Affirmative Action Should Be Abolished

Discrimination Station

Anyone can potentially get into Harvard, but how? It is simple, as long as the people applying for the university are the right race. This policy may sound crazy, but it is real and it is called affirmative action. Affirmative action gives preferential treatment to minorities in admission to universities or employment in government and business (Messerli). Many people believe this action is the right thing to do to create even more diversity in schools. Affirmative action was created to ensure fair admission practices and to rectify a long period of racial discrimination (“Affirmative Action/Overview”). However, affirmative action should be abolished because it actually creates reverse discrimination, it lowers standards for grades, and is very stereotypical and unconstitutional.

Affirmative action actually does the exact opposite of what it originally intended to do by creating reverse discrimination. Author Joe Messerli argues that “a poverty- stricken white student who uses discipline and hard work to become the best he can be can be passed over by a rich minority student who doesn’t put in much effort at all.” In other words, Messerli is trying to say that by trying to accept more minorities who do not deserve to be accepted, it is discriminating a white student who actually has worked for his grades. Universities are supposed to make their acceptance decisions based on grades from former years of high school, not just by what color skin a person has. The University of Michigan is known to participate in this practice. In fact, the University of Michigan rates their potential applicants based on a point system. Being a minority student applicant would earn more than twice as many points ...

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...h, the students are ill-equipped to handle the schools they have been admitted to because they have not had such high standards in high school (Messerli). In other words, those students are not prepared for their classes they will take at the universities and will waste their money.

Overall, minorities should not be rewarded to high end universities just because they are a certain race. Affirmative action should be abolished because it is unfair to hardworking students that deserve to get into good universities. This policy leads to reverse discrimination, lowers standards, is unconstitutional, and is stereotypical. Why should deserving students be turned away from universities because they simply do not have the right color skin yet they have all the right grades? Affirmative action was created to end discrimination, but it seems it is only creating more.