When Color Determines Futures | Teen Ink

When Color Determines Futures

January 11, 2010
By westennis SILVER, Houston, Texas
westennis SILVER, Houston, Texas
5 articles 0 photos 0 comments

How would you like to be admitted into a college just because of your skin color and not because of your intellect? Colleges, such as Stanford, have been giving extra academic points to students that are of a different race or color, or that have grown up in a tough part of the USA. This means that if you are not a minority and do not have a different skin color, you have a strong chance of not being admitted into a college that is for affirmative action. I am going to argue that affirmative action is wrong because not only is it unfair, but it is racist to minorities and people of different races.

Affirmative action, was it meant to help or destroy America? In some ways affirmative action is good and is helpful. Affirmative action gives extra points to minorities based on what skin color they have, whether or not they have grown up in a poor part of the world, or any other disadvantage they might have. If you were a minority that needed to receive a good education, affirmative action could help boost your chances of making it into a good college. But on the other side, the way I look at it, affirmative action is absurd. Affirmative action judges people based on race, skin color, and sex. I don’t think that most students want to be admitted into a college based on their complexion, but based on their intellect. Also, since affirmative action aids minorities more than it does middle class people, the minority has a greater chance of getting into a college of his or her choice. This means that if a middle class student with a high SAT grade and a great GPA applied to a college that was pro affirmative action, he would have a less likely chance of being admitted into the college than the minority with the lower SAT grade and GPA. The student who works harder and is more deserving of being admitted is declined even though he met the criterion to be admitted into the college. In some cases, a minority could use affirmative action as a way to get into any school he or she wanted. He or she could take advantage of affirmative action and use it as a reason to slack off and maybe eventually drop out of the college. A cartoon that I observed showed a white man standing on mountain watching a black man climb the mountain using a tall box that was labeled affirmative action. It is unfair to other students. The students that endured the hardships of high school so that they could get into a good college are not given that tall box like minorities are. I agree with Bowman in that “a wrong can not be righted by another wrong” (http://blog.oregonlive.com/community_writers/2009/07/affirmative_action_is_just_wro.html). I feel that if affirmative action is to continue, racism will never stop.

One arguing against my opinion, would say that affirmative action could help minorities get a decent education. I agree with that, but in the process the minorities are being singled out. This is how racism ties into the dilemma of affirmative action. It happens to be that most minorities are black or Hispanic. Affirmative action can cause one to believe that all Hispanics and blacks are uneducated and stupid. Affirmative action is calling minorities stupid. Also, one might say that affirmative action could increase diversity. Increasing diversity is not an academic purpose of a college. A college is made to give people an education not to be diverse. Colleges that are for affirmative action just for the purpose of increasing diversity are not always good. Stanford is for affirmative action to increase diversity, but it has segregated dorms, graduations, and classrooms. You would think that if a school wanted diversity, they would treat the people of a different ethnicity better and not be racist and segregate them off from the rest of the college. Observing this, one can assume that affirmative action is racist and unfair.

In conclusion, I can prove that affirmative action is racist because it singles out minorities and makes them seem stupid. Affirmative action is unfair in that it lessens a hardworking student’s chances of getting into the college of his or her choice by giving a minority extra academic points which could raise his or her chances of getting into the college. Middle class students are not given the chance that minorities are with affirmative action. This is why affirmative action is unfair and racist.



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