Michael Bogdanos - Affirmative action

Affirmative action is inherently a flawed system of the past, for a variety of reasons. Affirmative action, in its simplest sense is lowering the standards of college applications for minorities. I hold firm the belief that raising standards for whites is just as ignorant and as unjust as lowering standards for minorities is offensive. This concept inherently suggests that because minorities are minorities their intellectual abilities are lower than whites’. Not only is this assumption grossly offensive, but it has been the sole cause for racism in our country: the belief that minorities are lesser than whites. Affirmative action is attempting to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, perpetuating racism along with it. There is an unbalance in grades and SAT scores, but this has nothing to do with race. It has to do with money. A student’s score will not be lower simply because of the color of his skin. It will change based on the amount of money that student was able to devote towards test preparations. The Hispanic student who got a 2000 on the SAT should not have an advantage over the white student who got a 2150. College admissions should take into account, however, that the underprivileged students who got a 2000 could be equal to, or greater than, the wealthy one who got a 2150. This is because while college admissions should be based on merit and future potential, grades and SAT scores are a measure of past success, and for the underprivileged, their past success has been hampered not by the color of their skin but by the money in their pockets (or lack thereof). Affirmative action as it is makes unfair allowances for successful minorities and leaves behind the impoverished whites.