Affirmative Action: Blacks, Asians or Latinos, defend Harvard’s admissions policy

Agustin Leon-Saenz presumes that he benefited from positive discrimination to enter the prestigious American University of Harvard. But “I deserve to be here,” he insists.

Within days of the crucial US Supreme Court hearing, several students or alumni defended Harvard’s admissions policy in exchanges with the AFP. As in other very selective universities, it takes into account the skin color or origin of candidates to ensure diversity on its campus. It has also set up communication programs aimed at minorities. It is thanks to these efforts that Agustin Leon-Saenz is now in his second year of science and engineering studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Going to Harvard seemed unreal, out of reach.”

Born in Ecuador 19 years ago, this young man didn’t speak a word of English when he arrived in the United States at the age of seven. He was then educated exclusively in public schools, with a black or Hispanic majority. This high school student, with excellent grades, one day received an email from Harvard advising him to contact a university student, also Ecuadorian, to apply. “That’s why I applied, because obviously I didn’t know anyone at Harvard,” he explains. “To see that there was at least one other Ecuadorian was enough for me.” However, when his file was accepted, he “didn’t believe it”. “Going to Harvard seemed unreal, out of reach.”

“Their equal”

Coming to the East Coast campus “was very disturbing”: in his New Mexico high school, most of the students were of Mexican descent; at Harvard, Hispanics make up less than 12% of students, and Agustin Leon-Saenz is the only Ecuadorian in his class. He then becomes friends with immigrants or descendants of immigrants and does not always feel comfortable with students from privileged backgrounds. “Some people think that because I’m Latin American, I’m not their academic peer.” “But I worked hard in high school, I deserve to be here,” said the young man.

Kylan Tatum, who studies literature at Harvard, doesn’t like “this question of who deserves or doesn’t deserve to be here.” For this 19-year-old Métis, he “ignores the social factors that weigh on the ability to get good grades”. He is aware that he was lucky. Sure, his mother is African American and his father is Vietnamese, but the two were able to pursue higher education after the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and were able to guide him in his candidacy. Today he regrets that the debate in the Supreme Court centers on allegations of “discrimination” against students of Asian descent, allegedly underrepresented at Harvard in relation to their above-average academic performance. The complainants “exploit the economic and educational successes of Asian Americans to use them against other minorities,” he judges.

“S’adapter”

Margaret Chin, a Chinese-American who graduated from Harvard in 1984, points out that affirmative action policies have served her community well. She herself, whose father was a waiter and her mother a textile worker, “never thought” to send her file to Harvard if a recruiter hadn’t manned a booth at a student fair in Chinatown, New York. Once hospitalized, it took her some time to “adjust”. “Luckily I found myself in a room with a very mixed group”, made up of young black, white and Asian girls from various social backgrounds. “I discovered new ways of living, they also learned from me,” she recalls.

Now a sociologist at the City University of New York, this 62-year-old woman is an activist with the “Coalition for a Diverse Harvard” on behalf of this founding experience. “I think we need diversity, especially in the United States, where the population is so compartmentalized” ethnically, she explains. If the Supreme Court banned affirmative action programs, minorities would undeniably lose, but so would “the rest of the population.”