Wednesday, May 27, 1998
Higher education is a privilege, not an absolute right
COLUMN: Underqualified people – not minorities – denied
admission to UCs
So what should I write about this time? Let’s do some mental
inventory: So far I’ve pissed off the rednecks, the circumcision
lobby and the feminists. But really, I’m not in the "pissing off"
business; it just so happens that my world view clashes with those
who are closer to the left-most end of the political spectrum. My
libertarian beliefs, which place the highest value on the rights of
the individual, and which despise (for the most part) group
identity of any kind, often get me in trouble. So today, I’ll give
my spiel on the events leading up to and culminating in the
capturing of Royce Hall by the Affirmative Action Coalition on May
19.
Affirmative action now no longer applies to the decision-making
regarding admissions to the UC system. As a result, the number of
Latino/a and African American students accepted dropped
significantly both at Cal and here at UCLA. Several student groups
on campus have taken this to be a sign of institutionalized
racism.
They have accused the regents, the governor and UCLA’s new
chancellor of blatant racism. The said student groups are calling
for the abolition of the newly adopted admissions policy on the
grounds that it is keeping the doors of higher education closed to
underrepresented minorities; they’re demanding open admissions to
the UC system and free tuition.
Like most people, I, too, believe that everyone has the right to
pursue life to its fullest potential. Higher education is certainly
one way of getting there. Attending UCLA or Berkeley, however, two
of the best universities on the West Coast, is not a right. It’s a
privilege conferred upon those who have distinguished themselves
academically from the vast masses with a high school diploma. But
the way that some have been presenting the case of those not
admitted in this first post-affirmative action year, is absurd. The
claim that the world without affirmative action is keeping
underrepresented minorities from going to college is incorrect.
What the world without affirmative action is doing is keeping
unqualified minority and white students from attending elite state
schools on the basis of their underqualification, and their
underqualification alone. Those who don’t get into Cal and UCLA –
regardless of their color – can and should go to other, less
selective UCs or CSUs. That’s why we have the three-tier college
system in California: There are community colleges, there are the
CSUs, and there are the UCs. For example, while UCLA only accepts
about 30 percent of those who meet the minimum qualifications, UC
Riverside and UC Santa Cruz accept almost all of them. Those two
UCs are hardly on the top list of where most students want to go,
but they are definitely not awarding worthless degrees to their
graduates. The reason why UCLA has fewer African Americans and
Latino/as enrolling next year, than it did in the years past, is
because those of them who are underqualified went to less selective
schools (and are definitely not going to receive no college
education at all, as some claim), while those who were offered
admission often ended up going to other colleges which either
offered better financial incentives or were simply better schools
than UCLA.
Another poor argument which I have heard often is what I call
the Input-Output theory. It goes something like this: If you go to
a "good" school, you’ll receive a quality education which will land
you a good job. If you go to a school less credentialed, you’ll
receive an inferior education and will subsequently end up with a
loser job. Denying the invitation to attend UCLA to some
underrepresented minorities will consequently lead them to bad jobs
– and there you have yet another example of institutionalized
racism. This reasoning is also illogical. One gets out of going to
college exactly what they put into it. College is not an assembly
line on which excellence is fabricated; rather, college is a place
where learning is facilitated and encouraged. Of course, one will
be more challenged, and one will be surrounded by smarter people if
one attends a more prestigious school. But attending such schools
is not a right. It’s a privilege earned, not awarded.
The reason why we had affirmative action in college admissions
in the first place is because many minority students come from
underprivileged backgrounds which denied them a quality education
during their elementary and secondary schooling. As a result, those
students had lower SAT scores and earned lower GPAs. Many people
believe that the purpose of affirmative action is to lend a helping
hand to such students and to enable them to attend elite schools,
because attending good elementary and secondary schools was out of
their reach. This approach is wrong. Rather than letting
unqualified students attend elite colleges under the auspices of
correcting past wrongs, what needs fixing is the public school
system. It is absurd that the richest country in the world has such
inferior public high schools, especially in minority neighborhoods.
