Affirmative action is not a perfect solution to increasing diversity in educational and occupational spheres. While the program may seem to benefit minority groups, affirmative action seeks to bend the socioeconomic rules already put in place instead of addressing the main systemic issue. Helping underprivileged communities by creating new laws, educational opportunities, and outreach programs would better tackle the pre-existing problem.

Many complications also arise when dealing with an initiative like affirmative action, such as prioritizing meeting the program’s requirements rather than seeking out qualified individuals. Demanding an institution, like a college or university, to accept a certain number of applicants belonging to a minority group can inadvertently bring a more prominent focus on the individual’s race or cause students to be chosen simply because they belong to a particular minority.

A student’s ethnic background, gender, or race being the deciding factor in their acceptance can also cause them to lose a level of respect in the eyes of their peers or make them feel tokenized. Institutions with affirmative action also tend to select upper-class or elite minorities who already have accessibility to educational opportunities, leaving lower-class minorities to fend for themselves and stuck in an unchanging situation. Two law professors, Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr. write, “The largest, most aggressive preferences are usually reserved for upper-middle-class minorities on many of whom they inflict significant academic harm, whereas more modest policies that could help working-class and poor people of all races are given short shrift” (Mismatch).

Affirmative action does sometimes help level the playing field for minorities and increase diversity, but it is also an imperfect and biased solution. Instead of having a program based on race or ethnicity, another answer could be a program with requirements based on class or socioeconomic status to benefit more communities with less privilege and opportunities in life.