Fifty years ago, in the midst of the American civil rights movement, President John F. Kennedy established what we now refer to as affirmative action. Its original purpose was that of non-discrimination, eventually considering factors of race, color, religion, sex and national origin. Now, I am a California liberal. I voted to repeal the death penalty, to legalize marijuana, to label genetically-modified food products and to allow gay marriage – not that you have to wear blue to think progressively. However, I think affirmative action is one of the biggest superficial hypocrisies in modern American thought. But I do not think it should go.

I decided to highlight this opinion in the face of recent federal court actions on the subject. Last Thursday, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals turned over Michigan’s ban on affirmative action, and as you read, the Supreme Court is making its decision on the legality of this law in general. I also decided to share this opinion because I may have just fully formed it after years trying to figure it out.

Here is the conundrum: I am a first-generation American born to Asian immigrants and a first-generation college student attending a university in which I belong to its least-represented demographic. But that scenario in no way epitomized or represented my college application strategy. I did not grow up in a region marked by its lack of cultural diversity. I grew up far from it, literally and figuratively, in a state where Asians dominated college admissions statistics and where my ethnicity probably had a negative affect on my chances toward acceptance. I never planned on affirmative action, never wanted it, never needed it and never used it.

But whether or not I was accepted because of affirmative action is irrelevant. That ceases to be the question once you realize the answer President Kennedy was trying to reach. Affirmative action does not make amends for race – it makes amends for privilege.

I came from privilege – not that of wealth but that of circumstance. My ancestors chose to come here during a time when the administration paved a way for them to safely do so. They were not mass murdered like the Native Americans, they were not enslaved like African Americans, and they were not ignored like Hispanic Americans. In this regard, I found my privileges brought by chance rather than through any action of my own. Others find the opposite, and that is not fair.

To those with equal rights but inferior advantages, here is your due. To those whose lives began 10 steps back, this is your pardon. We have 50 years since President Kennedy’s executive order is evidence that ability still is not just the product of birth, so to those labeled free but who remain out of opportunity’s reach, affirmative action is your privilege and yours alone.

Cheyenne Paiva is a junior majoring in biology. Her column runs biweekly.