Affirmation action was put because if Bush43 can be admitted into Harvard MBA with a 2.7 GPA and a minority can't get in with a 3.0 GPA , then the playing field will never be level. If you had applied to Harvard MBA the same time as Bush43 and your GPA was 3.5, Bush would have been admitted and you would have been rejected. Affirmation action tries to level the playing field. In sports the best talent plays because winning is everything, especially from college on up.
Originally Posted by adav8s28
This is a false equivalency by a long shot and a very weak argument. While someone who is rich and a legacy can buy their way in and I agree it is a shitty policy it actually works more against poor whites than anyone else - because an academically superior poor white student is the person not admitted when an inferior rich white legacy student buys their way into the school.
Affirmative action and quotas reserve spaces for poorly performing minorities other than Asians.
The solution (if we must persist in this racial system) to the previous practice of exclusion of minorities would have been to create more slots at the Ivy League schools, and all other institutions practicing quotas/affirmative action/diversity, so the same approximate percentage of deserving as well as legacy white students could be admitted, and then the school should have expanded to let in the less qualified (academically) minority/affirmative action admits.
So, if Harvard at one point let in 2000 white students per year, it should continue to let in 2000 white students and then add another 2000 or so slots for the affirmative action/quota admits, and the well deserving and academically superior Asian students.