Affirmative Action

[DarkTemplarZero]

So I have recently been slapped in the face with the reality of affirmative action. As many of you know, I'm a senior in high school, I'm white, and I applied early to MIT. Near-perfect SAT, grades, extracirriculars, math competitions, what not, and as I expected I got deferred. Then I took a look at the people that got accepted and I was ready to punch somebody in the face. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

"I can't believe I got in! SAT: 1910, rank 23 out of 510, GPA: 3.5 can you believe it!!!??"
^ Note that the above is an African-American girl. Now if you were to apply to any Ivy with grades and SATs like those as a White or Asian person, they would throw your application in the shredder without a second glance, but simply because she's African-American she gets accepted early over people who worked for most of the last four years to try to get in and proved themselves to be far more worthy. Am I the only one who thinks that this is ridiculous, unfair, and racist?

[Roy Karrde]

Ehhh according to the Human Rights Committee "the principle of equality sometimes requires States parties to take affirmative action in order to diminish or eliminate conditions which cause or help to perpetuate discrimination prohibited by the [ICCPR]" So Affirmative Action is needed to help stop discrimination, other wise it is a Human Right's Violation.

In other words this is revenge for you throwing out that everything is a Human Right's violation in our other debates ~.^. Really we have had the National Negro College Fund, we have had Affirmative Action, we have so many different programs and funds, and we still have Gettos, we still have Gangs. Look at the trash that was scraped out of New Orleans.

I'm with you in that it needs to go, it obviously isnt making some huge change, there will always be gettos as long as there are teens that do not give a damn. So yeah I am with you, I say get rid of Affirmative Action. Even if it is a Human Right's Violation ~.^

[Razola]

It should be based on economic class. Nobody will argue that a poor person had to work through a greater disadvantage than a middle or high class one.

More uneducated get educated along with jobs that require such an education.

[mr_pikachu]

No matter how you look at it, things are imbalanced. I don't have a problem with a degree of this, but it's utterly insane right now. A friend of mine currently has a 4.0 GPA, is in his senior year at an upper-tier private university, and he can't get a decent scholarship to save his life despite numerous interviews and applications for various applicable bonuses. (He's practically paying the full tuition right now.) He's also involved in numerous campus organizations, taking a role in some of their governments.

Needless to say, other applicants with far lesser credentials are the ones getting the scholarships. Do I have to give you the demographics, or is the point clear?

[Razola]

Maybe those who got it needed it more?

[mr_pikachu]

This is going to sound harsh. Maybe cruel. Hell, it might even sound bigoted. But I'm sick and tired of hearing "I need this" or "I need that."

There are plenty of major scholarships based on such needs. That's fine, we can leave those alone. They serve a purpose. But such concerns of economic standing should not be a factor in academic scholarships and awards.

It gets to the point where, depending on your ethnicity/gender/etc., it doesn't matter what you do. You can't get any credit for anything you do, because someone else "needs" it more. That's the problem I have. What's the point in competing like hell for a scholarship when your application's in the trash before anyone bothers to check your credentials?

...Sorry. It's been a really long day, and I'm honestly not feeling up to explaining my argument in a "nice" manner.

[DarkTemplarZero]

Hahah yeah Roy I guess I deserved that one. I guess that's one thing I disagree with human rights groups on, Affirmative Action tends to throw people into situations they're not ready for. I remember one particularly gripping Law and Order episode involving a black kid who got into an Ivy and was failing all of his classes until his surrogate father started paying for him to cheat so he could succeed and be a role model for kids in the ghetto, but the kid snapped and beat him to death with a baseball bat. You get the same thing, if a kid is from a terrible high school where he/she didn't learn anything, what makes them ready for a top-tier college?

[Jeff]

Affirmatave Action = Racism, plain and simple. Whenever I go to my schools home page and see their little "UMBC is an equal opportunity and Affirmative Action institution" message, I feel like telling them how much of a contradiction that is, since AA is basically unequal opportunity.

To think that a group of Americans fought for decades for civil rights so that they could be just as well-qualified as any white person, and then turn around and take a big steaming dump on all that by just letting black people get into college and jobs even if they're less qualified than someone else who couldn't get in. That's not making things fair, that's just fighting discrimination with more discrimination.

I agree with alot of the people who have posted, there are scholarships and financial aid to help out students who have grown up less privileged. There is no reason to give someone an easier chance of getting into college based solely off of their skin color, that just completely goes against Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream.

[Arnen]

If you work harder and get better grades, you should get the scholarship. Race (and gender, actually) should have nothing to do with it. Plain and simple.

[Perfect Chaos]

It seems that the major concensus here is that "affirmative action sucks major donkey balls"

However, a point on it. Affirmative action doesn't ALWAYS work out for minority groups. My family is Indian (hence, Asian-American "ethnicity") and I have a twin sister. We both applied for FAFSA and were expecting that we'd get SOME money in order to pay for college. Unfortunately, we got a slap in the face. FAFSA instead told us that they wouldn't give us any money and that my dad ALONE (my mom doesn't work, just a housewife) is supposed to contribute about $30k in college expenses for me and my sister. Now my dad does have a good-paying job (I'm not saying how much just as my personal preference), but despite the fact that my family has TWO college-bound kids, we're not getting ANY money from the government for college expenses. Now that's what ticks me off.

So yeah, my point is that, although affirmative action DOES exist in today's society, it still doesn't affect EVERY single minority group in America.

[mr_pikachu]

Well, I guess that means you're in the same boat as the rest of us... hmm. Perhaps all that matters to the colleges is that they have a high "minority" percentage? Huh. Odd, that.

Now, I don't know exactly how FAFSA works, but are there requirements for funding? That is, do you have to have a certain GPA or ACT/SAT score? Or do you have to have an acceptance letter from an accredited institution? Or is it just "I want to go to college! I'm not white! Give me money!" and you get what you want?