by Brett Hofmeister

Created on: March 02, 2009

First of all, there is only one race and it is the human race. I believe the question here should be whether ethnicity should be used in determining who should be allowed to attend college and I believe it shouldn't. I understand that colleges are trying to level the playing field by accepting certain, predetermined percentages of each ethnic group but they are also making it unfair to people who belong to the ethnic majority and deserve to be accepted. All that should matter is whether a person meets the requirements of the college and ethnicity should have nothing to do with those requirements.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /

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Statistically speaking, most people who belong to ethnic minority groups make less money, have less education, and less opportunity than people of the ethnic majority. This is the lingering effect of the antiquated "I'm better than you because you look different," philosophy. I understand that they need help and the playing field should be level for all involved. No one should be held back by their ethnic background because they didn't choose to be born that way. Paying someone less or turning them away from a college education or job opportunity simply because of their ethnicity is ridiculous. Creating equal opportunity means giving everyone a fair chance. I think colleges have lost sight of that by accepting people based on their ethnicity.

There have been many times when people have been turned away because of their ethnicity. This is wrong no matter who is being turned away. For a long time anyone who was of the ethnic minority could be turned away from anything simply because they were "different." Now it seems to be the opposite. People of the ethnic majority are being turned away because they are "too similar." Colleges are accepting people of the ethnic minority over more qualified people of the ethnic majority simply because they want to have a more diverse population on campus. They justify this by assuming that someone of the ethnic majority could easily go elsewhere and still succeed because they have such great grades, class history, test scores, and other statistics colleges look at. If they have such great attributes why not accept them? The most qualified person should be accepted regardless of their ethnicity.

I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if ethnic groups weren't so separate. What if every country, state, city, school, business, and home had roughly the same percentage of each ethnicity present? Asians, specifically the Chinese and Indian peoples, would be the dominant ethnicity everywhere. How would we deal with our feelings about other ethnic groups if we had to be around them every single day? I believe we would eventually learn to get along and accept everyone based on who they are instead of judging them based on how they look. Until we can learn to accept people of different ethnicities we will be stuck on an uneven field where someone is always getting the advantage.

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