When Affirmative Action Takes a Wrong | Teen Ink

When Affirmative Action Takes a Wrong

January 31, 2010
By colby4321 BRONZE, Houston, Texas
colby4321 BRONZE, Houston, Texas
4 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
-Friedrich Nietzsche


The time is always right to do what is right. -Martin Luther King, Jr. This is true. It is always the right time to stop what is destroying us as a community… affirmative action. Affirmative action was created to give a little extra points to different races and sexes around the world when applying to college and with that comes a whole different matter of arguments. Why do different races and sexes get points just because of their sex and race? Is that really fair? To answer those questions, people give points to different sexes, races, and people with lesser money when getting into college; and no, this is not really fair. Even though you are a different race or sex should not mean that you need extra attention when trying to apply to a college. That’s when I say that affirmative action is wrong.

The fact of it is affirmative action is racist against all races and sexist against all genders. People might think if you are of a different race and got into college that allows affirmative action to take place that you needed it and with it got in. For example, if a black person got a fifteen hundred and a white person got a fifteen hundred but since one is black and one is white, the black person would get extra “bonus points” because of their race and the white person would be denied entrance into that college. While the black person is in college, his/her colleagues would think they only got in because of affirmative action and that sparks the fire of racism.

Which leads to my second reason. Who is to say that minorities cannot get into college by themselves without any help? There are people who are minorities who get extra points when they don’t need any. Here is an example. A person has a fifteen hundred and a minority has a fourteen-fifty. Lets just say the minority is given one hundred extra points because they are female. Well, since the female has been given one hundred extra points it adds up to fifteen-fifty. The female would get in and the male would not even though the male has a higher knowledge then the female. This abysmal act is only cheating us. It is not fair to the men in the society because females are outnumbering them in colleges when some are not suppose to be there. I’m not saying that I’m sexist; I just believe that we shouldn’t give women any bonus points because it isn’t fair for the men. Why couldn’t they get in by themselves anyways? Are women not as smart as men? I believe everyone is equal.

The reason you should get accepted into college is because of your test scores and GPA. Doesn’t that matter too? That’s the whole point of being accepted into college. It shouldn’t be based on gender, race, and income because it doesn’t define who you are and what your capable of. It should be based on your overall knowledge and if your knowledge is strong enough to get into that certain college.

One might argue that the reason these minorities need extra points to get into college is because their school they grew up with was awful but even though it was, the ones who deserve to be sent to college will have been paying attention, getting extra help, forming study groups, etc… Those are the ones that deserve to get into the college.

Some people say that there is no racism in our community today. I will strongly quarrel against anyone who says that. Whoever says that must not be aware of the issues there has been in our society. I have witnessed it and I know there are people in our hometowns that are racist. I was out shopping one day and happened to overhear and see a man and woman talking amongst them. The man was arguing with the woman that there was no need for her to be here in our country and that she needed to go back to Mexico and I was just in absolute shock. It was very frightening to see and listen to all of that. My point is that there is still racism in the world today.

What we need to do is be equal that way everyone will have the same chances of getting into college as everyone else. To make this happen, we should only look at test scores and GPA because that is what college should be based on.


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