A Minority’s Equality

Should a person be deprived of admittance into a college that they really want to go to and worked so hard to get admitted to and be denied so a less qualified applicant can get in? Would it change your mind if he or she was a minority? Believe it or not, this happens in our college system today. This is called affirmative action. Affirmative action was created to instigate diversity in our educational and business community. However, while it was fashioned to instigate diversity, in reality it causes more racism and sexism in our nation. Affirmative action is neither fair nor politically correct, and does not solve the problems of racism and sexism in the educational and business world.

Firstly, universities obtain less qualified students through affirmative action laws. If a non-minority student was to receive the same score on his or her ACT and SAT and get the same GPA as a minority, the minority student would be accepted over the non-minority student due to the fact that he or she received extra points for being a minority. Proof of this can be found in the University of Michigan’s admissions standards where minority students are awarded an extra twenty admissions points because of their minority status (http://www.umich.edu/~mrev/archives/1999/summer/chart.htm). Some might argue that this practice evens the field because most minorities do not have access to good education, and therefore, have lower test scores than a person who received a higher level of education. Even then however, if an individual received a lesser education and had the desire to succeed, he or she could. An example of this is in “The Great Debate,” a movie based on a true story in which a group of black students, during a time of segregation, sought out to be the best debaters and had to compete against Harvard, an all white school. The students utilized all the resources available to them, put in many long, hard hours, and refused to listen or adhere to society’s low opinion of them. In the end, they were able to beat Harvard’s nationally ranked debate team because they had the desire to win and worked hard to achieve their goal. Thus, if a minority student truly worked hard he or she would be able to excel even if he or she went to a poorly educated school.
Besides this, it is completely unfair to the students that are not minorities, as well as racist to the minority students. Affirmative action helps a minority of students who do not receive good education, however it does not help the majority students who receive poor education. In fact, it gives an advantage to the minority students who are well educated. Affirmative action was created to create equality, but the truth is, it does the exact opposite. Laws change to suit the times, and minorities are becoming just as wealthy as majorities so why does the law not change? The answer is quite simple: people do not want to be considered racist or sexist. For a politician to be considered racist is political suicide for their entire career, but by allowing affirmative action to exist they are in effect being racist. We must remember, racism does not only pertain to the black or Hispanic cultures but applies to all races. What of Asian descendents? Are they not a minority in America as well? Why do only Indian, African American, and Latin cultures get recognized by the educational system as minorities Racism is preferring certain races over others, therefore affirmative action is in and of itself racist. Moreover, it is racist to the minorities by giving them extra points because it implies that they cannot do it on their own. Minority students are able to succeed off of their own merit; they do not other’s charity or pity. As long as these conditions continue, there is a good chance that the prevalent view of minorities in this country will be that they are not equal and cannot succeed on the same level as non-minorities.
Given the examples above about affirmative action, one can see affirmative action does not bring equality. For example in a soccer game or football or any sport, if the other team was to receive points before the game starts it is not fair to your team. The same applies in our educational and business worlds; we need the more qualified applicants getting the jobs, getting admittance or our economy will suffer. We will go into a depression do to less qualified candidates getting the jobs and being less productive than a more qualified candidate. Our children will suffer because of this or they will prosper because we do not have affirmative action. It is your choice. Affirmative action will never create equality.