In the year 1992, the gaming industry Nintendo released a game called Super Mario Kart. This game was made for the average gamer that enjoyed a little challenge. The point of the game was to beat your opponents in a race. The colorful, mild cartoon violence-filled game attracted many gamers, and it soon became wildly popular. Within the game, there were items you could pick up and use to throw your opponents off of their course and allow you to catch up to them or keep them behind you. Items varied from banana peels, shells, lighting bolts, and decoy boxes. Among all of these items was the infamous spiny blue shell, which is arguably the best item. It is only given to the racers who are in last place, and it directly targets the person in first. This would allow people who are in last to catch up to those who were in front of them.

Now imagine that it's not a mindless racing video game, but rather the race for education, and instead of a blue shell, it's affirmative action.

Affirmative action is given to minority students and allows them to catch up to their white peers. For a long time, this country has wronged people of color, and this is not a "gift of forgiveness." This is a chance to be equitable with our younger generations. If we gave the people in first a "blue shell," they would have no one to target because everyone is already behind them. There is bias and discrimination towards people of color when it comes to applying to college, specifically Black Americans and Latino Americans.

Recently, affirmative action has been a hot topic among political debates. In 2012, a young girl named Abigail Fisher applied to the University of Texas with high hopes of being admitted. But to her dismay, she was not. She claimed that it was because affirmative action took her chances away as a white person.

In "The Case Against Color-Blind Admissions," author Ronald Dworking states, "She does not claim that her SAT scores or her academic record were good enough to admit her under a standard that was neutral with respect to race."

Upon further research, Abigail's SAT scores and GPA were found. Fisher held a cumulative GPA of 3.59 and scored an 1180 out of 1600 on the SATs. These were good scores, but nothing to make her stand out to the University of Texas. Fisher v. University of Texas was not the first case to involve racial discrimination. There are well-known cases like Sweatt vs. Painter, Brown vs. Board of Education, and Loving vs. Virginia where people of color sued for being treated wrongly based on the color of their skin. Though Fisher felt she was in the same situation, she couldn't be more wrong. She felt like people were being "reverse racist" to her.

The thing about the term "reverse racism" is that when people say it -- and it's mainly white people who do -- they are admitting that there is racism towards people of color. They feel as though their racist acts are reasonable and justifiable, but when people are "racist" to them, it's out of hand and not right. (Which, let's clarify something up: you can't be racist to white people, but you can be prejudiced. Racism is having social, political, and economic power over another race, which white people do have in the U.S.)

Going back to affirmative action, a lot of people get upset by it, saying that it is giving an upper hand to students of color and making it harder for their white kids to get into college. It's not giving them an upper hand at all. Rather, it is simply leveling the playing field. You're probably thinking, "Jay, what the hell are you talking about? My kid took AP Calc, and they only took Algebra 2."

See, that's a good example of why we need it: many suburban schools, where the population is mainly white, have good funding and are able to hire teachers to teach advanced courses like that. Many inner city schools, where the demographic is mainly colored, do not have good funding. Someone who is the smartest in their school could only take up to Algebra 2. Logistically, he is just as smart in his school as someone in a suburban school would be in theirs.

A concern that people have about affirmative action is that they don't want a "small frog in a big pond." So, they don't want someone who's different? They would rather segregate? Are they trying to be a white knight and stop a minority from being uncomfortable? This is blatant discrimination that white people aren't understanding.

Affirmative action is not here to stay, that is a fact. One day it might be, but for now, it's a term in a text book that our grandchildren will learn about it in their AP Government classes. But until then, we need that one stepping stone to get us closer to true education equity.