Opinion //
Good riddance, affirmative action.
It was trying to solve a problem — but it didn’t work.
More than you believe, I believe in the power of equality. I believe in equal chances, and equal opportunities, regardless of your race or background. Regardless of your family or your social status. But not regardless of your abilities.
I believe in meritocracy. That where we go in life should be determined by how able we are and how much work we’re willing to put in. Students who study hard should be given spots in the most prestigious universities — not because of their race, but because they deserve it for who they are.
Sure, affirmative action helped get many blacks into universities and gave them opportunities they otherwise would never have had, but it’s the wrong solution for the real problem. It’s inherently racist as well.
Affirmative action is racist
I remember reading a while ago that a Japanese student with straight As and excellent portfolio was being rejected from a prestigious university. The reason — a black man with less excellent grades and less excellent portfolio was applying as well. And because of affirmative action — and because the student with better grades and portfolio was NOT black — he was rejected.
Oxford dictionary defines racism as the unfair treatment of people who belong to a different race, while the Cambridge dictionary defines it as the unfair treatment of someone because of his or her race. In the example above, what happened was a Japanese student being treated unfairly in university admissions, because he was NOT of the African-American race. Objectively, he had better grades and portfolio, which is largely what decides who gets in, but despite being the better student (objectively, of course), he was rejected based on the grounds of race.
Mind you, I’m not racist. I point out once again that I’m meritocratic. Those who get the prize pot should be those that truly deserve it based on their work, not because of someone else’s sympathy or because they’re underrepresented. If a black student has a better report card and portfolio than an Asian, or White, or Latino, then he very much deserves his/her spot in the university.
But critics point out again — that blacks are typically disadvantaged when it comes to studies and portfolios.
And it doesn’t tackle the root problem
Many black neighbourhoods have proportionally higher rates of crime, drugs, sex and violence than other neighbourhoods. The argument hence, is that these negative influences from young cause young blacks to become disillusioned with schooling and often are pulled into vices by friends or people they know.
Blacks have much higher rates of school dropouts and significantly lower levels of learning and academic achievement. This is the reason they are almost usually underrepresented in institutions of higher learning.
But I don’t think underrepresentation is the main problem here. The elephant in the room should be the disadvantages to black children since birth, like the negative influences of drugs and vice. The main problem is the presence of such vices that cause black children to dropout of school or to have lower levels of learning.
And affirmative action doesn’t tackle that. Rather than putting funding into black neighbourhoods to improve facilities, schools, counselling and such, affirmative action is the simple way out of just getting blacks into universities for the sake of it — and for the sake of looking fair in statistics.
Sure. Affirmative action is the best short-term plan for the problem. It does quickly get many blacks into higher education. But we’re way beyond the short-term. Affirmative action has been around for a while, so shouldn’t it be time now to consider long-term alternatives to solve inequity?
And it doesn’t send the right message
Yes, you can argue that affirmative action motivates because it shows the marginalised communities a brighter future, and helps them on easier paths to universities. But is easy the right way?
Dumbledore said in Fantastic Beasts, Do the right thing — not what’s easy. Right now, the message that affirmative action is sending over is that the government won’t do anything to help solve high unemployment, drugs, violence and poor facilities for the marginalised, yet it will go as far as set a racial quota to “improve” the representation of the marginalised in institutes of higher learning. Shouldn’t the real message be that “we will try to improve your lives, but you need to work hard as well to break out of the cycle of poverty”, rather than whatever message it is already sending?
In so many years of affirmative action, apart from once in a blue moon cases like the Obamas, how many people of marginalised communities have been lifted out of poverty? How many people have been helped? How many neighbourhoods have been improved? How many children of marginalised communities have been given better environments to grow up in and better education from the very start?
What affirmative action feels like, is a lazy policy to stat pad marginalised communities into the balance sheets to feel less guilty about failing to help them otherwise in their normal day-to-day lives.
So what’s right?
Now that we’ve done away with affirmative action, perhaps we can begin anew, with a clean slate to improve the lives of people from marginalised communities, not just a select few of them. Perhaps now we can implement long-term policies that care for them as they and the state grows.
One such policy is reintegration. Singapore enforces such a policy strictly in all places — housing, schools and such — that every place should have as many people of different races. Racial planning is important — to integrate lower and middle-income families from marginalised backgrounds into the local communities, rather than letting them group together and be targeted together — so that all races can grow used to the notion of living together.
Freeing marginalised children from unhealthy environments is also as important. One such way to do this is by improving facilities in black neighbourhoods. Remove all the old and collapsing facilities, improve them, create employment and kickstart the neighbourhood economies. Give youths something else to do, rather than letting them stay bored and start experimenting with vices.
Once we give black and marginalised children equal footing in society, with equal opportunities and access to high-quality education and facilities, we can inspire them to believe that a brighter future can be something to work towards. This will in turn encourage them to remain in school and challenge university entrance exams, giving them equal opportunities at higher education.
Affirmative action should never have been treated as the end. It was a means to achieving equity in education, but a poorly-thought one at that. The end we strive to achieve should be a (as) level (as possible) playing field for children of all communities, marginalised or not, regardless of race or background. Our eventual aim is always to make lives better for the marginalised — so why are we so insistent on stopping with affirmative action?
The abolishment of affirmative action isn’t a set-back for educational equity. It is giving us a clean slate to start again — to create a better future for all children.
