By Amanda Xu ‘18
Recently, an Affirmative Action Bake Sale hosted by the University of Texas’ Young Conservatives group sparked protest. Many students congregated to protest the racist attempt to criticize affirmative action. In the bake sale, the Young Conservatives attempted to sell cookies with prices varying to the customer’s race. While Asian and white men had to pay the most for cookies, Native Americans could take the cookies for free. This outrageously racist attempt to argue against a policy was supported by the Young Conservatives as “designed to highlight the insanity of assigning our lives value based on our race and ethnicity, rather than our talents, work, ethic, and intelligence.”However, affirmative action understands that students of various races, genders, and ethnicities experience varying institutional barriers to achievement leading up to the college admissions program. The policy tries to consider an applicant’s holistic profile of different backgrounds, opportunities for educational achievement, and viewpoints when admitting or rejecting someone. In fact, affirmative action greatly increases diversity in the classroom. With increased diversity in the classroom, we create a marketplace of ideas where people who come from different backgrounds all bring their own perspectives. This, in turn, increases the potential for learning and interacting with others. A University of Wisconsin study found that “the level of critical analysis of decisions and alternatives was higher in groups exposed to minority viewpoints than in groups that were not. Minority viewpoints stimulated discussion of multiple perspectives and previously unconsidered alternatives.” A University of Arizona study showed that institutional policies emphasizing diversity in school and opportunities for students to confront racial and multicultural issues in the classroom had uniformly positive effects on students’ cognitive development, satisfaction with the college experience, and leadership abilities. Furthermore, students who interacted with racially and ethnically diverse peers showed the greatest engagement in active thinking, growth in intellectual engagement and motivation, and growth in intellectual and academic skills.These benefits would be greatly reduced, if not lost entirely, without Affirmative Action. According to a study in the Social Science Quarterly, if we never had affirmative action, acceptance rates for African American candidates would fall from 33.7% to 12.2%, a decline of almost two-thirds, while the acceptance rate for Hispanic applicants would almost be cut in half, from 26.8% to 12.9%. In the longer term, the effect would be even greater because such students might be deterred from applying at all.Additionally, affirmative action’s diminished achievement gap increases our country’s national productivity. The Economic Policy Institute writes “Children on the lower end of the achievement gap without adequate skills, knowledge, and education have little chance for economic well-being in this country. When a quality education is denied to children at birth because of their parents’ skin color or income.” The National Center for Education Statistics finds that “education and skills are important because they expand a worker’s capacity to perform tasks or to use productive technologies.” Thus by helping those at the bottom of the ladder, United States productivity will improve overall. They found as assessment scores rise, so does economic growth. The McKinsey Quarterly of June 2009 discusses the economic impact of the education gap on the US in terms of lost dollars from our GDP. “A persistent gap in academic achievement between children in the United States and their counterparts in other countries deprived the US economy of as much as $2.3 trillion in economic output in 2008. Moreover, each of the long-standing achievement gaps among US students of differing ethnic origins, income levels, and school systems represents hundreds of billions of dollars in unrealized economic gains. Together, these disturbing gaps underscore the staggering economic and social cost of underutilized human potential.This also shows in potential increases in GDP. McKinsey and Company Social Sector Office finds if we decrease the gap between Blacks and Hispanics and Whites, GDP would have increased 2 to 4%, increasing GDP between $310 and $525 billion higher. Talking about the economically disadvantaged, if the gap between low-income students and the rest of the population narrowed, GDP would have increased 3 to 5% account for $400 to $670 billion more. National Education Association explains that increases in overall education attainment in a nation increase the nation’s stock of human capital and thus increase its aggregate output, income, greater quality of life, and has benefits to all of society.Overall, arguments against affirmative action must be taken seriously only when one understands that various backgrounds present unique obstacles to educational achievement. Additionally, when affirmative action is in place, classrooms experience a bigger marketplace of ideas, companies experience increased productivity, and our country experiences an increased GDP. Sources:http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37804620https://books.google.com/books?id=WU-9BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=%22multiple+perspectives+and+previously+unconsidered+alternatives.”&source=bl&ots=illlsSxaaH&sig=FEvEnwkorvzdTVWHMAzaPeyvAOg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRk_CGlIPQAhVFLmMKHRhpA-IQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22multiple%20perspectives%20and%20previously%20unconsidered%20alternatives.”&f=falsehttps://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S11/80/78Q19/index.xml?section=newsreleaseshttp://www.epi.org/publication/books_class_and_schools/http://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/web/97939.asphttp://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insights/the-economic-cost-of-the-us-education-gap