America has come to be known as a land of golden opportunity where anyone can come and work to become whatever they dream. No matter where a person starts out, they have the ability to make their own dreams come true through hard work. All people have the opportunity to strive to be the best they can be. Everyone has equal rights, such as the ability to buy land or vote for what they believe in, no matter to what race or gender they belong. The exception to this equality, Affirmative Action, is something that many people don't see as being unjust. In the 1960s, a plan called Affirmative Action was put into effect. The idea behind this proposal was for minorities and women to be given special consideration in employment, education, and contracting decisions (www.uri.edu/affirmative_action/aa.html). While Affirmative Action is meant to help a group of people, the actual practice of this law has been unjust to non-minorities.
             Affirmative action is a problem because it allows many schools to admit students because of their gender or race, not according to merit. This is extremely unfair to the people who don't fall within the group deemed minorities. For example, Julia McLaughlin, a white thirteen-year-old girl, applied to Boston Latin School, a very prestigious public school located in Boston, Massachusetts, and was denied entry because of her race. She had scored well on her entrance exam; in fact, she scored higher than more than 100 minority students, all of who were admitted (www.adversity.net/c4_tbd.html). When questioned about why this happened, the school's superintendent, Thomas Payzant, justified this reverse discrimination as a method of creating "racial diversity"(www.adversity.net/c4_tbd.html). Although diversity is being achieved, many qualified students are being penalized for the exact same standard that minority students are being rewarded for, race. This is just as unfair as the ...