Now, I’m not pitting the CRs. This is a novel and marginally clever way of getting the point across, much like the “affirmative action bake sales” they’ve held or the similar bake sales NOW has held to highlight pay discrepancies between men and women.
Nor am I pitting opponents of affirmative action. They’re certainly entitled to their opinion on the matter and while I may disagree with them the topic’s been done to death and I’m not really interested in rehashing it.
No, I’m pitting one Jason Materra. Materra is the president of this particular CR group and thinks that minority scholarships are “absurd.” Materra is of Puerto Rican origin. Materra is the recipient of a $5,000 scholarship which is open only to ethnic minority students.
One would think his opposition to affirmative action and minority set-aside scholarships would compel him to refuse the $5,000 scholarship he has received. Apparently, one would be wrong. Apparently, it’s perfectly all right to play the race card and suck on the minority scholarship teat as long as no one else does the same thing. Apparently all the minority scholarship money except his $5,000 is “absurd.” The ultimate in “do as I say, not as I do.”
Secondary pitting to the CR group as a whole for muddying the point by including ham-fisted phrases like “evidence of bleaching will discqualify applicants” and its previous insistence that gay student groups “indoctrinate students into homosexual sex.” I can tell you from personal experience as the former president of a gay college student group that it didn’t get me laid once.
I opened this thread all ready for an argument and instead I find that I agree with you on each and every point that you made. I have to work today and I’m all cranky and know all I get to do is say “me too.”
If I make $20,000, but I think, as a matter of policy, that the tax rate on people like me is too low, am I ethically obligated to pay more that the governemnt takes?
Actually, I’ll make this personal. Were I king of the world, I’d greatly reduce government education. Yet I work for a state university. Am I a hypocrite?
[QUOTE=Otto
One would think his opposition to affirmative action and minority set-aside scholarships would compel him to refuse the $5,000 scholarship he has received. Apparently, one would be wrong. [/QUOTE]
I cannot imagine any of the student Bush bashers here turning down a $5000 scholarship from George Bush.
I cannot imagine any of the Clinton critics here turning down a $5000 scholarship from Bill Clinton either.
$5000 for a needy university student is a lot of money to give up for principle. Are you suggesting that Jason should just shut the fuck up and take the money?
I’d need more facts before I bashed this guy. I’m against AA (beyond outreach programs) by the government, by have no problem when it’s done by the private sector. Perhaps his scholarship came from a private organization, and he’s protesting publicly funded AA type programs. The article isn’t clear.
Even if it’s a public scholarship that he got, one could argue that as long as one is requried to pay taxes that support this type of thing, there is nothing hypocritcal about accepting it.
Anyway, I don’t this is as cut and dried as the OP suggests.
For what it’s worth, I claimed to be Caucasian rather than Hispanic when applying to college, which put me out of the running for several minority-based scholarships and grants, because I was so opposed to the practice. I had a perfectly legitimate claim to Hispanic status. It’s unclear how much money was potentially lost by this decision, but it could easily have been as much as $5000.
Please note that my parents were NOT wealthy in the least, and that I was required to work throughout my undergraduate years in order to pay for school.
Now, this was before the Clinton presidency, so, technically, your prediction does not apply to me. But knowing now what I’ve said above, would you care to revise your prediction?
It’s sort of like belonging to a white-exclusive country club, enjoying all the priviledges and benefits on the weekends, while complaining about racism during the rest of the week.
A better political statement would be if he publically denounced his scholarship (refunding the money and everything). That way, he would be alerting others to the “unfairness and racism” of the system without benefiting from it. Of course, this would require actually taking a stand for a cause.
But the whole thing is a bunch of shit anyway. There are already white scholarships. And no one is stopping them for establishing more. People should feel free to set up a scholarship for whatever group of people they want to. If I want to establish a scholarship for inner-city youth from Atlanta, GA, a kid from suburban NJ should not find this unfair. I don’t see why the same logic can’t be applied to other kinds of nonmerit scholarships.
