Affirmative Action

Amy Hoang
ASA2 Blog 3

This week's article, “Situating Asian Americans in the Political Discourse on Affirmative Action,” was relevant to recent weeks, because my friends from high school who are currently seniors are getting acceptance letters. Although Affirmative Action is supposed to help disadvantaged groups who suffer from discrimination, it seems to hurt Asian Americans. It seems very unfair that schools are lowering their standards to accept students with lower grades than others, just because of race. I am aware that other groups may be disadvantaged because of the socioeconomic status they were born into, but Asian Americans don't have much benefit either. We earn what we have by our hard work, yet Affirmative Action essentially disregards these efforts. Thus, I agree with the article's statement: “Asian Americans [are] an innocent group wronged by racial preferences.”

In this video, President Obama makes some good points on Affirmative Action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saIVafSC38k

Question: Wouldn't affirmative action lower standards of education for minority groups, thus hurting rather than helping them?