Boston University group offers white scholarship

[StrykerFSU]

What benefit does a university, private or public, receive by granting admission to whites over blacks? Again excluding legacies and large donors because that is a question of wealth and not race and really is a small number of all potential students anyway, why would a university take an underqualified white over a qualified black? It makes no sense. Colleges are judged on average standardized test scores and GPAs of their incoming classes so why would a university penalize itself except to raise the all important number of minority students?

Perhaps a greater emphasis on education in black culture would help to better prepare their youth for college. There does not seem to be any problem for Asians and they are not white but they do have a long cultural tradition promoting education. Of course there are problems in our education system that put the poor, especially in our cities, at a disadvantage (remember, I watch The Wire) but is a federal government compulsory program to grant preferential treatment the answer? What about the citizens not able to benefit because of their race?

I recently read a book that told the story of an 18 year old white girl from a lower middle class midwestern family. She had applied to Yale because of her exemplary marks and qualifications but was denied admission while other less qualified individuals were off to New Haven because of their race...fair? Is that discrimination justified because this country once allowed slavery?

[Jester]

Your concerns are totally right, and the system doesn't work as it is intended all the time - to offer incentive for disadvantaged people to get themselves in a position where they can be admitted. It does backfire sometimes. I can't argue that, but the need will not go away without some help, and I can't envision better systems for the relative cost involved.

Stryker, my personal answer to you last question is "yes". I do have trouble with the words "less qualified applicants", given the way admissions works, especially at the near mythical Ivy League schools. Even the best of the best don't get in there. However, if it wasn't sour grapes (certainly might not have been, get the title and I'll read it), I do think that's a price we have to bear. I'm not sure I could say the same thing if it was me that lost out, but I hope I would.

Sonny, the word "gross" applies because of the lack of a qualifier in the sentence. It wasn't stated as something that happens occasionally or even routinely, but rather always.

[Dan Wishengrad]

I recently read a book that told the story of an 18 year old white girl from a lower middle class midwestern family. She had applied to Yale because of her exemplary marks and qualifications but was denied admission while other less qualified individuals were off to New Haven because of their race...fair? Is that discrimination justified because this country once allowed slavery?

I have read this topic with interest, waiting for someone to give a balanced historical perspective which has yet to be posted.... so let me offer my humble take:

The "discrimination" against whites caused by racial set-asides (i.e. quotas) sure does seem unfair on the surface. The example you quote, Cliff, of this non-affluent midwestern white girl denied admission to Yale in deference to less academically-qualified applicants is a typical example. The most famous case, of course, was Bakke v the University of California from 30 years ago. Bakke was denied admission to UC Davis Law School because of a racial quota system which favored applicants with lower LSAT scores and undergrad GPAs. This case became a rallying cry for efforts to end affirmative action.

But this issue is complex, and it doesn't only involve college admissions. And it doesn't only involve the South and the so-called "Jim Crow" laws designed to perpetuate discrimination of former slaves. There are countless examples of Northern, Midwest and Western U.S. cities with significant (or even predominant) black populations which never hired an African-American policeman or fireman, had no black employees of the city collecting garbage or repairing roads, cities where the doors were completely shut to anybody not from the "good ol' boy" network. Until the federal govt. stepped in with quotas for awarding a percentage of these jobs to blacks and the legal muscle to enforce these set-asides, the minorities NEVER GOT HIRED. Yet these people paid the taxes which financed the jobs they were excluded from. Medium-sized and small Massachusetts cities -- where the College Republicans who sparked this discussion are from -- were among the worst historical offenders.

Colleges and universities also used entrance exams to effecively exclude minorities from the inner-city who, without the benefit of better public schooling, were ill-prepared to compete with high school graduates from outside the ghetto. Many schools "had to be dragged into the 20th Century" by federal law which compelled them to set-aside a percentage of slots for minority applicants. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a good example of a minority who, given a chance for academic opportunity specifically because of racial set-asides, took advantage of the system and flourished because of it. It is no small irony that Justice Thomas has consistently voted against affirmative action in cases before the Supreme Court, despite his own presence on the Court being due to preferential law school admission policies.

Anyway, while there are certainly valid arguments to be made for ending racial quotas in our society as no longer necessary, it can also be argued that without them things could easily slide back to how they had been before set-asides were institued. But what this group of College Republicans has done is simply a clever political stunt, nothing more. Since exit polling showed that the GOP lost independents and self-described moderates in droves in the recent election, there will be more such ploys in the future designed to appeal to middle-class, white voters who fled the GOP to the Democrats in 2006. But we should remember our history clearly, and acknowledge that any "reverse discrimination" suffered by whites like in Cliff's initial example is more than offset by worse injustices suffered in the not-too-distant past when minorities were almost completely shut out of admissions to top schools and municipal hiring. There are two sides to this story...