Affirmative action

Affirmative action is necessary to increase the diversity in the school systems.  However, affirmative action should not really be taken because it is a sort of excuse for the minorities to say, “we are not trying hard enough therefore we cannot get into your school on our own merit and intelligence so let me in because I am…(include race or ethnicity here).”  Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of circumstances that could affect learning that results in low test scores and low GPA, like the school that the person attended had bad teachers or technology was not so great, but still people should not be allowed to get by in life solely based on race. There are people who come from these minority backgrounds that try really hard and they succeed.   The University of California has a small group of minority presence, this proves that even though there is a small percentage of minorities, that minorities can get into college without special treatment.  Race should not really be a deciding factor because the school has its academic requirements, so if a person of color and a white person both qualify for the one open spot in the admissions then go with the person who has better extracurricular and more life experience and ignore race. A university gives out an application that does not include any space to put race or ethnicity; If enough people apply from all different races, ethnicities, and life backgrounds (experiences), then on a first come first serve basis the university should be able to look at the applications and determine who is qualified to be in the university.  The university would then be able to take the qualified applicants and admit based on a) when the applicant submitted his/ hers application, and b) who out of the qualified people are more qualified.  If race was not a factor then nobody should be able to say that the university is racist, because the school is not even looking at race.  If the school ends up admitting a class that is 60% white, 8% black, 2% native American, 20% Latino and 10% other, then how can the school be punished for not looking at race.

On the other hand race could be useful only if the university blindly admitted a class of 100% white people.  In this case the minorities get upset and say that they were cheated.  This wouldn’t be fair to them even though race was not considered in the final or even preliminary decisions.  If student A has a ton of good qualities and life experience also gets good grades, but one of his or hers bad qualities is that he or she does not really work very hard (he just floats by on border line B’s) , and student B gets worse grades (C’s), but also has great life experiences and a great resume that would bring perspective to the classroom; who would you choose?