The Wake

Students hold varying opinions on affirmative action, and their stances seem to be dictated by whether it has harmed or helped them.

If some white students believe they unjustly lost out to students of color, they are obviously going to strongly disapprove of affirmative action. Such is the case with Mike, a white man and a junior at St. Thomas. Mike seems to clearly understand that the purpose of affirmative action is to “establish diversity in places where prejudice might otherwise prevent it,” but he questions if this is always the right route to take. He knows he didn’t receive certain jobs, scholarships and financial aid because they were awarded to minorities he believed were less qualified. Mike has a 4.0 GPA, was a member of the National Honor Society in high school, is currently a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and is co-president of the St. Thomas Investment Banking Club. Affirmative action “can force businesses and institutions to make decisions that stray from the normal course of what they might do” and “undermines the merit-based idea of our economy and nation,” Mike says.

It’s possible for someone overlooked for jobs or scholarships to be psychologically, as well as materially, harmed by affirmative action. Another student commented that affirmative action makes him “feel bad for being a white male, despite the fact that I bust my ass.” Not that sympathy should be given to the white majority in this situation, but the privileged might feel attacked to some degree because affirmative action.

Often, as long as a student feels that they haven’t been personally harmed by affirmative action, they feel good about the policy. Paul is a white male student at the University of Wisconsin-Stout who says he believes that the intentions behind affirmative action are good and that the policy should “definitely not be abolished,” only slightly reformed. The aspect of affirmative action that irks Paul is the use of quotas. He mentions the extreme circumstances surrounding the 1978 Supreme Court case Bakke v. Regents of the University of California. It involved a white man whose application to medical school was rejected partially because many black students with much lower credentials were admitted. Quotas are illegal in the United States unless a judge assigns one to a specific institution to make up for severe cases of discrimination.

Xiong, a sophomore at the “U” who is Hmong, feels differently. He believes that affirmative action is completely fair and is practiced with good intentions. He thinks of it as providing “equal rights and opportunities for everybody” and said he believes it’s a policy that simply gives people what they are entitled.

Both perspectives are hard to argue against. How do you justify taking opportunities from white students who, more often than not, didn’t personally have anything to do with oppressing minorities? Then again, shouldn’t something be done to help members of the minority overcome the disadvantages they face because of past discrimination? I don’t know the best way to handle affirmative action, and I believe that a solution is unlikely as long as personal experience, rather than objectivity, dominates the discussion.