Name: アファーマティブ・アクションについて誤解していること (What we get wrong about affirmative action)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:00:54.000Z
Duration: 9 min 13 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

When we imagine getting into college in the US, it often looks like a race to fill a

We mostly agree that these factors are a good way to decide who should get a seat.

But there's one factor where Americans disagree...

“Should race continue to play a role in how colleges pick their students?”

“Why should I be discriminated against because I'm white?”

“As a tool to increase diversity, affirmative action has been successful.”

“Why are you supporting - explicitly supporting - a system that penalizes people for the color

“High achieving kids, having under-resourced neighborhoods and under-resourced schools

need and deserve a leg up in admissions.”

There's a reason this debate makes you want to cry, and it's not just because it's about

It's because we suck at talking about race-based affirmative action.

One reason we suck at talking about affirmative action is because many of us don't actually

It was originally a way for colleges and universities to give special consideration to racial minorities

to help undo the effects of past discrimination.

And for many schools, it meant setting aside a certain percentage of their seats for minority

applicants, including the University of California Davis Medical School.

But that changed in 1978 because of this man, Allan Bakke.

Bakke was rejected twice by the UC-Davis medical school.

Back then, the school reserved 16 of the 100 seats for minority students, in an effort

Bakke argued he had higher academic scores than several minority students who were accepted.

And in 1978, the Supreme Court sided with Bakke.

The court said the school couldn't use quotas to racially balance the student body.

And that they couldn't consider race to remedy past racial discrimination.

Justice Lewis Powell wrote that societal discrimination is not a valid reason for considering race.

So, Bakke was admitted to UC-Davis and became a doctor.

“Ninety-seven medical students graduated there today, among them, Allan Bakke.”

But his case didn't end affirmative action.

Here's the rest of Justice Powell's decision: "the only state interest that fairly may be

viewed as compelling on this record is the interest of a university in a diverse student body."

So university administrators could no longer use affirmative action to address past discrimination,

but they could use it to create a diverse student body.

And, to be fair, diversity is beneficial to everyone.

For example, research shows that it exposes students to different ways of thinking, which

The Court said colleges couldn't use quotas to create diversity.

But later, the court said colleges needed concrete diversity goals.

So how do you have a goal without naming an actual number?

Well, one way would be to give bonuses to all students of a certain race.

But in 2003, the Court said that was not allowed.

Instead, schools could consider an individual student's race — if it was a factor

All of this means that our debates tend to paint a picture of affirmative action that

And it's not about historical discrimination.

It's a very narrow, and frankly confusing, tool for colleges to create more racial

And it's that tiny sliver of affirmative action that many conservatives want to kill.

And the latest effort comes in the form of a highly charged allegation:

Harvard is discriminating against Asian Americans.

“A group of about 60 Asian organizations is suing Harvard University.”

“At issue is whether the university imposes a cap on the number of qualified Asian-American

“But Harvard's argument is essentially that the Supreme Court says that we can use

race in admissions to diversify our campus.”

Harvard assigns each applicant something called a "personal" score to measure subjective things

And Asian applicants are scored lower on that metric than white applicants.

Meanwhile, on the academic metric, Asian applicants tend to score higher than white applicants.

So the plaintiffs argue that, since Asians have better academic profiles, Harvard is

using this "personal" scores to balance out the number of Asians they get.

Which is, ultimately, a fancy racial quota.

But in this chart, you can see that the share of Asian students varies a lot from year to year.

If Harvard had a quota, you'd expect that share to stay the same.

But even if Harvard wins its case, affirmative action opponents hope that this case will eventually

go to the Supreme Court, a body that's recently become more conservative.

And their ultimate hope is that this Court will rule broadly — and just kill affirmative

But there's another part of story that we glossed over — and it makes this debate

Harvard really is giving Asians lower personal scores.

“Asian-American students are marked down, subjectively.”

“I mean, courage, bravery, saying that Asian-American students lack that?

It brings up the inevitable question: Where do Asians fit into the affirmative action

It's a confusing question because Asians certainly face discrimination, but we've also had a

At very selective private colleges, Asians make up the second biggest group, even though

we're a much smaller portion of the US population.

But this isn't because Asians work harder or care more about education.

Here's a chart of immigration to the US since 1820.