Smith is a second-year undeclared student.
By Sophia Smith
I’ve always thought to myself: why is UCLA considered one of the most prestigious public universities in the nation if our students are so dumb?
These feelings were reaffirmed when I was walking back from class and saw a group of people in front of Kerckhoff Hall rallying for affirmative action. It was not the people who were rallying that I thought incompetent, but the people walking up and down Bruin Walk not caring, and the people holding signs so rudely going against them.
Sure, I guess you have to have freedom of expression and you have to listen to both sides of an issue to consider it a fair debate, but really, how ignorant can you be?
The fact of the matter is we don’t live in happy land, we don’t live in an ideal world where everyone is equal. I guess it’s easy to think so. I mean, I’m a white student and I grew up in the suburbs. Like anti-affirmative action proponents, I too was once encapsulated in a bubble of fantasy. I thought to myself: “Well, I worked hard in high school and studied hard for the SATs, so why shouldn’t everyone else have to? Admissions should be based on merit.” This is what I intimately call my “white blindness,” or thinking everyone starts off on equal ground, thinking everyone in the world is identical.
If you asked an anti-affirmative action proponent for their daily high school routine, you’d probably get this synopsis: I came home from school everyday and worked on my homework, while my mom and dad were out making their six-figure incomes to buy my SAT prep materials.
I’m sure if you had to choose between studying or working full time – not to buy SAT prep materials, but to feed your family – you’d have a different point of view. Oh, but this scenario doesn’t occur in the suburbs, so it must not be true...
Anti-affirmative action proponents: you’re sure lucky you were born into your social class.
God forbid you’d happen to be the son or daughter of immigrants who came to this country through dangerous routes, seeking a better life – does the word “Pilgrims” ring a bell? God forbid that you have to live with three other families in one house, afraid to go to the doctor because you are undocumented, and have to work 40 hours a week so that your suburban counterparts can enjoy the products of your cheap labor.
I’m sure if you were born into this unfortunate scenario, you’d still be advocating “merit” not affirmative action. Oh, but this scenario doesn’t occur in the suburbs, so it must not be true. After all, we all get the same opportunities to get ahead, right?
Merit can be defined as: rewarding people with huge wallets, not huge brains. And it takes huge brains to realize this.
The ultimate pillar of stupidity, the utmost manifestation of idiocy, the climax of total, unrelenting buffoonery, however, is the argument that affirmative action is reverse discrimination.
This argument that affirmative action is against white people was a concoction of the Republican Party and lunatic conservatives. They spoon-fed this idea to brainless California voters to end affirmative action. Admitting that you believe affirmative action is reverse discrimination is admitting that you’re a shallow, unthinking human ready to have your opinions decided for you by a corporate political party.
Why isn’t affirmative action reverse discrimination? Because reverse discrimination assumes that both parties in question have an equal ability to cause each other harm, and that no party has an advantage over the other. This is similar to a balance: if both sides weigh the same amount, giving one side more mass would mean favoring it, or discriminating against the other side.
But what if one side of the balance already has more, tipping the balance in it’s favor? Would adding to the other side of the balance to make things even be considered discrimination if the balance was unequal in the first place?
Thus, if minorities start off with a financial disadvantage, why would getting rid of that disadvantage be discrimination? People may say “Well, in order to let them in, you’d have to kick a white student out.” Well, the whole purpose of taking this disadvantage into account is to analyze everyone on an equal level (not the fantasy one, but the real one).
If white students are relatively weaker once the balance is equal, it shouldn’t make a difference because when there is balance everyone is admitted based on both academic and life factors.
If you are white and don’t get admitted to a UC while a minority student does, that just means that relatively speaking, you’re a weaker candidate. It means you depended on that balance to be uneven so that you could carry the false assumption that you had “merit” admission. It means you need the imbalance because if we look at everyone realistically in the context of their own lives and then make conclusions about their academic potential in a manner that’s fair, you realize there’s more competition – you realize you’re actually dumb.
So why not just fix public schools instead of affirmative action? Well, why not do both? While public schools are being fixed the UC can remedy the problem at a higher level until we get to the point when affirmative action is no longer needed.
But we’re not at that point yet, because people walk past rallies not caring about what’s said. But I guess that’s fine. No problems exist – if there were problems, I would have surely seen them back home in the suburbs...
I’m so ashamed of being a Bruin.