Affirmative action is the lowering of standards over aptitude.
A lawsuit that claims Harvard caps the number of high-achieving Asian-Americans it admits could go to trial in Boston as early as this summer, according to CNN. The lawsuit was filed in 2014 by conservative advocates who continuously challenge affirmative action and the distinction it makes based on students’ skin pigmentation.
The term “affirmative action” was first used in the United States in “Executive Order No. 10925”, signed by former President John F. Kennedy in 1961, which included a provision that government contractors “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”
Today in the United States, the term is widely known as referring to the practice by universities of requiring lower test scores for admission of Black students, while requiring higher test scores for White and Asian students.
This way, according to the supporters of this policy, we can counteract the imbalances and injustices in society which lead to less black students being admitted to the nation’s top universities in the first place, and ensure the greatest racial pluralism in the classroom.
The problem, among many, is that this policy draws a line in the sand on the sole basis of skin pigmentation, and not on any other relevant factor of admission.
If, for example, as was the case a couple years ago in Princeton university, a young Asian student from a poor socioeconomic background got an SAT score of 1510/1600, (back when it was still graded out of 1600), and a Black student from a comfortable socioeconomic background got a 1310/1600, then the black student would automatically be granted admission over the Asian student, regardless of the actual conditions both students went through to achieve these scores.
Does it matter that the Asian student grew up in crippling poverty, with a single mother and all the odds against him, and still managed a higher test score? No, all that mattered was that he is Asian.