Imagine for a second that you are applying to an “Ivy League” school. You have worked tirelessly to get to the top of your class. However, only the “best” candidates are selected for admission. Weeks pass and you finally receive a response letter. The word “Denied” echoes in your mind. You start to think about how it could have happened. You got near-perfect grades, participated in clubs, and worked within the community. What if you later found out you were excluded because you didn't have blue eyes? You would feel cheated, right? While this is a hypothesis, this is the type of effect we are seeing resulting from the implementation and continued practice of affirmative action. For decades it has unfairly favored people based on their racial, ethnic, and largely superficial characteristics. However, it is possible to make reforms to improve the current structure, without completely eliminating the current system. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Affirmative Action consists of laws, guidelines, policies, and administrative practices intended to end and correct the effects of historical and systematic discrimination against less privileged minority groups. (Feinberg) Affirmative action has come under scrutiny from opponents in recent decades. One of the main reasons for such opposition against Affirmative Action is the belief that Affirmative Action policies actually promote reverse discrimination. Reverse discrimination involves discriminating against the majority in favor of the minority. In fact, many people, such as political activist Ward Connerly, argue that Affirmative Action is just another form of discrimination in itself. Although Affirmative Action seeks to help minority groups who have been previously oppressed, it has fallen victim to perpetuating the very discrimination it sought to alleviate. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote during the Supreme Court case Adadrand Constructors v Pena, "there is a 'moral and constitutional equivalence' between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to promote a certain notion current of equality". .” The summary of this quote is that there is no difference between laws that specifically punish a specific race and those that provide benefits because of race in order to ensure equality. While affirmative action may appear to benefit minorities, the policies are actually harmful to all students. or candidates, and does not actually guarantee the success of those who are supposedly advantaged. While studying law schools by UCLA School of Law professor Richard Sander, he found that “affirmative action gets students into schools that are too challenging for them. As a result, they are more likely to perform poorly and eventually drop out. Ultimately, affirmative action actually decreases the number of black lawyers law schools produce.” Because universities do not admit minority students solely on the basis of merit, they allow minority students who are likely to fail to take the place of students who are much more likely to succeed in that environment. This affects all demographics involved in the admissions application program, as those who deserve to be admitted are excluded and those who do not deserve to be admitted, at least based on the merit of their academic achievements, are driven to failure for the purpose of diversity. Affirmative action failedalso to reach the demographic groups they supposedly want to help, at the highest levels of education. During a 2003 panel, Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of Harvard's African and African-American studies department, and Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, made the comment that “most of them – maybe up to two third – were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or, to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples.” They also pointed out that “only about a third of the students came from families in which all four grandparents were born in this country, descendants of slaves.” These findings show how those who intend to receive the benefits of Affirmative Action policies are overlooked, due to the way they are classified. The intent of the Affirmative Action policy was to help members of groups previously discriminated against in the United States. However, the label African American is too broad to be specified for people of African descent, whose ancestors lived through a time when Africans or African Americans were systematically discriminated against, both in law and practice, by the United States and his people. The main counterargument against opposition to Affirmative Action is the belief that colleges and universities provide opportunities to minorities who have historically been excluded from the system due to their race, ethnicity, etc. This belief makes sense, as minorities have been systematically excluded from higher education in previous centuries. It is also difficult to support the claim that past centuries of discrimination, slavery, and segregation have had no effect on the current structure of our society. Many believe that these historical inequalities have had a profound effect on the current advantages and privileges that some groups have over others within the United States. In fact, this is the main reason these policies are in place. However, it is unfair to say that every member of a specific minority group has had the same experiences, overcome the same adversities, and comes from a similar background, mainly due to the generality of the terms. Affirmative Action policies tend to operate on this assumption. Indeed, the arbitrary label applied to all minorities, regardless of their socioeconomic status or background, as explained above, has failed to benefit those who have been truly affected by past oppression and discrimination. A significant part of these assumptions is the idea that anyone who is not a member of a previously oppressed group has somehow benefited from the oppression of said minority groups, or at the very least has somehow gained some sort of social advantage due to of this. However, there is a solution to this complicated problem. If affirmative action policy were to be redirected from a focus on race, ethnicity, gender, etc., and instead focused on socioeconomic status, those who are intended to receive the benefits of affirmative action would receive attention, without alienating other groups equally disadvantaged. The new system would separate the population into several distinct groups based on income and other socioeconomic factors to avoid excluding those from poorer areas, who are in fact disproportionately African or Hispanic American, without lowering the standards of academic standards. The advantage of this system is that those who do not belong to a specific minority group are not disadvantaged because of it. Additionally, members of the poorest African and Hispanic communities will receive individual attention, rather than being overshadowed by.