“Dude, the only reason why UNCW accepted you is because you’re black.” Funny thing is I’m Hispanic, too.

If I had a dollar for every time the thought crosses a colleague’s mind, my college ticket would be paid for.

It seems a majority of non-minority students on college campuses, as well as the general public, assume minority students are here to play sports or help the school reach a “quota.”They assume the bar was lowered for our skin color, as if we are getting accepted into universities over the people who work hard to get into college to acquire that well-earned job.

None of that is true.

Yet affirmative action creates that bias. Affirmative action heavily aids in the effort to put more minorities on the right track, yet its flaws create a social quandary that isn’t going away anytime soon.

No one wants to have something for nothing­- to have the gratification of achieving higher education based on something that did not require effort to accomplish.

In fact, it’s insulting.

Let me describe a man and let you decide what you think of his achievements.

This man has a B.A. in international relations from Columbia University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, serving as the editor of the Harvard Law Review. He served seven years as an Illinois State Senator, resigning to assume U.S. Senate responsibilities. He has authored three books, one of which was a bestseller. In 2005, 2007 and 2008, TIME magazine recognized him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2009 he went on the win the Nobel Peace Prize. Does race really matter at this point? It shouldn’t. But the achievements of Barack Obama, the man described above, are being attributed to his skin color.

In this time of political uproar with the election rapidly approaching, I hear people say, “Obama only got elected because he was black!” several times weekly. Don’t those qualifications deserve tp be judged beyond racial lines?

There are exceptions, though. There are examples of unqualified students getting accepted to a college they didn’t earn acceptance to. But let’s not attribute race for actual minority achievement.

Look at UNCW’s demographics. Look around in your classrooms this week and count how many people aren’t white. There’s maybe one or two, right? There are approximately 11,000 Caucasian students in comparison to the less that 2,000 total minorities. According to recent studies, in the US only about 32 percent of college undergraduates are of minority descent (that includes all minorities). Even worse, only 25 percent of all graduate students in America are minorities.

The quota system of the Civil Rights Act was thrown out in the 1960s, so in retrospect there is no binding law that college campus or corporations have to accept or hire a certain number of minorities. No law says, “Hire this many black people and this many Hispanics.” It all varies. It’s all based on a university’s image and how diverse the student population should be.

How exactly is affirmative action the main reason most of minorities are in college when so few actually attend universities (despite making up more than one-third of the population in America)?

I agree that there is a place for affirmative action at UNCW. Just think of the drop of minority population around college campuses without it. It does need to be reformed badly. But let’s not act like race is the reason why I’m here, or any other minority student at UNCW.

We beat the odds to get here and we earn our spot every day we come to class. Success at UNCW means more than skin color.