Imagine yourself being a senior in high school and you have just received your admissions letter from the college of your dreams. As you start to open the letter you remember all the late nights and stressful weekends you’ve put into this college. The letter opens and you read those dreadful words that everybody wishes they never see. “We're sorry, but we won't be able to offer you a place in our school this year. We had many qualified applicants this year...” You are shocked, you feel unwanted, but worst of all, you blame it on race. This is called affirmative action, where there is encouragement of increased representation of women and minority groups in employment and education. Affirmative action happens all the time in the U.S. and it is just wrong. I believe that affirmative action should be removed from colleges permanently.

First of all, affirmative action was established to help people deal with discrimination, but all it has done is increase racism. Let’s say I’m walking at my college campus and I see a couple of black people. I could be thinking in my head “The only reason they are here is because they’re black.” Don’t you think that is a bit racist? Affirmative action has also increased racism by reverse discrimination. In many cases, it has actually resulted in the opposite of what affirmative action was meant to do. Now many white students, who are qualified, are being rejected from the colleges of their choice due to the favoring of many less qualified minorities.

Affirmative action also does not create diversity but segregated groups. For example, at Stanford, because of this need for diversity, there are “racially segregated dormitories, racially segregated freshman orientation programs, racially segregated graduation ceremonies, and curricular requirements in race theory and gender studies” (Socks, Theil 1). When you bring in these minorities they are usually just going to hang out with their own race, rather than spread out and meet every other race at the school. Another point is that colleges say that minorities think differently and have different perspectives. Do you really think that people can bring a whole bunch of different ideas only because of their color? Many black and white people think alike. Just because people were born into the world with different colors doesn’t mean they can automatically have a different mindset. This is completely false.

Some people say that minorities aren’t as smart as white people because they have segregated schools. Well, even if minorities can’t afford a private school there are extremely good public schools that are mostly black and Hispanic. Or maybe it’s because they know that affirmative action is established, so they don’t work as hard or put as much effort into their education. Even if you do go to a minority school it doesn’t mean that you don’t have the chance to become smart. For example, in the movie, Akeelah and the Bee, Akeelah, an eleven year old black girl who went to a minority school. The students at the school didn’t care or try to get an education. Akeelah, though, was an extremely good speller and worked hard at it. Long story short, she ended up winning the National Spelling Bee. Even though Akeelah attended a bad school she still came out winning one of the hardest competitions. So I believe it is a matter of whether you try to do well in school. It has also been said that white people get into colleges because they have connections. Truly, not every white person has connections and even some black people have connections. So that can’t even be a true statement.

Colleges all over the country need to abort the program of affirmative action. If we remove it now then we won’t be promoting people by their skin color but by the excellence of their performance. In sports it does not matter what color you are, if you perform the best, you get the greatest payment. This is how colleges should accept people, the most deserving get in.