I receive funding from NIH out of a program devoted to mitigating health disparities among certain minority groups. The program funds minority students in biomedical fields so that these folks then go into research and give back to their communities. Hispanic whites qualify in this program. We even have “Asians”…folks from the Phillipines. And yet the program is supposedly racist because it isn’t open to everyone.
But if the program were to be dismantled, the laudable mission of the program would not me acheived. If the program were opened to everyone, it would be no different from other funding opportunities and again, the laudable mission of the program would not be acheived. Treating everyone the same, regardless of racial/ethnic/cultural backgrounds, is not always appropriate.
There are scholarships for Italian Americans. Folks don’t tend to know this, but–at least in NY–Italian American males tend to have high drop out rates and many don’t go on to college. Thus, many academic institutions have AA for Italian Americans. Is this racist? Should scholarships targeted to Italian Americans be opened up for everyone? If not, why is this different from scholarships meant for blacks or Hispanics?
Nowhere in the article was Materra quoted as saying that he alone deserves minority-based scholarships. It’s very likely that he’d happily give up the $5000 if the practice of giving such scholarships were to end. He lives in a world he didn’t make, and the five grande’ll go to somebody if it doesn’t go to him - why should he refuse free money? What point would that serve? If nobody deserves the money for the reasons it’d be given, why shouldn’t it go to him?
Anyway, the article doesn’t say when he received the scholarship, and how his views might’ve changed since then. It’s entirely possible to be chosen for a scholarship as a freshman and not as a junior.
Scholarships provided by the government (or the university directly) should be given out on merit alone…I don’t know why we even ask what race you are.
My experience, sample of one.
Friend and I both apply to the same Uni. I have a slightly better GPA (3.5 vs 3.3). I also did better than him on the ACT (31 vs 28). While our extracurricular activites were not identical, we both agreed that they were roughly equal. Neither one of us were going to play any sports.
He recieved a scholarship that cover both tuition and fees. I recieved one that covered tuition alone.
This didn’t ruin our friendship or anything like that, but I did find it funny. He is native american, I’m as white as they come.
Now if a private group wants to give out a scholarship to a specific group, hell its their money, let them do what they want. I don’t have to agree with it.
I’d like to see a cite for this, if you don’t mind. I have plenty of Italian-American friends here in NYC and the vicinity, many of them quite bright, none of whom ever qualified for any non-merit scholarships other than some token cash from the Sons of Italy if they applied. That’s a far cry from AA for Italian-American males at “many” institutions.
As for non-merit “white scholarships” in general - there is indeed a boatload of money aimed at different ethnic groups. (My favorite obscure example was for Canadian citizens of Swedish extraction studying here in the U.S., although I actually had a classmate that fit the bill. And it was to my great frustration that German-Americans as a group seem too tight-fisted to set up a scholarship fund.) These are all private funds, however, and I agree with your point that private groups should feel free to supply funding to whomever they wish.
Again, I’m not interested in debating the rightness or wrongness of AA. So any comments specifically on that issue I won’t be responding to and while I’m not gonna try to dictate what does or doesn’t get said here I would kinda prefer that the AA debate be taken elsewhere. Anyway…
By accepting money he was awarded on the basis of his race/ethnicity while believing that awarding money on the basis of race/ethnicity is “absurd,” then that tells me he thinks it’s OK for him to do it but not for anyone else.
When I was in college, had I been offered a scholarship from a source that I find ethically objectionable or “absurd” I would have refused it on ethical grounds. I wouldn’t have taken the money on the theory that someone will end up feeding from the trough so it might as well be me, while decrying the absurdity of giving people like me money. Refusing the scholarship would serve the point of ethical consistency and dismantling the perception that he’s a greedy little punk who will work the racial system to his own advantage while being ethically opposed to the system.
The article states that he “is” a recipient. This indicates to me that he is currently receiving the scholarship. Feel free to make the obligatory Clinton “definition of ‘is’ is” joke here. I will amend my position so that if he received the scholarship prior to his anti-AA epiphany then he is not completely hypocritical, but he should refund the money so as not to benefit from a system he abhors. If he is a current or ongoing recipient then he should refuse all further payments and above all stop applying for racially impure scholarships.
