Why I Can’t Get Into College: Affirmative Action

Being in such a super-crazy SAT mode of studying words for their word roots, I came across affirmative action, and decided to apply those techniques to derive the phrase’s meaning. “Affirmative” starts with “affirm,” a positive word root, and “action” is something that instigates something else, so when put together, we have “something that brings about positive change for something else.”

You laugh at my obsessive behavior with test taking, yet this is what I have been driven to do in attempt to be admitted into the most elite colleges. However, even with my semi-good 2220, there’s always some other Asian kid with a 2400 who still doesn’t get in, so who knows about my chances. This holistic college admissions process has absolutely driven me, and most other Asians totally insane, and part of the reason can certainly be attributed to affirmative action.

Wait, you say, Asians are minorities, so shouldn’t you be praising the Lord for it?

Well, contrary to popular belief, colleges never consider Asians the “underprivileged” or “underrepresented” ones in the college admissions game. In fact, many of the elite colleges put a cap on the number of Asians admitted every year. Now this-this cruel, blasphemous, horrific brutality-is what affirmative action really is.

Affirmative action is what allows that Chinese kid with a 2390 on his SATs, who is captain of the varsity swim team, editor of the school newspaper, star of the math and debate teams, with 500 hours of community service to be rejected from Princeton while the kid next to him with a 1780, who is barely in the top 10% of his class, gets in with no problem just because he is ¼ Mohican.

Colleges incorporate affirmative action so they can brag about the impressive number of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans on campus. I mean, I don’t disagree with colleges trying to help out the needy. But let’s try to remember here, what happened to all those Asians who first immigrated here, especially the Chinese? Right, they were discriminated against to no end; employers feared hiring them because the Chinese could do more than any white man, so they were “taking” the white man’s job.

Who ever said stop discriminating against the Asians, and better yet, to make up for all that suffering, help them get into good colleges to brighten their future? Despite all the hardships we’ve endured, we’ve still managed to become the minority-majority over Caucasians at the entire elite UC system and a powerful force at every single elite college.

I have an African American friend who is very well off, with both parents working as doctors. He had jokingly remarked, “Hey, it doesn’t even matter that you’re smarter than me, cuz I’m gonna get into the Ivy League because I’m black but you won’t cuz you’re Asian.” Granted he was joking a bit, but that’s often the reality that we must face each year in the horrifying admissions season.

And this is what affirmative action has come to: just a perverse sort of reverse discrimination against whites, and continual discrimination against Asians. Stop driving us Asians insane. And give the white kids a fair chance, too. We must treat everyone equally. Send affirmative action to the stake.