Michael Obama's Letter To The Department Of Education Against Harvard University

A larger percentage of them that have the required test scores are denied spots than any other ethnicity. I will now share a sad story about a Californian boy with an Asian background. Michael Wang has just finished highschool, taking 13 AP courses (finishing school with a 4.67 weighted GPA), earning a perfect ACT score, earning multiple awards for piano, and participating in multiple national debate, speech, and math contests. He was turned away at almost every school he applied for (He got an offer for the University of Pennsylvania). Michael and many other Asians shared a struggle to get into a good college. Away from Michael, an absurd statistic shows that Asians currently hover around the 20% mark in most Ivy League schools, but Berkeley (a school that has no racial bias) is 47%

These cram schools can be found all over Flushing, a town mostly occupied by Americans of Asian descent. In Flushing, NY lives a young Asian American writer named Jefferson Mao who wrote to Yang seeking guidance about “’being an Asian writer (535).’” This is a great example of how stereotypes are affecting people today. This young man should not have to worry about being an “Asian” writer, but attempt to be a great writer no matter what his background is. Unfortunately, not all people think this way, and the Asian community suffers because of it. For example, “Princeton sociologist Thomas Expenshade has calculated that an Asian applicant must, in practice, score 140 points higher on the SAT than a comparable white applicant to have the same chance of admission (536).” This is incredibly unfair to young Asian Americans who strive for greatness and must work harder to not only meet the standards that are required for an individual to receive admission, but to get the standards needed for an Asian to get in. An example of fair acceptance on the collegiate level would be UC-Berkley. Ten years after outlawing any “racial engineering” at the State’s public

There is an examination of the admission rates that demonstrates the mechanism by which the freshman pool of African American and Latino students has shrunk so dramatically” (Patricia Gandara). In California, these supposed benefits of affirmative action are not being seen. A study run by Liliana Garces “documented a 5% decline (from 2,010 to 1,906 students) from 1995 to 1996” of the minority group that was attending “five selective public law schools in California, Texas, and Washington” (Garces). These statistics help notify the public that affirmative action in these few states is actually having a reverse effect on these people, and in this situation affirmative action is creating no benefits for minorities. A similar study performed at UC Berkeley stated that “even as Chicano/Latinos increased their representation in the applicant pool at UC Berkeley from approximately 13 percent in 1995 to 19 percent in 2010, they experienced… nearly [a] 75 percent decline in the rate of admissions compared to just over 40 percent decline for whites” (Gandara). The facts prove that affirmative action at prestigious colleges is not helping minorities become accepted. It is a useless effort that the government is wasting their time on. Therefore concluding that affirmative action within this area is useless and leads many to wonder if we should even waste time on the

Modern Day example would include the “English Only Movement” and the “reverse quotas for Asians in college admissions” (Ngai, p. 67). The limitations of Asian access to postsecondary education is troubling because they are amongst some of the brightest American citizens, especially when using measures of college readiness benchmarks used for college admissions. For example, Asian Americans taking the ACTs during high school scored higher on math and science portions than any other recorded racial group. In an economy where science, technology, engineering and mathematics

admissions policies are themselves finding that the only way to enlarge the minority presence in college without such policies is to improve dramatically the

The fault in special admissions programs is that they will use skin color as a more important factor than academic and personal merit. Thus, those who deserve advancement may not receive it, due to affirmative action and the associated reverse

The equal opportunity that affirmative action provides has also increased the amount of minority applicants applying to each school. It has “resulted in doubling or tripling the number of minority applications to colleges or universities, and have made colleges and universities more representative of their surrounding community” (Messerli). Since the playing field has been evened, it has encouraged more of those who are disadvantaged because of their ethnicity to apply for and get admitted into college. However, the quotas cause schools to admit under qualified students of minor races who don’t meet the limit over highly qualified students who’s race has reached the limit.

“What is more striking is that young Asian Americans — not only the children of foreign-born physicians, scientists, and engineers, but also those of uneducated, low-skilled, and poor immigrants and refugees — have repeatedly shown up as high school valedictorians and academic decathlon winners, and have enrolled in prestigious colleges and universities in disproportionately large numbers.” (Zhou and Kim) Immigrant children with adverse backgrounds have managed to secure positions of high academic honor. They come from backgrounds that require them to work harder than American-born children for their

Affirmative action has been one of the most effective tools to correct a history of inequalities in our nation’s history against people of color and women. The huge advances made during Civil Rights era still has not completely eradicated centuries of sexism and racism. Opportunities for advancement for those previously omitted remain few and far between in comparison to their counterparts. Race and gender are not, nor should they be, the only selection measure but they do warrant to be one of the many influences considered in college admissions, hiring, and awarding of grants and other forms of financial aid. Many prestigious and well regarded school universities such as Harvard and Stanford have been at the forefront of this ideal. Nonetheless, affirmative action remains a heavily contested social issue in the United States.

