Affirmative action is a very controversial topic in America
today. As a Hispanic woman in
engineering I for a long time struggled with choosing my stance on affirmative
action. I know that affirmative
action makes my minority status and sex an advantage in my field, but as a
strong believer in a meritocracy, I believed the idea of embracing a racial
project like affirmative action contradicted this, but as I learned more about
the structure of our society, the necessity of affirmative action came to light
for me.
Until very recently, I had never truly questioned my
negative experiences that came from being a minority student applying to “top”
universities. Despite being
extremely well qualified when applying to college, I was still told by several
fellow students that I “only got into Michigan because [I] was Mexican”, as
well as, that as a woman, “applying into engineering was a good strategy to
assure [I] would get into school”. Though hearing this did not at the time
truly burden me because I knew my academic standing was what brought me here,
it did make me question, is that what everyone else thought when I said “I’m going
to Michigan”. Would I be forever
plagued by the many stigmas that follow minorities. Would my achievements be diminished and attributed to my
minority status? It is policies
such as affirmative action that perpetuate the stereotypes among minorities at
higher education institutions of being “a product of Affirmative Action”. That however is not an issue of policy,
it is an issue of society and ideological work.
Many believe that affirmative action is no longer necessary
because our society no longer privileges whites over minorities. Others claim that it is a form of
reverse racism that has set up a system of discrimination against the white
majority. Another argument against
affirmative action is that it violates the constitution, which guarantees equal
rights for all, by giving certain groups an advantage over others.
Though I admit that I believe that these arguments are valid
and I agree with all of them on some level, I must provide the counter-point to
each of these.
Though I see it as true that by law, whites are no longer
privileged, I believe that by the social structure of our society, they still
are. The laws of the past have
created an America in which the white majority holds economic and social
advantages over minorities. For
example, it is quite clear through out the country that many communities are
racially segregated and with this racial segregation comes economic segregation
as well. We can look to the
division between urban neighborhoods and their suburban counterparts, populated
with minorities and white majorities, respectively, as an example of this
segregation and the economic disparity that comes with this. This economic disparity in turn creates
differences in educational systems, employment and housing and leaves us with a
country in which poverty has been racialized. With such a disparity in economic wealth, comes a disparity
in opportunity. Wealth allows
people to live in better areas of the country, and therefore go to better
schools, and therefore have a great advantage when applying to universities,
which then gives you an advantage in the work force. If someone from an impoverished part of the country never
receives an opportunity, such as that given to them by affirmative action, then
the mobility and distribution of wealth from the white majority to all races
will never occur.
I can look to my own life experiences to draw these
conclusions. I was born in Mexico and moved to the United States when I was six
years old, my parents only completed seventh grade before they began working on
their families farms. My oldest
sister was the first person in our extended family to attend college followed
by my other sister and myself. So
coming from a lower middle-class Hispanic family, I have experienced first hand
the disadvantages that come from being a minority. I grew up in a very diverse city, in New Rochelle, New York,
that is composed of a population that is about one third White, one third
Hispanic, and one third Black.
With such an even distribution of race, the disparity in the
distribution of wealth became even more apparent. The north end which was the wealthiest part of New Rochelle
was by a large majority White, while the mid to southern parts of the city
which were the least wealthy were Black and Hispanic. As a student, what stood out to me most was my honors and AP
classes, which were nearly comprised of all white students. So were these White students inherently
more intelligent than their Black and Hispanic counterparts? I didn’t think so. I, living in the middle part of New
Rochelle, went to Albert Leonard, the middle school on the north side of New
Rochelle, which to anyone in New Rochelle could be instantly identified as the
middle school with better teachers, programs and funding. The students from Albert Leonard were
the ones who populated advanced placement classes. These were also the same students who I competed against
when applying to the best universities.
So were Hispanic and Black students less intelligent? No, I believe they simply did not have
the opportunities that would encourage their success. They lived in the less wealthy part of town, and went to
worse elementary and middle schools, so that by high school they were already
at a disadvantage when class placement was decided. I see it as a form of institutionalized racism, where in my
hometown like many if not most across America, minorities find themselves
economically disadvantaged, it is this lack of wealth, which diminishes
opportunity and inhibits social and economic mobility.
So what does affirmative action do to fix this? It gives minorities an opportunity to
amend the disadvantages they encountered because of a society that is
structured in a way that places them at the bottom of the socio-economic
“totem-pole”.
As for the claim that affirmative action is a form of
reversed racism I can not agree with using the term racism to describe the
policies of affirmative action, because I see these policies as a way of trying
to help a group of people as opposed to hurting another.
It is because of the need to help minorities rise that I am
a proponent of affirmative action.
I do hope that some day affirmative action is irrelevant, but that will
require allowing this policy to proceed and evolve until we have achieved
proportional representation in education and in the work force. It is not until that goal is reached
that America can truly say that it is a racial democracy that provides equal
opportunity for all.
So with all this in mind, where do you stand on affirmative
action?
Yanet Zepeda
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