Opinion: Affirmative action or reverse racism?

Flashback to a few years ago when the only stress was applying for college. Those long and tedious essays, taking the ACT or SAT, cumulative GPA…so many factors played into whether or not a student will be accepted by a university. Ethnicity and race have ended up being key factors for public universities within the past few years. Now that the initial desires of affirmative action plans instilled by universities have been fulfilled, reverse affirmative action has been prevalent and present.

The Fisher v. University of Texas case of 2008 is coming back into play. Fisher is going through the appeals process and had a hearing with the federal appeals court this past week. Fisher’s legal team told the court that the affirmative-action procedure “was unnecessary because the campus had achieved a critical mass of minority students.” Fisher’s head attorney, Bert Rein stated, "the university had no numerical standards.”

Affirmative action is a process that should not be applied to any school or workplace. Having to fulfill a quota is something that a school or business should never have to worry about or attempt. From an education standpoint, there are thousands of students across the nation that have higher scores, higher GPAs, and a better application than other students. However, those other students may be Latino, African-American, Asian, or a female; those students will have better chance at being accepted into a school based purely on ethnicity or gender, even though their scores may be lower.

Caucasian males in this nation are now being completely overlooked due to affirmative action. Affirmative action, one may say, can be referred to as reverse racism. Minorities are being chosen over Caucasians because of quotas, not because of scores, work ethics, resumes, etc. Quotas should not be instilled anywhere. They instill a sense that a business or school needs to focus more on what the ethnicity, race, or gender of a person is rather than their resume or test score.

Affirmative action is already proving to have reverse effects. The longer this process is in place, the more reverse effects the nation will see. This process needs to be removed. Not only is it unjust but it is also ridiculous. It excludes people that are clearly a better choice than a minority. Remove affirmative action and have acceptance processes be based solely on performance and resumes, not the gender, race, or ethnicity.