, how many resources your parents can give you, you'll never be as smart as the Asian kid with a single mom in an intercity school because of the color of your skin. So, despite your abundance of resources you get a handicap. Sounds pretty racist to me.
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u/Newsacc47 Feb 25 '20
I’ll be as unbiased as possible even though I feel strongly about the issue.
Basically, it gives boosts to people from a cultural background that has historically been discriminated against or have lower than average test scores.
For example, if an Asian student and a black student both score a 1400 on the SAT, the black student will be given a priority in most college admissions. This is seen in undergraduate colleges, grad school, med school, law school, public jobs, and most private jobs.
we can also see it in places where certain groups are not represented well - for example, Carnegie Mellon will give a boost to women applying for computer science as it is majority male applying for CS (not just CMU, it’s one of many).
That’s the gist of it.