Affirmative Action-Jonathan

In reference to affirmative action, I have very mixed feelings on whether or not it should be eliminated. The reason I say this is because although it does attempt to level the playing field by giving minority students a chance to attend highly resourced schools, it also takes away opportunities for students who are often overlooked in the minority spectrum. I think people often associate blacks, and Hispanics as "minorities" but forget that there also poor whites and Asians who are overlooked by stereotypes which surround them. Inclusively, although affirmative action attempts to "diversify" schools to mix cultures and fix common stereotypes, I feel it has the opposite affect in which people are forced to embrace these stereotypes further perpetuating them because people are forced to generalize who belongs in what group, and who fits under whichever title when ultimately everyone should be viewed for their intelligence and personality. On the other hand, I recognize that it helps give an opportunity to students who's academics would be otherwise be overlooked just because of their religion or race. Subsequently, affirmative action levels the playing field giving an equal opportunity for minorities to receive the level of education which they would otherwise be denied. However, when looking at the demographics of some of the best schools in the country, the demographics don't seem to be 50/50, rather it seems as if a only a percentile, if that, of minorities make up these. Thus, it calls to question: is affirmative action really making much of a change? Hence derives the confusion in deciding whether or not affirmative action really aids in eliminating education racial equality? I do however believe with it's purpose and if it weren't flawed in some ways, I would definitely agree with it. Even more, I think that for affirmative action to really make in impact it has to change the mindset of the people in our country to stop categorizing everyone based on the their race and the stereotypes which follow. For ultimately everyone's story is very different and everyone has a different background. Hence if stopped judging everyone, and assuming everything we could get passed the idea of "minorities" and we could start viewing one another for our academics, work and personality. So hopefully in the future we might not even need affirmative action because we will all accept one another and everyone will simply have an equal chance for education, not keeping money involved, however that is very unrealistic and probably will never happen.