Affirmative action is an attempt at providing special accommodations to people of races that have faced economic and social roadblocks. These accommodations include accepting a minority to a college as opposed to a person of a majority population, if their grades and achievements are similar. The constitutionality of this has been challenged in the 1978 case of Bakke v. Regents of University of California, in which court case affirmative action was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court. In an upcoming case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, this issue will once again be challenged in court.

Minorities should not be given preferential treatment in college admissions due to their race, as it is unfair to the majority population (whites) who may have more merit and accomplishments than the person of the minority race. In  a May 21 Pew Research Center values survey, only 31 percent of the public agreed that “we should make every effort to improve the position of blacks and minorities, even if it means giving them preferential treatment.” More than twice as many (65 percent) disagreed with this statement.

With benevolent intentions, affirmative action was put in place to rectify past grievances and help those minority groups who were disadvantaged in the past. Higher education means greater opportunities for the future. By the end of the college process, however, individuals may feel cheated by the system that gives preferential treatment based on minority characteristics unrelated to merit and achievement. In fact, instead of promoting diversity and alleviating racial tensions, the affirmative action aspect of college admission can foster resentment among various ethnic groups. A student can work for grades, scores, and extracurricular activities; a student cannot change his or her race, and thus it’s unfair that race is considered in otherwise merit-based admissions process.

It is not only unfair, but unjust, whena student’s race is taken into account during college admissions. As Tennessee Congressional Representative Steve Cohen said in 2008, affirmative action is “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” The implications of affirmative action suggest that minorities cannot compete in the intricacies of college admissions. It’s insulting. We are in the 21 century; students should be able to feel accomplished and confident in their academic merit regardless of their racial backgrounds.

This system has also become disadvantageous to certain minority and non-minority groups. College and career opportunities for these people are limited when merit accomplishments can be overridden by the well-intended, but detrimental, goal to “diversify” the student body. Students with roots, or even dual-citizenship, in culturally-rich places, like parts of Europe and the Middle East, or the more ethnic areas of Southeast Asia, get overlooked under the general umbrella of “Caucasian” or “Asian.” To properly diversify the student body, admissions officers should  not consider race in applications. There are so many factors that fall under diversity, from geography, religion, family history, birthplace and language. To consider race as a diversifying factor is simply unnecessary when a student can be so cultural without having an ethnic heritage.

This attempt for equality in college admissions has become a system full of injustice and lost opportunities. In all fairness, diligence and achievement in academics are the factors that propel a student to success, not a student’s race. As stated in the introduction paragraph above, elevation of minorities’ college applications does not comply with the Equal Protection clause in the Constitution, so getting rid of affirmative action in college admission is the only way to have a fair system free of inequity.