Throughout the course of history, it has always been thought that students who were ethnically diverse or part of a minority race were discriminated against in the realm of education and did not always receive equal treatment as white students.  In historical cases such as Brown v. Board of Education, minorities have fought back against unfair preferential treatment for white students and strived for equality in all aspects of the educations system. However, recently, a new trend has been occurring and is particularly apparent in college admissions, where there seems to be a reverse in this standard view of racism. Instead of whites, minorities are the students who are being unfairly favored.  Many competitive colleges prefer to accept students of more rare ethnicities over whites because they aim to create diverse and well-rounded student bodies that are composed of various cultures and ethnicities, creating a more interesting college campus.  When college admissions departments look through and scrutinize thousands of applications for their school, often times having a race such as African American, Latino, or Indian makes students much more competitive than a white student who may be just as qualified for the school.  For this reason, college racism when deciding who to accept has become extremely controversial, and white students believe that acceptance should be independent of skin color and based solely off of academic achievement and merit.  Although some argue that college racism is justified because it offers minority students opportunities and creates a more diverse atmosphere in colleges, as long as qualified white students are being rejected based on their race, college racism is not ethical, and acceptance should be based on factors excluding race. 

Although it is apparent that favoring one race over the other should not be allowed in college admissions, some believe that colleges have a right to discriminate based on their desired racial distributions, and an increased amount of opportunity available for minorities.  Colleges use racial discrimination in order to provide the most diverse campus and experience for the students. Living on campus with the diverse ethnicities can help provide new learning experiences.  Therefore, this makes campuses more versatile with different types of people, and avoids a culturally homogeneous learning environment.  Colleges justify their racist actions by a recent Supreme Court ruling referred to as affirmative action.  An article entitled “Race Still Matters in the College Admission Process” by Calvin Ratana, a respected writer from the Sundial, discusses affirmative action, and defines it as “the practice of improving the educational and job opportunities of members of groups that have not been treated fairly in the past because of their race, sex, etc.,” stating that it “just factors in race as one of the many criterias that institutions use in the consideration of who to admit into colleges” (1).  People who support this practice of affirmative action in college admissions view it as a way to compensate for the probable setbacks that minorities have had throughout their lives due to conditions of hardship economically or socially.  Colleges justify racial preferences as giving minorities the opportunities they need to be successful in life, since commonly minorities are less fortunate than students who are white, and without college acceptances and scholarships they may not be able to achieve their full potential on their own.  In an article entitled “Poverty Preference Admissions: The New Affirmative Action?” by US News writer Lauren Camera, it states that “Race-conscious affirmative action has been used for decades to address past inequities and offer students from disadvantaged minority groups – especially African-Americans and Latinos – a better chance at gaining access to college” (1).  This mindset of college application offices is often regarded as a positive thing that benefits many disadvantaged minorities and offers them valuable opportunities that they would not have access to if affirmative action did not exist.  However, this perspective disregards the repercussions of favoring certain students based on their skin color, and how this affects the remaining students who deserve opportunities just as much.  Although affirmative action was created to try and diminish pre-existing racial inequalities in education, it seems rather counterproductive today, because it is creating a form of reverse racism that is just as unfair as discrimination has been in the past.  For this reason, the justification of racism in college admission is wrong, and the perspective that diversity benefits campuses and minorities should consider the consequences of this unethical preferential treatment. 

