Affirmative Action?

What is affirmative action?

By definition, affirmative action is a policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment.

America has such a policy where minority groups are given a sort of advantage over the "majority."

In terms of education, minority (mainly Black and Latino) students are seen in a more...sympathetic light than white students or asian students. Why is this so? To make things more "equal" by looking at other people unequally. The system is at fault in and of itself as it contradicts the very principle it is trying to advocate.

Here is a scenario of such affirmative action:

• There are two students in the same school
• Both students have a 3.5 GPA boasting a 2100 on the SAT
• Both have the same living conditions, family income, and work ethic
• However, one student (student A) is black while the other student (student B) is Asian
• Both apply to the same colleges and universities
• Student A is given a full-ride scholarship to the most prominent university in the nation whereas student B is merely accepted at a more mediocre school

The problem with this scenario, is that between two students who have identical lives and identical acheivements, one is chosen over the other because of their race. Students should not be pooled into a category in the college board's eyes, nor should they receive the same stereotypical placement when they apply for jobs in the future.

The concept of affirmative action is an admirable ideal, but it cannot be truly fair the way it is now. If students are pooled according to race, not only does it cause controversial issues and debates, but it keeps the people from moving past all the racial stereotypes and "bad blood" between the ethnicities of this nation. How can the people progress and open their minds if the government itself cannot move past the stereotype that everyone considered part of the minority is poor and degenerated.

It is a fact that many monorities do occupy the slums and backwater areas of the nation, and it is true that many of the students of these areas do not have access to a competent education. Many students work jobs and care for their siblings as their parents work two jobs trying to get ends meat. It is assured that the student's academic acheivement will be affected in a negative manner. However, this is not all of the people in the minority, and since it is not, a system pooling all these students together according to ethnicity cannot be seen as fair.

A truly fair system would look not at the student's race, but their background and work ethic. These two things are the deciding factors in who should be the beneficiaries of the affirmative action policy. The college board should see if that student comes from a tough background where academic acheivment would be more difficult. They should see if that student, through the trials and tribulations, would still work to acheive his or her best in academics.

The fault in this system, however, is that with all the students who apply for college throughout the nation, an acceptance board doesn't have the time or the desire to check the student's background in depth and accurately gauge the student's work ethic. Until this can be acheived, a truly fair system of affirmative action will remain an ideal, unreachable with our modern day society.