Since the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s, preferential  racial treatments have been working to increase minority participation and improve opportunities for historically excluded groups.

This treatment is called affirmative action.

Landmark Supreme Court cases such as Regents of California v. Bakke (1978) and Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) have stated that quotas, numerical goals for a certain number of minorities cannot be used in the college admission process.

Diversity, however, can be used as a legitimate government scapegoat and thus, race can be considered as a “plus factor” when making college admission decisions.

But in California, Proposition 209 (1996) prevents state governmental institutions from using race or sex to give preferential treatment in public education and employment.

Debates over affirmative action programs have become quite important in the political world.

Those who support an equal chance of success for everyone often support preferential treatment programs as a way to ensure that the Constitution is not color-blind nor sex-neutral.

Race shouldn’t matter when it comes to college admissions.

At Cal High, there are a variety of students from all races and cultural backgrounds.

All these students can choose to take the same classes without any regards to their ethnicity.

Success in high school is all merit based, depending only on a student’s initiative and ability to push himself or herself.

Race is never considered when someone takes a test or takes part in some extracurricular activity.

Why, then, should these external factors matter when admission officers look at a student’s grades, essays, and test scores when he or she is applying for college?

How well a student does often depends solely on his or her effort.

According to The Huffington Post, colleges often look at students in comparison to the rest of their school rather than in comparison to students from other schools.

This fact contradicts the common misconception that students can only go to the best colleges if they go to the best, most competitive schools.

So, excelling at a presumably “bad” and noncompetitive high school would often allow for a student to go to even better colleges than he or she would with the same results at Cal High.

In this case, why should the student’s race be important?

A point in defense of affirmative action programs is that these minorities have historically been subjected to racism and inequality.

For example, Native Americans, African Americans and Jewish people have been subject in the past to historical racial discrimination.

Today, our society has made great advances in trying to ensure equality of opportunity for all students, regardless of race or ethnic background.

Of course, we can still see discrepancies in unemployment, crime rates, and wealth among those of different races.

Race should not hurt anyone, but it should not help anyone either.