I don’t see the two situations as analogous as you have no (legal) alternative to participating in the tax system, whereas nothing compels this gentleman to apply for minority scholarship money.
If you want to send the federal government more money, you may write a check payable to the Bureau of the Public Debt.
But I think the debate here is centered around private vs public (ie, gov’t funded) scholarships. Are there any public scholarships exclusively offered to White students?
sunfish, an authority in college admissions told me that, so I have no cite to provide. But note that when I say AA, I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about recruiting efforts and breaks in admissions. That kind of stuff.
I don’t see a problem with a university having race/ethnicity/gender/region-specific scholarships. When I was in college, I received a scholarship not for my race, but for my gender. And yet rarely do people go beserk when they hear about sex-based scholarships. I don’t even think my college had race-based scholarships (it was public, though). No one should look at minority students and assume they get googobs of cash each semester.
If there were scholarships offered to white (non-Spanish) students exclusively, would this take away the supposed racism of the other scholarships?
Like, if there were a heap of scholarships available for white students (no specific ethnicity, just “white”), would the College Republicans still have their panties in a wad? Or are they upset simply because they can’t find any “whites only” scholarships? I’d like to know.
Since there’s no cite to look at, I can only say it sounds kind of off-base to me, and doesn’t jibe with the experience of people I know. I grew up next to a heavily Italian-American neighborhood (complete with grandmas dressed all in black who spoke no English); if some special recruiting effort was on, I’m sure it would have come up in conversation along the way.
Back to Otto’s point: If the kid is saying that he doesn’t feel minority-based scholarships aren’t appropriate, then he shouldn’t be accepting money from such a fund, public or private. Or should we say that there is some sort of monetary value beyond which one’s principles should be ignored?
[QUOTE=sunfish]
Since there’s no cite to look at, I can only say it sounds kind of off-base to me, and doesn’t jibe with the experience of people I know. I grew up next to a heavily Italian-American neighborhood (complete with grandmas dressed all in black who spoke no English); if some special recruiting effort was on, I’m sure it would have come up in conversation along the way.
[QUOTE]
No offence, I’m not sure this means much. Colleges and universities didn’t exactly break down my door trying to get to me…nor were their special recruitment efforts in my all-black neighborhood or my predominately black high school…but that doesn’t mean schools don’t have AA for black Americans.
Also, rarely does someone know if they’ve benefited from AA. It’s not like they stamp you with a giant AA label when you get accepted to a place.
I trust that my friend speaks the truth. She currently works for a college here in NJ and knows all kind of stuff.
No offence, I’m not sure this means much. Colleges and universities didn’t exactly break down my door trying to get to me…nor were their special recruitment efforts in my all-black neighborhood or my predominately black high school…but that doesn’t mean schools don’t have AA for black Americans.
Also, rarely does someone know if they’ve benefited from AA. It’s not like they stamp you with a giant AA label when you get accepted to a place.
I trust that my friend speaks the truth. She currently works for a college here in NJ and knows all kind of stuff
No offense, but without concrete information there’s no way I would buy that there are “clandestine” AA recruitment efforts for Italian-American males that rival efforts on behalf of other minorities. I myself have strong ties to the academic community, and this is the first I’ve ever heard of such a thing.
BTW, if we are going to make appeals to friend’s comments … I just ran this thread past my boss, who is Italian-American, from Bergen County, and until a few years ago taught at the undergrad level. After he stopped laughing, he pointed out that there are certain colleges that traditionally have larger Italian-American populations in the greater NY metro area, but that is principally because they market themselves to kids who either plan to live at home or don’t want to travel far. Perhaps your friend works for one of these places, and has taken her school’s approach to recruitment as a more widespread phenomenon.
If you don’t mind, please ask your friend for the names of some of these “many” universities who indulge in AA for Italian-American males; I’d be curious to see what schools come up. If you don’t wish to ask, or she is reluctant to name names, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on this topic.