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Pros And Cons Of Affirmative Action

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Affirmative Action—the consideration of race in college admissions—allows colleges to admit students based on their race to increase campus diversity, even if their academic standing is not as high as other students applying to the university. It is widely regarded that minorities are underrepresented in higher education, and while this may be historically accurate, there is a new group that is losing the benefits of higher education—lower class students. Students coming from lower class families are often deprived of educational opportunities, not because they are of lower intelligence, but because they simply cannot afford to attend college. By making college more affordable for these low income students, colleges can increase diversity …show more content…

While critics believe that moving to such a system would cause racial diversity in colleges to decline due to the lack of racial preferences, poverty data suggests otherwise. Columbia University’s National Center for Children in Poverty finds that 65% of African American children and 63% of Hispanic children live in households considered low income, compared to 31% of Caucasian children. Since the majority of low income children come from minority households, a system with preference to economic disadvantage would continue to expand racial diversity without discriminating against …show more content…

In 2003 the court heard the case of Grutter v Bollinger, deciding 5-4 in favor of the affirmative action practices in place at the University of Michigan law school. In the majority opinion, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor writes, “We [The Supreme Court] expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” This substantiates the belief that affirmative action was never intended to be a permanent concept, and needs to be replaced by a system that works for the 21st

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