Affirmative Action and Personal Ethics... what a combination

Recently, a very good friend of mine received something many high school seniors would kill for: an acceptance letter from Yale. She deserved it. She has an extraordinary GPA and excellent test scores, wrote a refreshingly humorous essay, and had teachers falling over themselves to write her stellar recommendations. And she's a minority.

Well, sort of.

Esther is, in fact, 1/2 Sephardic Jew, so she wrote on the application that she is Hispanic. To be honest, she is not Hispanic. Physically, she is as white as I am (and I'm about the shade of a marshmallow... before toasting). Culturally, she does not identify with any Hispanic communities, participate in any "Hispanic" activities, or consider herself to be Hispanic in any way, shape, or form. The closest she ever came to being Hispanic was during freshman and sophomore year when she was enrolled in a Spanish language course to fulfill her foreign language requirements. Furthermore, despite her Jewish name, Esther does not consider herself even remotely Jewish. Au contraire, she is a devout atheist and, other than the occasional wedding, christening, or bar mitzvah, has never set foot in a house of worship.

Esther is certainly a bright girl and a diligent student, but I don’t know if she would have gotten into Yale if the admissions office thought she was just another white Jewish girl. It’s possible, but admissions into the top schools in the country are so few and far between it’s difficult to tell.

In Esther’s defense, the college process has gotten dirtier over the years. As more and more well-qualified students apply for the same number of openings in the most prestigious colleges, it’s become impossible for even the best student to be certain she will get in. And to be fair, Esther never took an SAT class, never had a “college coach”, never had a personal tutor for anything, and goes to a fairly mediocre public school. Surely a girl with a private tutor, SAT prep course, and college coach is “cheating” just as much as Esther is, especially if she fails to mention these additional advantages in her application.

So was Esther justified in taking advantage of affirmative action and using her somewhat questionably Hispanic heritage to get into college? I don’t know. I guess I’m just glad that the only Jewish blood I have in me is Russian and decidedly un-Hispanic, so I’ll never have to judge my own ethics in the affirmative action arena.

Share this post on:

 •    •    •    •    •