An aspiring young high school graduate applies to a university in hopes of being accepted. He anxiously awaits confirmation. He attends the campus frequently to be involved; he has excellent recommendations, a great GPA and good SAT scores, and an overall deep wanting to go that University. Meanwhile, a young school graduate applies to the same University. However there is a different side to the story. The other applicant lives in a small town, she is poor, a minority, does not have as great GPA and SAT scores, and is the first to go to college from her family. While the other student is ambitiously pursuing this University, she is simply applying in hopes of getting in. The time comes to see if you will get accepted or not. Now before you wonder who gets in, I must inform you of some information that could affect your decision on who gets in. Affirmative action is like a point system for different characteristics for the applicant. Now who do you think deserves to get in? The small town girl gets in, and the aspiring guy gets looks over because he did not have enough points. The girl got points for being a minority, being from a small town, and for being poor, and just being a girl. Without affirmative action, this girl would not have gotten in. I am against affirmative action because even if you let in more minorities, it does not mean it is going to be more diverse and less racist and segregated.

If you really examine affirmative action, it is racist. Racism is prejudice and discriminating against different races. If a college applicant gets extra points on his application for being a minority, then that would be discriminating against the other applicant if they did not get extra points for being white; is that not racist? Now the other side argues that without affirmative it is racist because it is not letting in other minorities in the campus. Colleges have the right to give points for extra curricular activities, GPA, SAT, teacher recommendations, grades, and outside activities from school. Applicants do not deserve to get points on being a minority, small town, gender, and other factors that are not school related. Applicants deserved to be judged on there IQ and what special features they offer. For example, who would you want accept; a kid who is smart, plays the violin and football, or the kid from a poor small town, who is not as smart and does not offer much to the campus, except for being a minority?

If you walk around a university, you see that they are rich in diversity, religions, and other factors that affect diversity. However you not just need minorities for diversity. You need different people with different capabilities for different activities. Each kid that is accepted offers something to the unique to the university. There are different clubs, sports, and classes that everyone is involved in. Most universities argue that they use affirmative action because it adds diversity. Most likely when they mean diversity they mean adding different minorities to the campus. Universities do not realize that they do not need minorities to add diversity; they need kids with different, unique capabilities diversity. Imagine, a group of football players, cheerleaders, band mates, and a violinist group socializing with other groups. Now imagine Now I am not saying we should not let in other minorities, we need to let them in because of the right reasons; not just miscellaneous points for reasons that are not important when dealing with knowledge.

What campuses also overlooked is that affirmative action promotes segregation. Take for example a university that had separate graduations, one being only African American and the other being everyone else. This university promoted segregation and did allow diversity to spread through different minorities. If you let in a lot of each race into a university, they will not meat new people, they will not join new activities and new classes. They will stay in their racial group and will not want to break out of their racial shell. If there were a campus with a fair amount of racial diversity, and the university started to let in several more Asians because there was a shortage; I think other groups around them would start to view them as the Asian crowd and nothing else. To me that seems like it would add a lot of racial tension and segregation to the campus instead of diversity.

In the end several universities do not realize that affirmative action promotes segregation, it is racist, and affirmative action does not help diversity. The reason there is so much debate or against and for affirmative action is because it affects almost everyone; when you apply to school or when you apply for a job. All the needless points for an applicant that is not as deserving as the other applicant is not fair. We have all heard the saying nothing is fair; well to me, I believe the fairest way to accept applicants is not through affirmative action.