To understand why it’s time to end racial preferences in higher education, consider the following hypothetical scenario of race-based grading.
A university professor walks into class at the beginning of the semester. After a review of required texts, assignments and examinations, the professor discusses the grading policy. The professor explains that there is a new university policy that applies a double standard for grading and is an extension of the university’s race-based admissions policies.
The professor explains that a standard grading scale will apply to all white, Asian and Arab students. African-American and Hispanic students will automatically receive extra points for all assignments and will receive a final letter grade based on a preferential grading scale.
Most people would find this a blatant form of discrimination, and would object for several reasons.
First, the students receiving academic favoritism might justifiably complain that they are being stereotyped as a homogeneous group. It would be offensive to many of those students to assume automatically that they all need preferential academic treatment.
Second, this form of academic profiling creates a disincentive for black and Hispanic students to study as hard as they would otherwise.
Moreover, these students could face a special-preference stigma when they enter the job market or apply to graduate school. If a student graduates from college with a 3.5 grade point average, a prospective employer or graduate program would justifiably question the academic credentials and potential abilities of those students who received race-based adjustments in all of their undergraduate course work.
Finally, most everyone would object to the fundamental unfairness of giving preferential treatment to certain groups of students. The students who didn’t receive special grading preferences would rightfully feel they were being treated unfairly and being discriminated against. Why should an Asian student with an 85% score in an accounting class get a letter grade of B if a black or Hispanic student with the same percentage gets an A?
These and many other reasons explain why the only acceptable practice in the classroom is the equal treatment of all students as individuals, without regard to race, sex, ethnicity or religion.
And yet the hypothetical classroom-based discrimination is exactly the type of admission-based discrimination that prevails at the University of Texas. And it is the obvious objections to academic favoritism in the classroom that explain why racial favoritism in college admissions is being legally challenged.
Students are treated as individuals without regard to race by university professors once they enter college. Treating all students as individuals when they first apply to college will ultimately move us further along toward the ideal of a colorblind society than maintaining the current admissions practices of double standards, special preferences and racial discrimination.
President John F. Kennedy said: “Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races and national origins contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes or results in racial discrimination.” Hopefully, Kennedy’s vision will prevail now that the Supreme Court has an opportunity to end state-sponsored racial discrimination in college admissions.
Bottom Line: How can it be logically and legally consistent for somebody to support affirmative action when practiced by a staff member in the admissions or financial aid office of a university in one building on a college campus, but object to “affirmative action grading” when practiced by a college professor on that same college campus in another building? If race-neutral grading is the accepted standard for the treatment of college students IN the classroom, then race-based preferences cannot be justified when selecting students for admission to the university in the first place.
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