Drafting the Annotations

Maxwell, Connor, and Sara Garcia. “5 Reasons to Support Affirmative Action in College Admissions.” Center for American Progress. 1 October 2019. www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2019/10/01/471085/5-reasons-support-affirmative-action-college-admissions/.

This article focuses on the ways affirmative action is beneficial towards students’ lives and the overall quality of a college campus. The overarching claim the authors use is that affirmative action has been shown to promote diversity and inclusion in the student population of many colleges. They also suggest that “racially integrated classrooms can reduce students’ racial bias, improve satisfaction and intellectual self-confidence, and enhance leadership skills” (Maxwell, Garcia). In other words, by exposing students to a diverse environment, they evolve to be more inclusive of others and better equipped for the nature of the real world once they attain a college degree. Throughout the entire article, the authors list the reasons why colleges should consider using affirmative action. These reasons range from underrepresentation to prioritizing and promoting diversity as well as increasing social mobility within colleges.

            This article was written by Connor Maxwell, a “policy analyst for Race and Ethnicity Policy,” and Sara Garcia Connor Maxwell, a “former senior research and advocacy manager for Postsecondary Education” (Maxwell, Garcia). They intended to educate their readers about the historical background surrounding the implementation of affirmative action and why it was needed in America in the first place. Both authors have prior knowledge when it comes to dealing with race and education in America, so they suggested that affirmative action was the only possible option for colleges to consider when selecting students. They’ve seen how the educational system can be exploited because those with privileges reap all of the advantages, while the underprivileged are overlooked and refused acceptance. In my opinion, I agree with the authors because “students of color, especially black and Latinx students, are more underrepresented at selective universities today than they were 35 years ago” (Maxwell, Garcia). Underrepresentation among schools has existed since the supreme court case of Brown vs. Board of Education, and it seems to have never disappeared because favoritism has always been directed towards whites and the rich for many years. White privilege provides legacy students an unfairly large advantage in the admissions process, even if they are academically prepared or not. Rectify this failing system through affirmative action will make up for the injustices of the past. Furthermore, integrating schools with people from all walks of life will “prepare students to work in a diverse global economy, increasing the productivity, effectiveness, and creativity of teams” (Maxwell, Garcia). The goal of affirmative action isn’t meant to slow the process of getting into college, but to consider every application and to choose fairly based on what’s best for the college. College is supposed to be a stimulation of the real world, so having a diverse population reinforces the idea the outside world is filled with people of different positions, races, ethnicity, etc. Overall, I found that this was a proper genre choice because a stance was taken, and it was elaborated more in-depth, based upon factual data and observations. Furthermore, both authors made sure that the readers could understand the big picture they were trying to instill. Everything on the page was organized in a way that was digestible to the readers, as demonstrated by the headings and hyperlinks.