Affirmative action is the tool of much of society to undermine the achievements of many minority students on campus. Often times when a minority is successful or if their presence is even acknowledged in an institution of higher learning, people can't help but bring up affirmative action. It's funny because people say minorities would stop being tokenized if affirmative action didn't exist. While I find that to be unlikely, my rebuttal to that is "why does the minority need to be tokenized in the first place." Implicit in the statement that minorities wouldn't be tokenized if affirmative action didn't exist is that every minority didn't earn their way into the University. You can even make this a weaker statement, but at the very least for their rationale to be solid you must think a considerable amount of minorities or at least a simple majority of minorities got into their institutions (we can assume minorities in top institutions, if that makes the conversation more amicable towards naysayers) because of their race/gender. This is an unfair assumption. Regardless of what your opinion of affirmative action is, it does not give anyone the right to decide which minorities deserve to be at an institution and which don't. To even engage in that kind of behavior is despicable.
But Affirmative action is being employed in a more subtle way. It's being used to hijack conversations concerning minorities. This can be seen in the #BBUM thread, where articles concerning the twitter trend are riddled with affirmative action debates. These debates are not the message of #BBUM, but when we discuss only affirmative action on their pages (which is what tends to happen when affirmative action is brought up) a multitude of experiences are lost due to the selfish tendencies of a few individuals. Why is affirmative action the favorite talking point of many white and asian students? The discussion of affirmative action typically reinforces notions of white superiority and asian superiority over other groups such as black and latino students. Constantly the message that is given is that blacks and latinos are lazy individuals, who don't work hard enough, which is why they don't get into top universities. It is masked behind fake good intentions such as arguing that getting rid of affirmative action would help black students, it won't (as evidenced by current statistics of black enrollment here at the University). People will claim it will end the tokenizing of minorities. Unfortunately they don't realize that minorities aren't tokenized by affirmative action, but by people. People assume minorities couldn't get into their universities without the help of affirmative action and treat the program as poison that taints even the brightest of minorities. Instead people could stop passing judgement all together and only judge minorities based on the merit of their actions, but that is a foreign concept for individuals who want to feel like they've been cheated in the world.
I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss affirmative action. I'm just saying that we need to stop bringing up affirmative action where it is not warranted. If a student of color brings up affirmative action in a value based framework (i.e. affirmative action is good or bad), then feel free to engage in a conversation about your thoughts. If you want to discuss affirmative action on your personal site or publication, go ahead, knock yourself out. But if affirmative action is mentioned in passing or as a historical context for some larger point, then you only serve to make the conversation about you when you decide to prattle on about affirmative action. Minorities don't have time to argue affirmative action every time someone decides they want to discuss it. Some minorities don't even care about the program. The point is that when people bring up affirmative action in contexts that have very little to do with it (or where affirmative action is one of many points being discussed) they typically only do so to degrade the minority they are talking to or to make the conversation about their needs, rather than the minority's needs. It's selfish and childish. Please stop.
But Affirmative action is being employed in a more subtle way. It's being used to hijack conversations concerning minorities. This can be seen in the #BBUM thread, where articles concerning the twitter trend are riddled with affirmative action debates. These debates are not the message of #BBUM, but when we discuss only affirmative action on their pages (which is what tends to happen when affirmative action is brought up) a multitude of experiences are lost due to the selfish tendencies of a few individuals. Why is affirmative action the favorite talking point of many white and asian students? The discussion of affirmative action typically reinforces notions of white superiority and asian superiority over other groups such as black and latino students. Constantly the message that is given is that blacks and latinos are lazy individuals, who don't work hard enough, which is why they don't get into top universities. It is masked behind fake good intentions such as arguing that getting rid of affirmative action would help black students, it won't (as evidenced by current statistics of black enrollment here at the University). People will claim it will end the tokenizing of minorities. Unfortunately they don't realize that minorities aren't tokenized by affirmative action, but by people. People assume minorities couldn't get into their universities without the help of affirmative action and treat the program as poison that taints even the brightest of minorities. Instead people could stop passing judgement all together and only judge minorities based on the merit of their actions, but that is a foreign concept for individuals who want to feel like they've been cheated in the world.
I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss affirmative action. I'm just saying that we need to stop bringing up affirmative action where it is not warranted. If a student of color brings up affirmative action in a value based framework (i.e. affirmative action is good or bad), then feel free to engage in a conversation about your thoughts. If you want to discuss affirmative action on your personal site or publication, go ahead, knock yourself out. But if affirmative action is mentioned in passing or as a historical context for some larger point, then you only serve to make the conversation about you when you decide to prattle on about affirmative action. Minorities don't have time to argue affirmative action every time someone decides they want to discuss it. Some minorities don't even care about the program. The point is that when people bring up affirmative action in contexts that have very little to do with it (or where affirmative action is one of many points being discussed) they typically only do so to degrade the minority they are talking to or to make the conversation about their needs, rather than the minority's needs. It's selfish and childish. Please stop.
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