Whites-only grant offered. Re: Affirmative Action

From the Detroit Free Press, Monday, February 16, 2004

Bristol, R.I.

Whites-only grant offered

A student group at Roger Williams University is offering a scholarship for which only white students are eligible, a move they say is designed to protest affirmative action.

The application, issued by the university's College Republicans, for the $250 award requires an essay on "Why you are proud of your white heritage" and a recent picture to "confirm whiteness."

"Handing out scholarships based on someone's color is absurd," Jason Mattera, president of the College Republicans, told the Providence Journal.

The stunt has angered some at the university.

The administration is trying to stay out of the fray and said the group's action is not endorsed by the university.

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I can scan the article if you want 'proof' that it's real. Anyway, I'd like to know what sort of person would find this thing offensive. I find affirmative action both racist and offensive. It promotes the idea that certain races or ethnicities require aid because they are otherwise thoroughly incapable of achieving the 'norm'. The fact that a white-only grant has angered people causes me to infer that people have the idea that whites are inherently well-off in comparison to other races, or that they are somehow exempted from being allowed to have help. Yes this is a protest. I support it. Just as I support 'straight pride parades'.

This type of 'anti racism' annoys me to no end. I'm not sure what the situation was like when slavery was active, but I'm pretty sure there were whites who lived at the poverty line as well. It is conceivable even to me that any person regardless of race (even if he was a white male, God forbid) can be in a state of affairs where s/he requires some help. So why shouldn't we give it to them? Because they are white? That's hardly an argument.

To me, affirmative action is just as wrong as being upset at a whites-only grant.

Affirmative action is wrong. There was a time and a place for it, back when 'minorities' were really and truly being denied places in universities because of racist leadership. Now, however, it's just plain racist. I don't like that I cant get grants for school because of the color of my skin. That's wrong. However, because it's only a wrong commited against whites, it's ignored and those who stand against it our labeled racists.

Race should not be an issue when applying to ANYTHING. Race should NEVER be an issue. Whenever I'm presented with any form that asks my ethnicity I write in 'American'. Grades, extra ciricular activities, and all that jazz should be important when applying to a college or a scholarship. Race should not be an issue.

Edit: Oh and, by the by, I am white, and my family is not at all well off. We're lower-middle class at best, and if it werent for FAFSA basing their grants off of financial status, I wouldnt be able to afford any sort of college. And no, I am not in the least a racist or a bigot, nor am I prejuidice. I don't see how wanting equal treatment for all people regardless of skin color, gender, and sexuality equals racism, but apparantly it does in this day in age.

Technically isn't this not affirmative action but destory the other things that are or now were affirmative action? If there are scholoarships for every other race besides white then those are affirmative action scholoarships. By making one designed for white people isn't everything back to a level playing field?

Affirmative action sucks.

I agree that sholoarships based on race/color/etc... has gone a little too far, but I don't think that this is the best way to go about showing your opinion on the matter. In Texsa they enacted a new law/rule that the top 10% of every school gets a free ride to any state school (University of Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, etc...) in the hopes that it will give inner-city and other impoverished students a chance to excel at college. While this is great in theory, my fiance's roommate her freshman year was dumber than a stump, but she came from a school of 50 kids, and she was in the top 10% of her class, if not she was the top 10% of her class. Anyway, my fiance had a 3.8 average all through school, but because she was from a large school, she didn't make the free-ride cut.

Where am I going about all of this? I agree that there are instances where giving things based on race/color/etc... is bad, but over-all it is still needed. Big business and the U.S. in general is stil run by white males, and I fear that if all laws were pulled immediately, most would go back to their old ways and we would have to instantiate affirmative action again to give others a fair chance.

Afirmative action isn't fair, nope. I'm also white, and also poor. I paid for college through FAFSA and personal loans, i.e. my parents cosigned, and probably had to put up our house as collateral, I don't even know. I got a small scholarship because of my SAT scores. Being poor as a bucket of dirt and growing up in a hick town didn't stop me from doing well in high school, because I cared. If you care about your grades, you'll do well, and maybe some people deserve to be rewarded for it. That's what scholarships should be: they should reward hard work. Rewarding someone because they were born a certain color or in a certain country is ridiculous, and I wouldn't even feel right taking such a grant if it existed, because I wouldn't have earned it.

Affirmative Action comes across as more insulting to the minority involved than the whites it ignores. It says to the recipient, "You aren't worthy of any skill-based recognition, and if you were white, we'd deny you faster than you can spell affirmative, but we'd be racist to deny you, so here you go." No thank you. I'll earn my way through life. I might not be the next Bill Gates, but I'll deserve everything I get.

