When U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the executive order to implement affirmative action across America, widespread controversy erupted among the people. A policy meant to consider the status of historical oppression when it came to employment and education was a victory for minorities and women, but for others, it felt like they were being oppressed now; many even began calling it “reverse discrimination”. As soon as a year after the law was signed, states across the nation began banning affirmative action, with California being the first; eight other states soon followed. Courts have been steadily dismantling it for years, despite the Supreme Court upholding the policy multiple times.

This year, affirmative action is being brought up yet again. In October, the organization Students for Fair Admissions challenged Harvard University’s admissions practices in the Supreme Court, claiming their use of affirmative action violated the Equal Protection Clause. Their stance has significant backing, especially from Asian Americans who believe they are losing seats in top colleges because of affirmative action. However, there are major problems with this stance. Let’s go through them.

Before we begin, I must make something clear. As a Chinese American who lives in a liberal area, I have seen arguments for both sides of the debate, and have personal connections especially with those who support banning affirmative action. However, I believe Asian Americans who support that are ignoring flaws in their arguments that must be addressed.

First, let's consider their motives. Asian Americans who want to get rid of affirmative action do so believing it would increase the chances of them getting into better colleges. They believe that with affirmative action in place, spots that are “rightfully” theirs are being taken up by other minorities like Latinos and African Americans. This means that they think without affirmative action, college admissions would be completely merit based, and that admissions are completely fair to begin with. There are two problems with this argument. Ignoring the racist undertones (which really can’t be ignored), college admissions are extremely subjective and unfair. Luck is a huge part of it, and I would argue other factors such as legacy admission takes away just as many, if not more seats than affirmative action does. In fact, the Journal of Labor Economics published a study estimating that legacy students are up to 8 times more likely to receive admission than students that aren’t legacy. On both the Harvard and Yale Common Data Sets, the two universities rank Alumni relation and Race/ethnicity as equally considered. If Asian Americans truly wished to increase their chances of getting into a top college, they should be fighting just as hard to get rid of the legacy system, instead of just focusing on affirmative action.

Another reason why admissions wouldn’t become merit based like Asian Americans believe is because of America’s inherently racist foundation. To understand this argument a bit better, we need to look at Asian immigrants and their cultures that they left in their original country. In nations like China and South Korea, college admissions are, at face value, completely merit based. The Chinese Gaokao and South Korean College Scholastic Ability Test are, respectively, the one major factor that get highschoolers into college. These tests only consider your ability to apply information that you have learned, and do not have any comparable affirmative action like America’s, at least not when current Asian immigrants were still there. Therefore, immigrants see this system as one they’re promoting in the face of American college admissions without affirmative action. But this is completely false, simply due to the fact of the vast differences in cultural and national heritage. If we simplify this argument to only race-based affirmative action, China and most Asian countries are mostly monoethnic nations with internally similar cultures, at least towards education. None of them even come close to the widely diversified population of America. Therefore, these immigrants are applying the wrong status quo to their argument. Just because their system works in those nations, doesn’t mean it will in America. They haven’t considered America’s inherently racist history, and how that racism still plays a significant role in the modern day, because it was never as big of a problem for them before they immigrated.

In fact, I would argue that without affirmative action, there would be virtually no legal guarantee that colleges would accept minorities at all. It is the only legal policy that forces these colleges to consider race, including the race of Asian Americans. Without affirmative action, what would prevent these historically white colleges from decreasing acceptance of ALL minorities? Yes, the 14th amendment states that you cannot discriminate, but because of the subjective nature of college admissions, universities can easily tell minorities, “you didn’t get in because you were unlucky— sorry.” And receive no punishment. Therefore, there’s a great chance minority populations in higher education will decrease nationally due to the lack of legal protection. The bottom line here is this: in a nation where racism permeates every aspect of society, can you really trust that anything will be merit based at all?

The assumption that without affirmative action, colleges would accept less of all minorities can be proven by this: the president of Students for Fair Admissions that uses Asian Americans as the face of their organization, is a caucasian man by the name of Edward Blum. He is a conservative legal strategist with the goal to completely “eliminate racial preferences” from America, according to the New York Times. Not only has he previously challenged affirmative action in Fisher v. University of Texas, but he also orchestrated the case that struck down a core policy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 2013. This case had immediate consequences, with Texas implementing a previously blocked voter identification law and declaring that redistricting maps would now not require federal approval. For a refresher, voter identification laws were used to prevent African Americans from voting during the Jim Crow era, and without federal approval, redistricting maps are vulnerable to gerrymandering that can ‘crack’ and ‘pack’ minorities to lessen their political voices. Clearly, Edward Blum has a racial agenda, and Asian Americans now are obliviously helping him in his latest endeavor to take down affirmative action. He knows that affirmative action is letting more and more minorities into top colleges, and in order to have more white students he’s determined to get rid of the policy that protects those minorities.

In addition, if affirmative action is overturned by the Supreme Court, it won’t just be college admissions that will be affected. As a reminder, the original policy also includes employment, meaning without affirmative action employers don’t have to consider race when it comes to hiring new workers. The stance of Asian Americans who support banning affirmative action is much too shortsighted, as they’re neglecting the need for affirmative action after college. In fact, a study by Harvard’s Woman and Public Policy program found that, “there was a significant loss of workplace diversity once affirmative action programs were repealed [in states], and this loss specifically affected Asian women, black women and Hispanic men”. Affirmative action is meant to prevent workplace discrimination, and without it there is less protection for all minorities.

If you weren’t convinced by those arguments, consider this: even if affirmative action did take away seats from Asian Americans, I would argue it is still better to have a more diverse student body than one that’s full of academic minds but of only a few backgrounds. Historically, it was the empires that were the most diverse that lived the longest: take the Romans and the Mongols, for example. These two empires spanned centuries and continents— and were famously accepting of different cultures for their time. Diversity cultivates trust between different identities; in fact, what good can come from the lack of diversity anyways? The more people from different backgrounds that you meet, the more empathetic you become, and thus the better you become as a person. Forget righteousness; if you were good enough for these top colleges in the first place, even if you weren’t accepted there’s no reason you wouldn’t succeed elsewhere. Our goal as a whole should be to improve society, and not be focused on our personal desires— and the best way to improve society is to cultivate empathy through diversity.

Finally, I will admit this: affirmative action is not a fool-proof solution. As with everything, there are flaws— after all, it’s an abstract concept being applied by humans who see it in different ways. But this doesn’t mean we should eliminate it, especially when it’s the only protection that so many Americans rely on for a chance at a better life. Ultimately, as the Supreme Court’s decision for this case is set to release this spring or summer, this is the truth we must accept: affirmative action is not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.