thus begins an opinion piece that ran just last week in my university’s most read newspaper. needless to say, this ‘article’ made waves. it is entirely indicative of a general incline felt by many of the “majority” students at UW-Madison. read for yourself and just try and count all the biases, microaggressions, paraphrases, generalizations and blatant misinformation.

BY: Justin Kramer

Throughout the upcoming fall and winter months, the university will begin processing thousands of applications for admittance for the 2013-2014 school year. Yet there is one troubling aspect about how applications will be evaluated: Utilization of affirmative action policies. Affirmative action is one of the most racist policies currently in existence and has no place in the admissions process.

Controversy erupted last year when, as the Milwauke Journal Sentinel reports, Virginia-based Center for Equal Opportunity reported a wide disparity in the ACT score range of incoming freshman, finding white students averaged a 29, Asians a 30, African-Americans a 25 and Hispanics a 26. This data goes back to the 2007-2008 academic year — the last year data was available when they conducted their analysis. The explanation for this gap is not difficult to find; the university publicly admits to giving preference to certain ethnic minorities. University officials claim such an admissions process is a “holistic” or “comprehensive” approach. Cutting away the buttered-up semantics, it becomes quite clear the university is unapologetically racist in their admissions process.

In defending their blatant racism, university officials claim it’s vital for students to be immersed in diversity with a wide range of viewpoints. If that’s truly the case, why does the university not ask if the applicant is a Republican or Democrat? Why not also ask if they happen to be Catholic, Jewish, Hindu or any other religion? Where is the representation of atheists? Should we also strive to achieve a financially diverse group of people? How about giving special preference based on sexual orientation? Apparently some groups are worthy of special diversity consideration, yet others are not. This double-standard is nothing short of state-sponsored, socially-accepted discrimination.

When affirmative action is acknowledged as being readily employed, it’s understandable why certain parts of the student body respond with vigilant protest. It’s hurtful to suggest some students may not be worthy Badgers, and implicating if they did not belong to a targeted minority group, they would have not been admitted. While nobody is admitted based on ethnicity alone, last year Adele Brumfield, UW-Madison’s director of undergraduate admissions and recruitment, told legislatures those not meeting all admissions criteria receive a second look if they belong to a targeted group. It logically follows if these students hadn’t belonged to said group, they would have been afforded no “second look” and denied.

While I can understand those who resent this notion, the solution isn’t more of the same, but an abolition of affirmative action. If race and ethnicity were not part of the admissions process, nobody with sub-average admissions qualifications would ever wonder if their skin color did indeed make the difference. For this very reason, affirmative action is anti-Martin Luther King, Jr., since instead of judging applicants on their merits and by the “content of their character,” we instead give biased judgment based on race. The unspoken, unintended implication to minorities is, “you are inferior and not good enough to compete with the white man or Asian on your own. Because you are not qualified enough, we will give you special consideration we do not give to other ethnic groups.”

Liberals’ insatiable obsession with diversity further serves to inadvertently strip people of their individuality and instead sees everyone as groups. We have black groups, white groups, LGBT groups, Muslim groups and so on ad infinitum. This mentality will never cease so long as we deliberately perpetuate racism with affirmative action and other such policies that serve to lump together individuals as a monolithic group. What’s sorely missing is seeing beyond the race or gender, and instead viewing everyone as a unique individual. Yet, whenever we try to eliminate the barriers preventing people from seeing their fellow human beings as individuals, we are often labeled racists. To paraphrase John Hawk, it’s a great irony those who view everything through a prism of race accuse those who don’t of being racist.

Affirmative action is a backwards-thinking, racist governmental program inflicting a great injustice on our society. The true anti-racist envisions a post-racial, post-gender society where we view each and every member of our society as an individual not bound by the constraints of whatever “group” he or she may belong to. Instead of digging in their heels and defending their discriminatory admissions standards, our university officials should instead cast aside this ill-designed policy of equality (read: social inequity) and lead the push for a future where we dump irrelevant, arbitrary characteristics — such as ethnicity — at the door.

Justin Kramer (jdkramer2@wisc.edu) is a junior majoring in nuclear engineering.

Writing about Affirmative Action does not need to be this incendiary. Entirely decrying such a complex idea as affirmative action merely a “backwards-thinking, racist governmental program inflicting a great injustice on our society” is not only beyond over-the-top hyperbole, but exhibits a complete lack of understanding of every issue such a brash and obtuse statement raises.

Despite so many people’s fanciful ‘beliefs’, many of us know we do not live in a “post-racial, post-gender society where we view each and every member of our society as an individual not bound by the constraints of whatever ‘group’ he or she may belong to,” and we do not wish to; we live this every day, and factors like our race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity form part of our identities. These “groups,” as Kramer so abruptly describes them, are pieces of who we are—why would we want them to be ignored? 

The problem with this “colorblindness” approach is that it not only ignores very real and very vivid differences between different people, but it also arguably causes even more damage by insisting we are all the same, no matter what circumstances we may undergo or experience as individuals. There is a plethora of social theory to cover this problem, however it evidently has done little to affect in any determinable way this writer’s ideology, or perhaps more aptly, opinion. 

Ideas like these that seek to minimize and ignore the very great and very real struggles and pains of so many people must be examined holistically: who developed them, what prompted them, why they exist at all. So long as pieces like this can continue to be published, read, and agreed upon by my fellow students and peers, we will continue to oppress one another by our ignorance. We cannot allow such ‘opinions’ to go condoned.