Against Affirmative Action

For hundreds of years racism has been a big problem in society. Frederick Douglass best depicts racism in his autobiography, Frederick Douglass. He suffered through many hardships while he was a slave, and was fortunate to get out of slavery alive. Affirmative action is a way to increase the amounts of women and minorities on college campuses all around America. Affirmative action is wrong and will not solve the problem of racism.

Affirmative action is immoral and should not be used by colleges to decide who is accepted and who is denied admittance into the school. First, racism is still an enormous problem in society today. There are many people who are racist, or sexist, and affirmative action will not solve anything in today’s society. If a white person applies to Harvard and they have 3.8 GPA and make a 1300 on the SAT, they pretty much know they will get in. Then an African American minority student may apply to Harvard with a 3.4 GPA and makes a 1200 on the SAT. The white student gets a letter in the mail saying that it came down to a tie between him and an African American who had a 3.8 GPA and made a 1200 on the SAT. It said he was not chosen because the school wanted to have a more diverse campus and to give minorities a chance to succeed.

Second, affirmative action causes tension on school campuses between different races. When schools would divide races up by dorms and by classes it would create tension between the races. Since they would not interact with each other they would not know what to do when they did and it would create hatred between the races. Then if two students were going to go to the same school, and they just knew that they would be accepted because they were the top one and two of their graduating class. One ends up getting in and the other does not get accepted under a minority who was less qualified as him. The person who ends up going to the school would feel hatred towards the minority.

For people who believe in affirmative action, they have no idea what they are supporting. First, it is generally understood that children from poor minorities do not always have the support to push them through school. Because they are poor, their parents might work more that one job. Consequently the kids might blow off school. College admissions officers might look and see a lot less of the minority population does not attend college. if admission counselors want to make the campus more diverse, they might choose a under qualified minority student, over a well-qualified majority student just to make the campus more diverse.

Third, those who support affirmative action believe it is giving under qualified students a second chance at succession. Think about when they were wasting time partying, while students from the majority were at home writing a paper and ended up not getting accepted, under a minority student who did not care about school. The teens do not deserve a second chance when they blew their first chance. If they did not put in all of the effort then why should they get accepted over the well-qualified majority student? I know that I would be mad if that happened to me. If I put in all of that time and worked really hard, I would feel resentfulness toward the minorities. Affirmative action will not solve racism and will only make the problem of racism even worse. If someone knows that they were declined over a minority student that would make them feel hatred towards minorities for a long time.

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