Originally posted by: return_to_hades
Those are Supreme Court cases on affirmative action. Giving anyone priority due to race is illegal. The Supreme Court has ruled that reservation is illegal so is adding additional points Affirmative action is one of the most misunderstood concepts.
If a college says 5% of all students must be minority. Or a workplace says 5% of all employees must be minority. It is illegal.
If a college in admission criteria gives 20 points to good SAT scores, 20 points to extracurricular activity, 20 points to good GPA and 10 points for minority ' the 10 points for minority is illegal. Similarly an employer who weighs minority status along with qualifications is committing discrimination.
Affirmative action is to give equal opportunity. Let's say for law school admission, statistically in the national student pool 10% of [b]qualified students[b] are African Americans. However, the law school has only 5% of African American students. In this case the school is not equally representing the African Americans. The school may have to forego some other applicants so that student demographics is more representative to a national pool. Sometimes it may not be having enough black student applicants and it has to find a way to get more. However, if 25% of students are African American then the school is overdoing it and it has to favor other students till the balance is sought.
Although affirmative action is misunderstood and abused. That is why many people feel that even affirmative action should be eliminated and pure meritocracies should be established
