The affirmative action debate continues apace in 2019, especially considering a major lawsuit alleging that Harvard University discriminates against Asian-American applicants. Many people would probably be surprised to hear that the vast majority of the country agrees with the conservative position that race should play no factor at all in college admissions.
According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of Americans believe that race should play no factor in college admissions, while only 7 percent believe it should play a major role. Unsurprisingly, Pew research associate Nikki Graf wrote, “while majorities across racial and ethnic groups agree that race should not be a factor in college admissions, white adults are particularly likely to hold this view: 78% say this.”
But majorities of racial minorities also shared that view: “65% of Hispanics, 62% of blacks and 59% of Asians.” What’s more, 63 percent of Democrats said race should not be a factor in college admissions, compared to 85 percent of Republicans.
Similar data points are provided by Gallup, which showed that 65 percent of Americans did not approve of the Supreme Court decision in Fisher v. University of Texas, which “confirms that colleges can consider the race or ethnicity of students when making decisions on who to admit to the college.”
While Americans quite clearly do not agree with affirmative action policy in effect, most people still have a positive view of the term. When Gallup asked people if they support “affirmative action,” without any explanation to what it actually entails, 58 percent said they do.
Why such a difference in response to essentially the same question? Framing matters. “Affirmative action” sounds nice. Using race as a factor in college admissions, not so much.
While polling results will vary based on the framing of the question, a clear conclusion can be drawn: Most Americans are interested in creating a meritocracy where college admissions are based on one’s merits, not immutable characteristics like race and gender. This, however, does not mean that most people are opposed to taking things like economic situation into account. The Pew poll also shows that 47 percent of Americans believe that admissions offices should take into consideration whether or not a person is the first in their family to attend college.
The idea that if one is brought up in a more difficult situation, therefore they should be granted more leeway in college admissions, is totally legitimate. In my opinion, and in the opinion of a majority of Americans, what is not legitimate is the idea that you should be either rejected or accepted to a school because of your skin color. Rather than assuming certain experiences based off of the color of one’s skin, what we need to be doing is assessing each person’s experiences on an individual basis.
America is a country built on individualism. Instead of embracing admission decisions based on race, gender, and other immutable characteristics, maybe we should stick to evaluating individuals based on their own merits, skills, accomplishments, and experiences.
Jack Elbaum is a high school student at Highland Park High School in Illinois.