I understand the opposition to affirmative action-type grants, but there's a fairly sound reason behind it, at least it's usually given one in the law:

It's not discrimination if you give an advantage or benefit to a group that has traditionally been disadvantaged by discrimination in the past.

There's no denying that African-Americans, to name but one group, were severely held back up till the 1960s in the US. That kind of damage takes a long time to undo, since virtually the entire culture was forced into a lesser socio-economic state than most others.
Giving preferrential treatment to minorities may be unfair and hard to justify, but there are reasons for it. When someone's been the victim of racism for generations, you can't make everything right just by saying, "well, OK, from now on you'll get the same treatment as everyone else, but no help to break the cycles of poverty and poor education that've been afflicting you more than anyone else."

How long must we pay for the mistakes of generations past? Why must more deserving students suffer just because they are white? The purpose of equality is to treat EVERYONE equally, not switch preferences every few decades.

I understand that reasoning, but it would follow (since we're talking about race universally, not say, a particular instance where race happens to be the focal point) that there was no way a black man/woman could make it without affirmative action. Since this is obviously not the case, it's not fair that 'certain minority folk' get a helping hand while others who are doing much better exist. Basically I'm saying that if this is an issue of race, and if some members of said race can succeed (Tiger Woods, Mike Jordan, the literal hoards of other football players, and I could probably name some reporters and wall-street analysts), doesn't it mean that the 'field' is 'leveled'? I do. There are some white folk who are dirt poor, and some asian folk who are dirt poor, and some black folk who are dirt poor. It's the same now. Away with AA.

That's like the stunt I heard where people set up a booth to sell cookies. The price of the cookie for whites was $1.00, for hispanics was $.50, and for blacks was $.25. I thought it was funny. People were outraged, but that's what goes on behind the scenes every day.

What do you mean by 'behind the scenes'? I don't get it. :betty:

Originally posted by Cid
That's like the stunt I heard where people set up a booth to sell cookies. The price of the cookie for whites was $1.00, for hispanics was $.50, and for blacks was $.25. I thought it was funny. People were outraged, but that's what goes on behind the scenes every day.
I found it kinda stupid, as it was done in <i>Boston Public</i> a month ago. I figure if you want to try to make a statement, make an original one and don't copy it off of the tv.

<i>It's not discrimination if you give an advantage or benefit to a group that has traditionally been disadvantaged by discrimination in the past. </i> --Big D

People aren't just a product of the past. People who were held back, sure, I can see helping them to get ahead. But people who're going through college today are born into a country where, legally at least, segregation no longer exists. We're making up for segregation which is not even supposed to be happening any longer. If segregation is still going on, even in an unofficial way, why the heck don't they go after the people who're discriminating? Afirmative action is treating the symptoms and ignoring the problem, if a problem even exists today on a scale where such things are necessary.

It's like the people who were recently trying to sue the government for reparations from slavery. No one who was a slave is alive today. No one who OWNED a slave is alive today. And yet somehow they felt that if my ancestors did something bad to your ancestors, I should pay you. Life doesn't work like that. I'm responsible for my own actions, and my life is a product of my own choices. I'm not responsible for things that happened before I was born. I'm not entitled to anything as a consequence of anything that happened before I was born. The same goes for Black/Hispanic/Female/Left-Handed/Size-9-Shoes College Applicant X. We are entirely equal in terms of our ability to make choices and our ability to make our own lives whatever we want to make them. There's no reason anyone should be treated differently than I, just because of what color s/he was born.

How long are people going to have to keep paying for the past? How long until afirmative action levels the playing field? The playing field is never level, for anyone, and it's never going to be. That's the nature of the world. You deal with your circumstances as you get them.

Segregation may not be an issue today, but my understanding of affirmative action - when it comes to grants and scholarships and such - is that it attempts to rebalance the unfair socioeconomic situations caused by previous racism and civil injustice. That legally we may not subject our people to racial inequality, but its effects still reverberate through what is technically a balanced system. That is, a kid born into a minority family that was forced into the inner city over pre-civil rights movement issues, a place where decent education can be hard to achieve, still experiences that original unequal treatment secondarily by being born into that socioeconomic situation. Maybe that kid wants to better his life, but his situation - thanks to his parents' situation, an effect of systemic racism - won't allow it. This unfair restriction, then, is affirmative action's target. As i understand it, anyway.

i don't know what i think about Affirmative action, though, and i make no value judgements on it.

Originally posted by Flying Mullet
I found it kinda stupid, as it was done in <i>Boston Public</i> a month ago. I figure if you want to try to make a statement, make an original one and don't copy it off of the tv.

Twas Bosten Public that copied. I heard of that stunt several years ago.

And by behind the scenes, I mean by awarding scholorships and acceptance of minorities into specific colleges just to meet quotas and not allowing white students with higher marks into college due to the school being overcrowded.