|
|
Being a student at UC Berkeley ensures that I come in contact with the issue of affirmative action at least once every semester. Going to a school that is so liberal and progressive guarantees that any major political viewpoint gets expressed here every time it picks up in the news. Affirmative action comes up every semester when applications are being filled out by high schoolers around the world or when they are being review or acceptance letters are being sent out. So affirmative action is seeking for equality among all people. This is by setting up quotas based on race to help undo any racially-based negligence on the part of the acceptance board. Some have called it fairness in a world of racial hatred and ignorance. Others have called it reverse racism. But this rant is not on affirmative action specifically; it just fits into the convresation perfectly. No, this rant is about equality and what it should be defined as in this world and how we should deal with inequality, specifically through governmental channels. I believe there are two major viewpoints out there about what equality is. One is the removal of all barriers for people by giving everyone equal rights, period. The opposing viewpoint is that the group that is deficient in equality be given specific and direct help to alleviate their lacking equality. Let's take free speech as an example to illustrate this. In the first viewpoint, free speech would be reached if no one had any barriers against them speaking. Anyone can say anything they want and no one can stop them. Now with the the second viewpoint, there are two possible scenarios. One is to somehow aritifically inflate the abilities of the inferior group (perhaps by giving them government-subsidized air time on television or in print). The other is to artificially supress the superior group so as to put them on a more level playing ground with the inferior group. Either way there is an active power changing the abilities of a group to put it on the same footing as the other group. Now which one is right? Well, both have their problems. The first one is that if the inferior group is too inferior it could be silenced by the superior group. The only hope the inferior group would have is that their supposedly better message would get through and slowly gain momentum. This is the view that John Stuart Mill took towards free speech; no restrictions at all, not even for libel or slander. Just true free speech. Now the other one has a problem in that the group making the decision as to whether both groups are equal can make a mistake and make the inferior superior by accident, thus negating the group. The whole point is to make neither group superior or inferior, but figuring out how to level everything out would not be perfect and thus an imbalance would incur. Personally, I support the former viewpoint over the latter. The amount of possible problem in the latter are horrendous and can lead to huge issues with whatever ruling body that levels the playing field. That ruling body would be able to suppress or support any group they want and there would not be any good way to have checks and balances (and don't say by public voting because that is democratic facade; the imbalance in voter turnout for various groups tends to negate any equality). The former, though, removes that by taking away possibilities for any group to suppress or unfairly support another group. So how does this tie into affirmative action? Well, I say that affirmative action based on race (at least for school admission) is wrong. That is taking the latter viewpoint's approach and that is not the based way to go about this. A better way is to take into account economic conditions and what outside requirements of school were required of the student. Economic conditions are quantifiable; income, school ratings (yes, they are not perfect, but they are better than nothing), etc. Race does not necessarily have anything to do with how a student performs in school. But a student's economic situation can have a huge impact on how he does. Having to work to help support his/her family (which is another rant on family planning) usually has an effect on that student's academic performance. People argue that affirmative action undoes the poverty and racism that students face because of their race. Well, if their is racism in the school at the teacher level they should complain to the school district and take action (which will help them get into a good school). If there isn't, then what hurdle are they overcoming based on their race? Unfortunately most racial groups tend to live in an area of the community where there race lives (when will this country finally realize cultural isolation is stupid and start getting along?), and thus racism is minimized to some extent. That leaves the economic conditions to deal with and that is hard to deal with. That should be a factor that admissions take into affect. Luckily Berkeley already does that. When affirmative action was removed, Cal admissions started to take economic factors under account. You know what happened when they started doing that? Minority groups grew. They removed this artifical leveling of the playing field based on race and then took facts into account. Some will say that using economics as a deciding factor is an artificial way of leveling the playing ground. To that argument I say "no". Economic condition can show what kind of student someone is by how he overcame that part of his life. Being a specific race says squat directly about what kind of student someone would be. |