When applying to the school of your choice, you work as hard as you possibly can. After all, it is your dream school. You study for weeks in advance before your SAT’s to earn those above average scores, write and re-write your essay as many times as it takes until you’ve reached perfection and stay after multiple days of the week to maintain your standing in clubs and on sports teams. But when compared with other students, before the crucial verdict is reached, the races of the applicants are noted. Unexpectedly, something completely out of your control is thrown into the decision making process and there is nothing you can do about it. You happen to be white, and your dream school is 89% white. Suddenly, everything you have worked for throughout the past four years has been put on the back burner and not recognized for its entirety because of your skin tone.
Affirmative action is not meant for the minority to be admitted simply because they are a minority, but if two candidates are closely ranked the college is granted the ability to choose the minority over the white student. For a country whose fundamental principles are based on fairness and equality for all, how is Affirmative Action not seen as racist and discriminatory?
Affirmative Action in college admissions is exactly racism, and can be considered as backtracking considering all the progress made to combat racism. I was always taught in school growing up that people are the same no matter what they look like, and that everyone is equal. I guess these principles aren’t relevant to the college admissions process, because minorities are allowed an automatic “leg up” on a white student who has similar credentials.
Sure, the statistics are there saying African American students are more likely to live in poverty as opposed to white students, but this country shouldn’t lose its fundamentals to accommodate to the minority. If Affirmative Action was the other way around, for instance, and the student whose skin color is the majority was accepted simply on the fact they are the majority, people would be staging riots. But because it aids the minority and encourages diversity suddenly it is okay and people support this movement. That, to me, does not make sense whatsoever.
I know colleges have the right intentions in mind, but they are going about it the wrong way. Students who work hard and earn their college acceptance letter should be admitted, bottom line. Affirmative action is still in place because it is expected that white students have greater advantages in life and in school because they are considered the majority. What colleges don’t realize, however, is that that is a completely false belief.
Take Annandale High School for instance, a school prided on its diversity and where whites are the obvious minority. When applying to college I, being a white student, would automatically have my achievements overshadowed simply based off of the fact that I am white and colleges assume I’ve lived an easy and privileged life. This is an unfair assumption, because colleges would only see my skin tone and not realize that I am in fact the minority who spent four years in high school with the adversities associated with being the minority. So how could giving me a slight disadvantage in the college admissions process because I am the majority be fair considering I am, in actuality, the minority in my class.
Allowing the minority a small advantage based on something out of their control is completely ridiculous. You can’t choose who your parents are, and you can’t change your heritage. Therefore, race shouldn’t even be in the equation of a college admission. If the majority of the school is white because they were the most qualified out of the applicants received, then so be it. The fact that a student checks the “White/Caucasian” box on their application shouldn’t matter; it shouldn’t even be seen by the college admissions board.
