9 October 2019

If one of the factors of college admissions had to do with the color of your skin, would you take the opportunity? Affirmative action is a policy that support people of a disadavnatged group that has suffered discrimination in different areas such as employment, education and housing. In a school setting, for generation white individuals always benefited educationally then people of other races. Affirmative action is an attempt for equal opportunities in the admission process. The topic is very controversial because we have one side that believes it gives minorities a fair chance in applying to college. In the texts, “Here’s What’s Going On With Affirmative Action And School Admissions” by Anya Kamenetz and “Assessing the Results of Race-Sensitive College Admissions” by Derek Bok, they both address the results of affirmative action in the educational system as well as what’s it’s like without this policy. When analyzing these texts, I noticed how different but similar they are. Each author had similar ideas but presented them in their own way. The text by Kamenetz is an online article, while the text by Bok, is a scholarly journal and when presenting your information the first thing you would want to keep in mind is the audience and genre as Carabelli and Dirk state in their texts. 

Genre is a specific type of writing , film and music. The style of genre varies depending on the goal of the writer, artist or director. In the writing style, mystery, most authors writing in order to build up anticipation throughout the book. This eventually always leads in a cliffhanger or the culprit being found at the end. In a romance film, the director wants to focus on the love aspect so we as viewers can relate to it more. All of these definitions and styles are what we are used to seeing and saying on an everyday basis because it is what we are taught. In the journal, Navigating Genre by Kerry Dirk, the author wants us as readers to expand our definition of the term, genre. He states, “The definition of genre has changed even more since Bitzer’s article was written; genres are now viewed as even more than repeating rhetorical situations”(Dirk 5). The author explains how genres are no longer one word answers. They do not only explain that something is one way. Genres are also used in our everyday lives. Learning how to write a letter, creating your resume or even writing an exploratory essay are ways we use genre. 

Just how Dirk explained that genre has no limitations, in Carabelli’s article, “Identifying a Conversation”, I found that they had similar ideas but not written in the same way.In the article, he explains how the important part of writing is identifying how you are connecting with the reader. To have an understanding of who your target is and how you are taking an approach to it. Carrabelli and Dirk have similar ideas in which, as writers we need to be able to write for all types of readers. In Dirks journal he explains how when writing a country song, you will add depressing elements such as a breakup and something that tells a story. This attracts an audience who generally listen to country music often. The author brings up this idea by explaining the structure of a country song in order. Compared to the article, where this a limited amount of space to write, we can tell that, Carabelli had a similar idea as well. He brings up an example in which if you are writing an essay about the workplace. In order to have a successful paper then you must interview those in different workplaces, so readers have something to relate to and we know that the work is plausible.

Kamenetz text opens up with statistics on the amount of undergraduate students in college from the year of 2015. It reveals that, more than half of white individuals were able to go to college over the rest of the races. (14 percent were black, 19 percent were Hispanic, 7 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander) She brings up how the issue with affirmative action is mainly with selective colleges because they reject an abundance amount of applications than they accept them. This results in most people not even applying to these colleges because of the low acceptance rate. In Kamenetz text, she brings up a case called Fisher v University of Texas where Fisher lost her case regarding college rejection. The schools policy is that they review applicants based on race whose grades are “below the top 10 percent”. This promoted wanted change in making admission process fair. Some individuals saw it as discriminatory when they have the grades to get in but are denied because of priority to minorities. Assessing the Results of Race-Sensitive College Admissions by Derek Bok, address the outcomes of affirmative action in college admissions. He starts off with stating the side for affirmative action by stating how affirmative action is a gateway for minorities to have a good career. It gives them control over their own lives and power in society. In the text it states, “In medicine only seven blacks in 1995 would have qualified for the 10 U.S. medical schools if admission were determined by college grades and test scores alone”(Bok 106). If it weren’t for this policy, black individuals would not have the opportunity to become aspiring doctors and on. These programs help them fulfill their dreams and get equal opportunities as other races. Bok then introduced the opposing side in which individuals feel as if the policy is not fair to students who try and work hard in schools. The affirmative action is biased to a particular race. Putting students who are not up to par with qualified whites are more likely to dropout. It does not make them work hard because admission was basically handed to them.

When assessing these two texts, the first thing that draws my attention is the publication site. Popular articles such as the one written by Anya Kamentez, is on a site where it is easily accessible by all types of users. Popular articles are usually surrounded by ads in order to make money. The only way they are able to keep their site open is by running ads for the public to see. Popular articles have links that are also accessible to other articles and apps that are related to their site. We usually see this when we first open the page and are told to sign up, login and even subscribe. Comparing this to Boks article, even though the site might tell us to sign up or log in, their intent is to contribute to the research regarding different academic topics. Regarding the context of both texts. “Here’s What’s Going On With Affirmative Action And School Admissions”, keeps their texts short and simple. They basically summarized the ideas presented in “Assessing the Results of Race-Sensitive College Admissions”. They did because their intended audience is really broad. The popular article wants everyone of all intellectual levels to be able to understand their writing so they have small and easy paragraphs. The scholarly article on the other hand presents both ideas and expands on them. Just like we are to do with an argumentative essay where we write a claim and branch out on it. Scholarly articles, bring in information from all types of genres in order to put their paper together and make it plausible. Even the two articles are presenting us with the same idea, they both are constructed differently. As a student both articles are easy to read and presented coherently but they both contribute differently. The scholarly article, helps with furthering understanding the topic of affirmative action because it goes in depth compared to the other.

The topic of affirmative action in an educational setting is controversial because you have one side who believes that it gives minorities a chance to have an opportunity to get an education in a society where white people have a lot of power. However, others believe that it is unfair to those who work hard and do well in academics and more to be shadowed by a less qualified person because of their race. The articles, Navigating Genre by Kerry Dirk and “Identifying a Conversation” by Jason Carabelli show the differences between different types of genres. They identify why different texts are presented differently even if they have the same topic and the advantages/disadvantages it has for readers. The texts,  “Here’s What’s Going On With Affirmative Action And School Admissions” by Anya Kamenetz and “Assessing the Results of Race-Sensitive College Admissions” by Derek Bok, both address affirmative action but in different ways.

 

 

WORKS CITED

Bok, Derek. “Assessing the Results of Race-Sensitive College Admissions.” The Journal of Blacks in  Higher Education, no. 29,   2000, p. 106., doi:10.2307/2678860.

 

Carabelli, Jason. “Jason Carabelli.” Writing Commons, 30 Nov. 2012, writing commons.org/chapters/information literacy/ c r itical-reading/783-identifying-a-conversation.

 

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Navigating Genres, Colorado State University,wac.colostate.edu/books/writingspaces1/dirk- -navigating-genres.pdf.

 

Kamenetz, Anya. “Here’s What’s Going On With Affirmative Action And School Admissions.” NPR , NPR, 7 July 2018, www . n pr.org/ sections/ed/2018/07/07/626500660/everything-that-s-going-on-with-race-ethnicity-and-school-admissions-r I g ht-now.