Before coming to Stanford, I constantly faced the issue of having my acceptance discredited. I faced statements such as:

“Oh you didn’t have to work hard to get in there because you are Latino.”

“Of course you were going to get in. You are a minority.”

“Well, now we have to see if you succeed there.”

I knew what these people were thinking. They were thinking: Affirmative Action. Now that I am at Stanford, I finally could see why affirmative action is important. I am surrounded by students that attended top high schools across the country. Students that came in with double digit college credits and were already taking classes that I would not be taking anytime soon. Students that were part of the top 1% and were given endless amounts of resources. I have to be transparent and say that I did experience the imposter syndrome. But, I soon realized that these students came from a very different path in life than me, so I could not compare myself to them. In many cases, I was not given anything close to the resources that these students were provided. Yet, I knew I belonged here, because my acceptance was as valid as theirs.

Experiencing this gave me more of a platform to address why using affirmative action as a way to attack minorities or simply wanting to get rid of it is not right. I specifically want to address some of the statements said by UT-Austin’s “Young Conservatives of Texas”.

“Our protest was designed to highlight the insanity of assigning our lives value based on our race and ethnicity, rather than our talents, work ethic, and intelligence” –Vidal Castaneda, YCT-UT Chairman

Reading this statement makes my blood boil. You want to know what is insanity? Insanity is the fact that poor, minority communities do not have the resources nor the funding to give children an adequate education. Insanity is going into poor, minority schools and there not being qualified teachers teaching students. Insanity is allocating more funds in funding predominantly white schools than minority schools. That is insanity.

But, you believe our talents, our work ethic, and intelligence should all be deciding factors for being admitted into institutions? Not everyone can afford piano lessons or violin lessons. Our schools are so underfunded that fine arts programs tend to be the first ones to be cut. We can’t all be athletes or some of us don’t have the resources to participate in a sport. So you tell me, how can we show our talents?

As for our intelligence and work ethics, these things are measured by our GPA and our standardized test scores. Having a low GPA is not a good measurement of work ethic, especially when it comes to kids with rough backgrounds. Some of these poor, minority students have to work jobs to help sustain their families or have to uphold other responsibilities. Also, take into consideration the quality of education that these kids are receiving. As for standardized testing, these kids do not have the test prep resources nor the classroom resources to help them succeed in standardized testing. Therefore, looking into a student’s background is important because a GPA or a standardized test score is not always a good reflection of the student themselves. There is much more to us than a few numbers.

“Well, I am voicing my opinion on an issue and expressing my freedom of speech.”

I am not trying to silence your opinion about affirmative action. However, when you exploit the identities of oppressed individuals and assign them low values to illustrate that we, minorities, are given handouts or receive some type of priority to be admitted into institutions—well that is when you cross the line. These identities are not light, they come with their own weight. Being Black in America means that you will be racially profiled to the point that you can’t even receive a fair trial in our judiciary system. Being Latinx and/or Hispanic in America means that you will have a POS presidential candidate use terms like “Bad Hombre” and other derogatory terms against your people to only receive a response of a crowd cheering him on. Being Native American means that your people are not only exterminated from their native lands and restricted to land reservations, but later the lands they are restricted to are infringed and threatened by greedy corporations that care more about expanding pipelines than the well-being of these human beings. Being Asian-American in America is having to deal with stereotypes and struggling to find your own identity in a society that doesn’t understand that Asia is a continent of individuals with many different identities. So, when you and others say that affirmative action is racist, please stop, take a look around. Our people are constantly oppressed, our people are constantly abused, our people are discriminated against, and our people continue to suffer even after hundreds of years of oppression. We have all odds stacked against us. Saying statements like:

• “There should be judgement based on merit.”
• “Don’t you think there is a problem with people coming here and competing with other people and they are not qualified.”
• “What’s the deal with going to that big school, why don’t you just go to community college or another school?”

These statements are ignorant of the fact that we live in a society where minorities are far from privileged. Affirmative action is a way in which institutions evaluate student through the lens of their unique backgrounds. Affirmative action is not institutions lowering their standards, it is institutions taking into account all the factors that play a role in a student’s life. It is leveling the playing field. But, you making these statements assuming that we are given leniency or we don’t have merit to be at these institutions is ignorant of the holistic process that many institutions have in place.

We have merit and schools see our merit. Our merit, even after facing all our barriers, is reflected not only in our hard earned grades and standardized test scores, but in our perseverance, our determination, our character, and other attributes reflected in our experiences of breaking barriers to get to where we are. Thinking that an ACT/SAT score or GPA is what matters more is you contributing to the meritocracy that exists. The truth of the matter is that in the future your GPA and ACT/SAT will be irrelevant. People will not remember you by you being the top of your class or having score a perfect ACT/SAT score, they will remember you for the good things you do and the impact you have on others. This cookie bake sale already set you up for a very bad start for how you will be remembered—as the fools that boasted their GPA’s to an audience and argued against affirmative action just to show the bigotry they embody. But back to my point-- kids like me, poor, minority students, are unique; we have the character to break boundaries and keep moving forward, and the virtues to bring a change in our communities. Our experiences make us unique and I am sure the admissions boards see this in us because our merit is beyond our GPA and ACT/SAT scores. This is an important point to make: Schools want more than a perfect GPA or a perfect ACT/SAT score, they want individuals with character to change their college campuses. Many of us are those individuals.

So please stop using affirmative action to feed your ego or establish a “racism” argument because you have no basis for your argument. This quote itself explains it in two sentences:

“No nation can enslave a race of people for hundreds of years, set them free bedraggled and penniless, pit them, without assistance in a hostile environment, against privileged victimizers, and then reasonably expect the gap between the heirs of the two groups to narrow. Lines, begun parallel and left alone, can never touch.” -Robinson, R. (2000). The debt: What America owes to Blacks. New York: Dutton Books.

Us, affirmative action babies, are what will address this parallel line issue. Therefore, we will not stop shooting for the stars. We will not stop attending these top institutions. We do not need validation from anyone to be at these institutions because we received our acceptances—that is valid enough. We will not allow you to use our identities lightly for stupid sh*t like racist cookie bake sales. We will not allow you to feel like you have the right to question our belonging in these institutions because you have no idea of what we had to go through to be where we are. At the end of the day, the truth is clear: We were accepted and we belong here. We are not going anywhere. So, stop questioning why we got in and why you didn’t. Parents, check your entitlement and stop saying that we took your child’s spot. You know what they say: The truth hurts. And you know the truth, you or your child did not impress the school admission boards. We did. That is why we are here.