Reverse Discrimination In College Admissions

Affirmative action, the act of giving preference to an individual for hiring or academic admission based on the race and/or gender of the individual has remained a controversial issue since its inception decades ago. Realizing its past mistake of discriminating against African Americans, women, and other minority groups; the state has legalized and demanded institutions to practice what many has now consider as reverse discrimination. “Victims” of reverse discrimination in college admissions have commonly complained that they were unfairly rejected admission due to their race. They claimed that because colleges wanted to promote diversity, the colleges will often prefer to accept applicants of another race who had significantly lower test scores

However, in order to make Himma’s claims hold more water, let us only consider the soundness of the claim that only race and gender (even though other groups should also be included in the race and gender factor, e.g., Native Americans, mixed race, hermaphrodites) are significant factors that lead to academic disidentification and employment inequality. For the sake of clarity, it should be noted that Himma does not believe that race and gender directly caused academic disidentification and employment inequality but rather the stereotype threats that is commonly attached to African American and women that caused academic disidentification and employment inequality (Himma 284 L. Col.). Thus, because every white male do not suffer the same level of stereotype threats like African Americans or women, they have an undeserved competitive advantage in academics and employment. (Himma 280 L. Col.). Thus, Himma concludes that because one’s race and gender can lead to stereotype threats, and stereotype threats cause academic disidentification and employment inequality, we should then punish the social group that experienced less stereotype threats for the benefit of the other social group that had experienced more. The fallacy with this belief is the unfair emphasis on race over the root cause of the problem, which is the stereotype threat. One’s race may lead to stereotype threat but it does not directly cause stereotype threat. A white male that is just born into the world should not automatically deserve less stereotype threat than the other social groups only to be punished later during academic admissions and employment. Furthermore, there are certainly better ways to eliminate academic disidentification in African Americans and women without using affirmative action. For example, through state funded awareness programs that criticizes stereotype