The findings reveal that Asian American students’ cultural orientation is a significant contributor to their academic achievement. Asian Americans put strong emphasis on efforts whereas white students see academic abilities as an inherent characteristic that cannot be improved through efforts. Further, the immigrant self-selection and optimism for future success among Asian American students and their parents contribute to their exceptional outcomes. On the other hand, they did not find any significant differences between Asian American and white students’ cognitive abilities. Socio-demographic characteristics in Hsin and Xie’s analysis had limited explanatory power for Asian Americans’ superior academic achievement. The authors claim that such lack of significance of socio-demographic characteristics is due to socioeconomic variation within Asian Americans. While they do not completely reject the significance of socio-demographic factors, Hsin and Xie fail to consider how Asian Americans as a group exhibit exceptional academic performance despite with-in group variation in socio-demographic

An article written by Terence Chea explaining that, Campus Diversity Suffers under Race blind Policies, admission was “four times higher than their percentage in the state’s K-12 public schools” (Chea, Terence). Asian Americans students have a high acceptance rate into universities. Specifically to UC Berkeley, the freshman class consisting in the school of 30% of white and 46% percent of Asian Americans. As the result of affirmative action reverse discrimination is present as a large number of minorities Asian Americans have been accepted into UC

Thanks to California Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibits state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity specifically in the areas of public employment and public education, Asian American enrollment rates in the University of California system remained stable at a rate of around 40 percent. In contrast, the percentage of Asian-Americans admitted to Harvard, and other Ivy League schools remains remarkably stable for the past 20 years at around 16 percent despite the increasing Asian American applicants (Washington Post). Apparently, AB 1726 is used as a backdoor way to overturn Proposition 209, which bans the affirmative action. Concerns have been rising among Chinese American communities that AB 1726 will be a threat to Chinese American’s struggle for social and economic equality. Also, AB 1726 is not the first act that attempts to reintroduce affirmative action in California. Senate Constitutional Amendment No.5(SCA 5) was proposed to eliminate Proposition 209’s ban on the use of race, sex, color and ethnicity in college admission in California admission system (California Legislative Information), but was withdrawn because of the fervent opposition from primarily Asian American communities. If SCA 5 is highway robbery, AB1726 is deception and inseparably linked to SCA 5. Instead of supporting overt racial discrimination, supporters who crave

“The American Council on Education (ACE) has a longstanding record of commitment to access to higher education for all qualified Americans and to the advancement of equal educational opportunity” (The Importance of Diversity in Higher Education) This dedication is considered in ACE's positions open strategy, its automatic exercises, and its livelihood polishes. It has been communicated over and over in resolutions by the ACE Board of Directors with respect to governmental policy regarding minorities in society, nondiscrimination, value, meet open door, and induction guidelines. The ACE is only one of the numerous aggregations that accept assorted qualities in universities.

Students don't get accepted to colleges because of their race. The article “The Truth About Name Brand Colleges: Why Fit Matters More Than Prestige” by Kat Cohen, Cohen talks about the differences

Affirmative action is the improving of educational and job opportunities for members of groups that had not been treated fairly in the past. Affirmative Action came to be following the Civil Rights Movement to treat years of discrimination and to promote equality, though as John Fobanjong denotes in his article Affirmative Action, some policy makers sought only to improve diversity statistics, not to level the playing field. This nationwide program makes race a qualifying factor in college and job applications: it’s in place to encourage diversity because according to Issues & Controversies’ Affirmative Action: Are Affirmative Action Programs Necessary, minorities represent less than their percent of the population in academic careers. Even though the “1964 Civil Rights Act, a landmark law that banned discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or national origin in schools,” was put into place, Affirmative Action, a program that uses race in college admissions, still continues (Affirmative Action: Are Affirmative). Regardless of surrounding law, Affirmative Action is fundamentally flawed because there is no cause-effect relationship between skin color and income, an underlying assumption of the program. Affirmative Action blankets all minorities, whether lower, middle, or higher class, labeling entire races “disadvantaged”. Furthermore, as covered in John Johnson and Robert Green’s book titled