In an unbalanced world, tools often are needed to help create a more level playing field and phase out unmerited bias and subjectivity. Affirmative action has been one of those tools for America.

The evolution of the United States' social and economic institutions helped to broaden the rift between people and opportunity. The time has long been overdue for Americans to find a means to right the injustices of the past and prepare a more equitable future for their citizens.

We have thought affirmative action to be the means. But the merits of that institution are once again being debated by our nation.

On Wednesday, the Bush Administration announced plans to challenge a University of Michigan application program that found its way to the Supreme Court.

The nation's high court agreed in December to hear a lawsuit brought by three white students who say the university law school's admissions policy discriminated against them in favor of less-qualified minorities. The case is believed to be the biggest affirmative action case in a generation.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told The Associated Press that President Bush "seeks ways to encourage diversity and do so in a way that does not rely on either quotas or racial preferences" because "quotas and racial preferences do not serve to lift up our country and to help the average American. Instead, they have a tendency to divide people, to separate people who are deemed to be worthy of something and have it taken away from them not on the basis of merit."

The president is right. Admission policies, such as the U-M law school's, don't benefit the average American. Affirmative action benefits marginalized Americans.

Our country has been plagued by different forms of discrimination since its inception. But it is wrong to lump the discrimination promoted by affirmative action as part of that epidemic.

Affirmative action discriminates by identifying, distinguishing and discerning the areas that our nation has failed socially and economically. It works to mend those inequities.

Despite the president's take on the subject or how the U.S. Supreme Court decides, the problems affirmative action is designed to address will not be solved.

As the United States continues to grow and cultures mix, the obstacles humans face with unjust social stigmas will not just go away. The search for balance should not be simply dismissed form our social consciousness.

Americans need to continue the dialogue inspired by the U-M law school case to help them identify the areas in which their country struggles and triumphs.

Perhaps it would do America better to focus affirmative action goals toward equaling the playing field for its citizens at earlier ages rather than waiting for people conducting college and job searches.

We need to find a way to promote fairness in America and we cannot abandon that search, no matter what the Supreme Court has to say.