This article is an excerpt from 8 Steps to Help Black Families Pay For College   by Thomas LaVeist, Ph.D. and Will LaVeist

Affirmative action: it's a pretty loaded phrase, isn't it? Chances are you can't read these words together without calling to mind a specific case or debate you've read about. We're not going to give you an extended treatise on what makes affirmative action good or bad—that's a conversation that could go on all night. What we will give you is an overview of how affirmative action affects you right here, right now—when you're applying for college and for financial aid.

"First of all, what is affirmative action? Like so many words and phrases, affirmative action has been tossed around pretty carelessly over the past few years, and its actual meaning has been blurred, if not lost altogether. Contrary to what you may have heard (contrary to what "They say . . ."!), affirmative action is not about quotas—that is, it's not meant to force schools or businesses into accepting or hiring a certain percentage of minorities or women. Instead, affirmative action is meant to level the playing field and ensure that schools and businesses are not intentionally discriminating against minority groups. Let's look at colleges as an example: Around 12 percent of all college students are black; if the student body at your college is only 1 percent black, it's likely that there is some discrimination at work. Now, this isn't always the case, of course—but it's the principle that affirmative action was built on. When discrimination is suspected, schools or businesses should make special efforts to reach new pools of minority applicants in an effort to diversify their staff or student body. Affirmative action is meant simply to help minorities overcome past discrimination and achieve a level of diversity that many people argue is essential in higher education.

Misperceptions
One common misperception about affirmative action is that it allows less-qualified people to "take the place" of those who are more qualified (but who happen to be white males). When affirmative action works the way it's supposed to, this isn't the case, and those hired or accepted should be as qualified as anyone else.

When it comes to affirmative action and college admissions, the process gets tricky. Unlike jobs, in which the requirements a candidate must meet are pretty straightforward, the requirements for admission to a college aren't so clear cut. A college application is made up of many components, all of which are important—your SAT scores, your high school transcript, your essays, your extracurricular activities, your personal interviews. Which of these components is the most important? Ask 10 different people and you'll most likely get 10 different answers. Admissions officers at 10 different schools might have 10 different answers, too. In the landmark court case of 1978, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, it was decided that race could be one of the components taken into account. (This legal precedent has often been challenged, and many colleges are reconsidering—or being forced to reconsider—their use of race in admissions.)

Many schools rightly believe that diversity is an important part of an education, and actively seek to attract minority students. Sometimes these minorities have lower grade point averages or SAT scores than non-minorities. Sometimes, however, so do athletes, artists, musicians, children of alumni (legacies), people who have shown their commitment to volunteer work, or people who have overcome serious obstacles in life. Is someone with a higher GPA or SAT score "more qualified" for college than one of these people? Of course not. Colleges, that is, selective colleges, admit students whom they think offer something to the university. These colleges aren't so much concerned with admitting well-rounded students as they are with building well-rounded classes. Admissions officers are looking for students from a variety of backgrounds who have a variety of talents.

Look Out for "They Say . . . "
According to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, out of the 16.5 million undergrads in 1999-2000, more than a third were earning grades of C or lower. And of all African American students, 48.9 percent fell into this category—a larger percentage than in any other group. Opponents of affirmative action sometimes use statistics like these to make the case that certain ethnic groups are "in over their heads" when it comes to college. Does this figure really mean that affirmative action is doing colleges a disservice? Not at all. The executive director of the National Association of Scholars, Bradford P. Wilson, explains it this way: "The most obvious thing that it suggests is that African Americans are coming to colleges and universities with less preparation for college-level work than other groups. But I wouldn't blame it on affirmative action, because most of the institutions [included in the report] are not selective institutions." Poor grades can be a reflection of any number of cultural, personal, or academic factors.

Affirmative Action and Financial Aid
As for financial aid, it only makes sense that colleges will do their best to meet the financial need of the students they want the most, whether those students are African American, white, Hispanic, or another ethnicity. Many minorities do indeed come from families with low incomes, and if a school is committed to improving its minority representation, one good way to do so is to make sure minority students receive the money they need to attend. Despite this fact, race-targeted financial aid is unusual at most schools, and schools that have tried to use it (such as Northern Virginia Community College, which had privately funded minority scholarships) have been taken to court. Financial aid will be based on what your family can afford to pay. Affirmative action will not really play a role.

The Bottom Line
What's most important to keep in mind here is that affirmative action is neither out to hurt you nor out to give you something you don't deserve. One thing is certain: No college is permitted to have separate admissions criteria for different racial groups; all students must be in competition with one another regardless of race. Affirmative action is meant, as we said, to ensure that the doors of higher education are open to everyone. Don't worry about being accepted into a college "because you're black." As we said, there are many, many components to a college application that are weighed differently for each student, and your application will be evaluated for its merit and strength just like any other.

This is a case where listening to "They say . . . " could really set you on the wrong path, and it's what has blurred the true intentions of affirmative action in the first place. What you need to keep in mind is that affirmative action aims for equal opportunity and equal access for everyone.