It is unfair to those of the Caucasian ethnicity to be rejected from a college because of their race if they have comparable high school achievements to other ethnicities that are being accepted. Intelligence is not based on race, and if a school is trying to admit the best possible class, they must disregard the ethnicities and focus mainly on the achievements of each of the individuals to make it a fair system. According to Emily Deruy, writer for ABC News, “The 468 most selective colleges spend anywhere from two to nearly five times as much per student as less selective institutions. African Americans and Hispanics who attend those schools also gain 21 percent in earning advantages compared with just 15 percent for whites who attend the same schools” (2). In other words, Deruy is saying that there is an unbalanced advantage towards African Americans and Hispanics in education when compared to whites. The advantages for the minorities have gone so far in fact, Hispanics college enrollment rate passed the whites, by 49 percent to 47 percent (Krogstad, Fry 2). Many court situations have occurred in which a student of a certain race wasn’t accepted into a college, but another student with equal or lesser achievements is accepted. For example, one of the biggest cases in the past decade was the Grutter v. Bollinger case in which a white resident from Michigan applied to the University of Michigan Law School, and was denied admission. Michigan Law School admits to using race factor in making their final decision in order to achieve diversity among the organization (Oyez 2). It’s not just whites being scrutinized, all ethnicities are, and the most logical way is if there is no category for race in the application, making it fair so that the most intelligent people are accepted. In California, Asian-Americans push to exceed whites and other minorities, CNN writer Carl Aruz says “At the University of California Berkeley campus, for example, 43% of 2010 undergraduates were Asian, while 33% were white” (2). The use of racial discrimination in college admissions should not be used, and college admissions should be kept legitimate and unbiased by being based solely off of grades, test scores, extracurriculars, and clubs, disregarding race as a deciding factor.

Although affirmative action was created to provide equality, in actuality, it has created conflict for many students’ chances of getting into their college of choice, by limiting their access based on their race. In order to restore equality in secondary education admissions, the concept of affirmative action should be removed from the school system, and the entire nation of the United States should follow the eight states who have already banned affirmative action.  In an article entitled “What Can We Learn from States That Ban Affirmative Action” by the political researcher, Haley Potter, it states “In all likelihood, more universities will be sued for their consideration of race in admissions, and more states will decide to ban affirmative action” and “public flagship universities responded to the bans on affirmative action by implementing new methods of promoting racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity on campus” (Potter 1).  This banning of affirmative action and implementation of new ways to promote diversity provides viable solutions to this college racism epidemic that is occurring across the country.  The remaining forty-two American States that still practice the policy of affirmative action should follow in the footsteps of the eight states that have already banned it, and who pioneer the way to equality in education for the country.  Instead of affirmative action, states should improve recruitment policies and financial aid for minority students that would have previously benefitted from affirmative action.  Rather than giving these students unfair preferential acceptance over white students, colleges should simply provide incentives for these students that would give them the same benefits but without sacrificing the other students who are deserving of admission.  Ultimately, admission should solely rely on the student's competitiveness and achievements in high school.  Racism should never be permitted, whether it is in favor of minorities or not, and ethnicity should not play any role in determining a person's future in education and success in life.  If college's remove race completely from the admission decision, college rejections or acceptances will directly reflect a student’s intelligence and work ethic, not genetics, and colleges will end up with a much stronger student body composed of students who are the most deserving of a spot at their school.

The rising trend of racial discrimination in American college acceptances has proved to be unethical and unjust on many occasions. The recent practice of affirmative action in education has defeated the purpose of why it was initially created, by producing more inequalities in the education system that are often overlooked.  Even though there are some instances where college acceptance racism benefits campus diversity and minorities, it is unfair for qualified white students to be rejected from a college solely based on their skin color.  In the future, colleges around America should ban affirmative action when making admission decisions, to restore equality and justice in college acceptances, and create a student body who truly deserves to attend their school. 

Works Cited

Azuz, Carl. "Should Race Be a Factor in College Admissions?" Schools of Thought RSS. N.p., 16 Feb. 2012. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
Camera, Lauren. "Poverty Preference Admissions: The New Affirmative Action?" US News. U.S.News & World Report, 12 Jan. 2016. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
DeRuy, Emily. "Here's Why We Might Want to Use Race in College Admissions." ABC News. ABC News Network, 31 July 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
"Grutter v. Bollinger." Oyez. Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
Krogstad, Jens, and Richard Fry. "More Hispanics, Blacks Enrolling in College, but Lag in Bachelor’s Degrees." Pew Research Center RSS. N.p., 24 Apr. 2014. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
Potter, Halley. "What Can We Learn from States That Ban Affirmative Action? - The Century Foundation." The Century Foundation. N.p., 26 June 2014. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
Ratana, Calvin. "Race Still Matters in the College Admissions Process." The Sundial. N.p., 16 Apr. 2014. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.