The announcement last week that applications to Northwestern from Latino and foreign students were at an all-time high came at a most appropriate time — just days before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It might seem to some that King’s dream of equal opportunity for people of all skin colors is finally being achieved.
But King also dreamed that people would be judged not by their skin color but by the content of their character. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the current form of affirmative action, a policy frequently and publicly supported by NU.
This policy is the reason my high school counselor suggested I not reveal my race on my college applications. Her rationale was that since so many Asians were already at U.S. colleges, stating my race would reduce my chances of admission.
The current system of affirmative action is inherently unfair because it discriminates against certain racial groups for their high levels of achievement. If 30 percent of the most qualified applicants are Asian Americans, then that should be reflected in the composition of the student body. I shouldn’t have had to keep my race secret to get a fair shot at college admissions.
It is wrong to reject applicants who would otherwise be accepted just to have the “correct” racial mix. And it is condescending to assume it is necessary to lower the admission standards for black and Latino students.
If NU refuses to abandon the idea of affirmative action, they should base it on income, not race. Low-income students might have lower standardized test scores because they often attend poorly funded public schools, which often have overstressed teachers and larger class sizes.
By giving preferences to lower-income students, NU would be compensating for mitigating factors that actually exist today, rather than seeking to remedy a historical imbalance that is many decades in the past.
Following the Supreme Court decision this summer to uphold race as a factor in college admissions, the University of Michigan is now asking applicants for information on their intercultural experiences, the educational backgrounds of their family members and, optionally, their household income.
But even this misses the point. Instead of whining about their upbringing, college applicants should have to demonstrate their writing ability and intellectual prowess.
King did not want his children to receive unfair advantages — and neither did Hubert Humphrey, the Senate floor leader for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, who said he would eat the pages of the statute book in which the act appeared if it ever led to race-based preferences.
In its current form, it has.
And if NU refuses to give up affirmative action to achieve its much-vaunted diversity, can it please give preference to conservative students so we can finally have some intellectual diversity?
Nadir Hassan is a Weinberg sophomore. He can be reached at [email protected].