Michigan took the easy way

The Supreme Court has been petitioned to hear a case involving the admissions processes used at the University of Michigan. In the case, the petitioners say Michigan was discriminatory in that they would regularly accept lesser qualified minorities to the undergraduate college and law school, denying qualified whites admission. A previous appellate decision stated that Michigan's policies were narrowly tailored to give "just enough consideration to race without unduly harming non-minority applicants."\nThis is not the way affirmative action was supposed to be done. Affirmative action is supposed to be the boost that equally qualified minority applicants need to get in the door, not a roadblock for qualified whites so lesser qualified minorities could be placed to fill quotas.Truthfully, if the only reason an institute wants a student to attend is because the student is of a different skin tone, what is that saying about the quality of learning environment and administrative integrity for that school?\nRacism is still a problem in the United States. Just two years ago, a black man in Texas was dragged behind a truck for miles, and just last year, popular opinion was that anyone with an Arab-looking face was a potential suicide bomber. On some college campuses, dressing in blackface is a fraternity initiation ritual and the only diversity is on the football team. Things in this country are still not equal, but no one wins in unfair circumstances. In the Michigan case, qualified students were denied, and lesser qualified students could be thrown into an academic situation they were not really prepared for. \nThis is just the surface of a much deeper issue regarding race and socioeconomic disadvantage in the American educational system. Poor and disadvantaged students often struggle to get to college, much less graduate from one. Some statistics say that only one out of every four black men that enters college will finish -- a disappointing number. And this is after the even more depressing figure that only 35 percent of all people, no matter what color, have a college degree. So some students need an extra boost, but it should not come at the expense of students of all colors who already meet the requirements.\nIf Michigan and other schools were to set up a conditional system to admit marginal students and help them improve, that would be an excellent way to contribute to the uprising of traditionally oppressed groups, and it would not put them in the way of students who can already meet the standards. With separate admissions requirements for standard and marginal students, Michigan and other schools could accomplish the goals of affirmative action without using minorities as excuses to obtain more federal funding, and qualified students could compete in their own league. Michigan would be helping ease the disparity of education between races instead of alienating groups of people.