Over 50 years ago, Brown v. Board of Education changed the course of the American education system forever as they deemed segregated schools unconstitutional. It was an undeniable triumph for minority rights and a stepping-stone to a real land of opportunity.
More minorities than ever before are making strides in education, filing into colleges around the nation. Not to mention more minorities are finding their way into the upper echelon of the American workforce, affecting public policy and the country - individuals like Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzalez.
Even the classrooms at ASU tell the story of minority successes. The University boasts an 83 percent increase in minority graduate students attending compared to 10 years ago.
But put into perspective, the success story becomes much more complicated and, unfortunately, much less of a triumph.
That 83 percent increase actually translates to a mere 14 percent of all graduate degrees going to minorities.
In a state where almost 40 percent of the population is minority, 14 percent - less than half - falls well below an acceptable level of representation.
Only, it's not just ASU, and it's not just graduate students.
While it's easy to see the huge achievements minorities have made, reality tells us an education gap between minorities and whites still exists and affects individuals all across the country.
Minorities may not be officially segregated anymore, but certainly social and economic stratification in an increasingly "meritocratic" society helps to explain some of the discrepancies.
For instance, research from Harvard's Civil Rights Project reveals that 70 percent of Hispanics and blacks in the South reside in minority-majority neighborhoods. And these segregation levels are strongly linked to poverty rates.
While it may not be federally enforced segregation, gentrification and its effects still linger today.
Colleges, primary and secondary schools across the nation as well as the workforce pride themselves on judging students and employees by the merits of their own work.
Perhaps that's as it should be. But a child growing up in a broken home, attending struggling schools in a minority-majority neighborhood, has a very different experience than one from a nicer mostly white neighborhood - one with parents who can help him or her with homework. How much and what they achieve, on the whole, are affected.
And that's the story the 14 percent minority gradate rate tells.
But however the discrepancy arises, the number of minority students makes a difference. Graduate students are our academic scholars, our corporate CEOs, the next wave of lawyers and doctors and our government officials. They're our future leaders.
