May 08, 2023 At 03:55 PM EDT
Newsweek recently welcomed eight high school students—from Denver, Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.—onto The Debate podcast for a series of special episodes, as part of the publication's new partnership with the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues (NAUDL). These recordings were done in anticipation of the students taking part in a live debate on April 14 at Newsweek's global headquarters in New York City's One World Trade Center.
The event signaled the beginning of an ongoing content initiative for Newsweek called Mightier, which covers youth debate and asks students to weigh in on some of society's most pressing issues.
The following excerpt, which has been lightly edited, is transcribed from a podcast debate on whether affirmative action is effective in its current form. In the excerpt, debater Haven Howard from the Washington Urban Debate League advocates for keeping select policy elements of affirmative action but abandoning its larger implementation. The full argument can be heard on Newsweek's The Debate podcast, below:
The main reason why affirmative action became a thing in the first place was because of minorities being underrepresented in major colleges and not having an equal opportunity for admissions into the college that they wanted to go to. But the solution to this problem is wrong.
While the idea is correct, the way that it's being handled is wrong.
Affirmative action only considers race and not the diverse backgrounds behind the race of that applicant. So affirmative action would be considered a racist solution to a racist problem.
As the current cases in front of the United States Supreme Court argue, [an institution] would prefer someone that is African American over someone who is Asian American, only because that university needs more diversity and more representation of that specific race. That itself becomes a discriminatory solution because it's no longer about diversity, but instead uses people by the color of their skin.
Instead, we should [use] some aspects of affirmative action so that minorities are no longer underrepresented, and all people have equal opportunity for education.
The goal of affirmative action was equality, but instead it is doing the opposite of its goal. If we keep just some aspects of affirmative action and not the entire thing, then we could help the underrepresented minorities and improve it, and that becomes a better solution. Things like financial aid, employee and management development and employee support programs should all stay.
One of the questions asked is, "If affirmative action is removed, how would financial aid look?" Many are unsure about whether affirmative action is good or not, but making a compromise in the middle would not only satisfy the students, but people would have an equal chance when it comes to admissions.
Some aspects like target recruitment aren't the best way for trying to increase diversity for two reasons.
One, people who have the same resume will be picked [by] the color of their skin, and that reverses the goal of affirmative action.
Two, it also sounds racist. One definition of racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on superiority of one race over another.
And for these reasons, I argue we should eliminate the interest quotas and diversity magnifiers that exist in the current affirmative action policies while maintaining some of the support programs for students after they are admitted and employees after they are hired.
This will help with discrimination while eliminating some of the biggest objections to affirmative action the current lawsuits raise.
Increasing things like financial aid is best for people who want the same experience as others but can't because of issues like money.
There are things that we should keep in order to improve the goal of affirmative action, but there are also things that we shouldn't keep at all. We shouldn't keep it as a whole, so that we could actually give everyone an equal opportunity for education and thus make society better by giving everyone a better chance.
The views expressed in this article may not necessarily reflect the personal beliefs of the author.