Pour money into public schools, hire qualified teachers and restore
the respect for the teaching profession, and you’ll have more
qualified high school graduates of all races getting into elite
schools based on merit, not affirmative action.
Some campus student groups call for open admissions. This is yet
another example of misguided egalitarianism. Have you had the
following scenario take place in a class: The professor hands back
the midterm papers, and then spends 20 minutes explaining to
students the difference between "its" and "it’s," "lie" and "lay,"
and so on. A good friend told me the other day that this exact
scenario took place in her lower-division history class, mostly
attended by freshmen. These freshmen were admitted last year, and
their average high school GPA was reported as being very close to
4.0. Now, if some of the brightest high school graduates lack the
command of the most basic building blocks of the English language,
think what it would be like if everyone and anyone could just
enroll at any university because it was a constitutional right. If
everyone and anyone can get a UCLA diploma, how will you
distinguish yourself from countless others who have it? The whole
point of receiving formal credentials (by this I do not mean
"getting an education") is to distinguish yourself from those who
don’t have formal credentials.
Still others want attending UCLA to be free. Who will pay for
this? Taxpayers? I honestly doubt that most Californians would want
even more money to be taken out of their salaries in order to make
college attendance free.
Finally, the most serious accusation made by the Affirmative
Action Coalition and their political supporters is one of
institutionalized racism within the UC system. A racist is someone
who hates people who are not members of his race; he obsession with
those people will make him go out of his way to harm them
physically or otherwise. If the UC Regents are truly racist, why do
they choose to turn a blind eye on the fact that there are more
Asian Americans admitted to the most selective UC schools than
there are whites? If those "evil white men" deciding who gets in
and who doesn’t are truly racist, why do they have a different
sentiment toward Asian Americans then they do to other minorities?
With their numbers at or around 20 percent of all Californians, why
do Asian Americans make up almost 40 percent of all UCLA students?
Are Asian Americans less non-white than Latino/as or African
Americans? Are Asian Americans and whites scheming together? I do
not doubt that there are individual racists and bigots within
various segments of the UC system (like there are individual
racists everywhere else in society), but to characterize the entire
UC system as racist is to say that the whole UC body is
systematically organized to keep the non-whites and non-Asians out
of UCLA and other schools. Making such outrageous statements is a
disservice and an insult to every honest man and woman working in
our university system. What I dislike most in the current
affirmative action discourse is this "if you’re not with us, you’re
against us" attitude shown by many on the affirmative action side.
The proponents of affirmative action are quick to label their
opponents as racists and bigots. This "either-or" attitude is so
short-sighted, its view of the debate is so simplistic and it does
little to promote healthy dialogue. I believe that the vast
majority of Californians who voted for Proposition 187 are not
racist. They simply have an alternative view of how we, as a
society, should go about curing the ills of racism and
discrimination. To automatically label the opponents of affirmative
action as "racists" is wrong, and it shows the same kind of
prejudice which the proponents of affirmative action claim to
fight. I, like almost everyone I know, am not racist, and want as
many qualified students as possible, regardless of their race, to
attend UCLA or any other school. By not supporting affirmative
action, I am in no way professing my alliance with the right wing.
When the proponents of affirmative action throw their opponents in
the same bag with the KKK, they are cowardly masking the truth for
their own political gains.
Before you dismiss my writing as worthless chatter, I urge you
to think twice about your own reasons for supporting affirmative
action. The debate we are witnessing today over affirmative action
is causing the same schism in our society that the fight for civil
rights caused in the ’60s. While the picture back then was rather
clear-cut – you were either racist or you were not – today, the
situation is more complex, and we must resist overly simplistic
interpretations of why people feel a certain way. I honestly
believe that the proponents of affirmative action believe with
their hearts and souls that what they are doing is just and right,
but I also believe that today, unlike in the ’60s, those who oppose
them are not simply racists lost beyond redemption.