It
is impossible to build a strong tower on a week base. Affirmative action seeks
to bridge the racial gap of the nation’s elite by helping students of diverse
racial backgrounds get into elite schools across the country, thus putting them
into a situation for which they are not prepared. Instead we should be focusing
on improving this nation educational foundations and making sure that no matter
what area based public school a child attends they are receiving a quality
education. While affirmative action is not ineffective it does not
effectively solve the problem it set out to fix, only make that harder to see. While
a school may appear to be diverse on the surface because of affirmative action,
students brought in by affirmative action will still be less prepared and less suited
for their situations. Most high level educational institutions in this country are
meritocracies so bringing in kids because of their race even though they may be
weaker than other students does a disservice to the school and its ideals. Affirmative
action can also weaken the confidence of anyone perceived to have acquired their
position by anything other than merit. To conclude I would like to share a
quote from Lyndon B. Johnson, "You do not take a person who, for years,
has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line
of a race and then say you are free to compete, with all the others, and still
just believe that you have been completely fair."
-Bennett Slibeck
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