Affirmative action has backfired

The acceptance of students by college administrators should be completely fair and unbiased for this decision can greatly impact a student’s life. However, affirmative action policies favor other races over others. This practice is outdated, seeing as how the National Center on Education Statists report that in 2011, 63 percent Hispanic, 69 percent Caucasian, 65 percent of African American high school graduates enrolled in college. When looking at just the statistics, great difference among the enrollment of races no longer exists.

“I think it was necessary when it first came to practice,” sophomore Erika Hathaway said. “But now, I think it can be unfair to the other races that do not get this benefit.”

Currently, there are eight states in the United States that banned affirmative action. California became the first state to banaffirmative action in 1996, but there have been calls to bring back this practice. In January of this year, Senate Constitutional Amendment Five passed the vote in the state senate, and if it had passed the public vote, affirmative action would have been reinstated s public schools. Nevertheless, there are still 65 percent Americans that oppose affirmative action. Bringing this system back will lead to less qualified students being accepted; the decision of admittance or the presentation of scholarships should not be affected by an ethnicity. Instead, universal disadvantages among all races, such as economical hardships, should be considered.

Affirmative action in essence promotes discrimination against certain races even though its objective is to close the gap between the races. College institutions should educate the students that meet their academic criteria; and in order offer equal opportunity to everyone, colleges must see the applications with unbiased eyes that do not privilege specific ethnicities.