Philanthropist eliminates all Hispanics from scholarship consideration. What to do, what to do?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Yes, it’s a hypothetical with a long OP. It’s a mystery to me why you’re still reading this if these vex you. There probably won’t be an attached poll, though I reserve the right to change my mind between now and the time I hit submit.

Today’s protagonist is Thelma, a fortysomething educator who recently took a job as the principal of her alma mater, Florida Evans High School. She’s done well in her career but is hardly the star of her graduating class; that would be her best friend, Bernadette, who invented some widget during her sophomore year in college, sold it to IBM, and used the revenue to start her own company. Bernadette is currently worth 2.6 gazillion dollars, retired, and idle. FEHS is in an extremely poor Memphis neighborhood. A generation ago, the students were almost uniformly black (as are both women); in the quarter-century since then, the demographics have changed, and now the student body is about 25% Hispanic.

A while ago Bernadette came to Thelma with a suggestion. Being she’s rich, nostalgic, and idle, she wanted to start a scholarship fund for FEHS grads and choose the recipients herself. She’ll let Thelma and her faculty establish the objective academic criteria for the scholarships, but she wants all the applicants to submit an essay she alone will jduge. Each year, she’ll give the top six a full ride at the college of their choice. Of course Thelma agrees to help set this up.

In the first year of the program, forty students out of a class of 400 apply for Bernadette’s program. Thelma delivers the printed essays personally. Thanking her, Bernadette suggests they go out to dinner. Thelma takes a moment to spend a penny; when she returns, she sees that Bernadette has discarded half a dozen essays, among them the entry from the school’s valedictorian, whom she knows to be the student who’s had to overcome the most hardship to succeed. Moreover, the discarded essays are all from students with obviously Hispanic names.

“What are you doing?” Thelma asks.

“You probably shouldn’t ask me that,” Bernadette replies.

“Since when do we keep secrets from each other?” Thelma says.

“Everybody keeps secrets,” Bernadette says. “You just don’t like to admit it. But okay. I don’t intend to pay for any wetbacks to go to college. I don’t want to get you in trouble or anything, so I’m not going to ask you to check anybody’s immigration status. I’ll just handle it my way. Anyway, get your coat. I’m hungry.”

What, if anything, should Thelma do with what she’s just learned?

2

hold a blacks vs Mexicans student riot. Get it broken up by police in riot gear. Then have another riot tomorrow. Then apply for government funding to address the [del]damage to school infrastructure[/del] systemic racism and prejudice.

3

In the future, she could avoid the issue by assigning each student a code number to be used instead of a name on the essays. Won’t change the fact that her friend is a bigot, but might blunt the impact on deserving kids.

4

She should tell her friend that it’s perfectly okay to be racist with scholarships, but that she should state beforehand that the award is only for x ethnicities so she doesn’t waste the Mexican kids’ time and effort applying. It’s legal to make a scholarship that only applies to redheaded left-handed females with the last name Duffy, if you want to. Since it’s an award, it’s not a violation of anyone’s rights to require recipients to look a certain way, or have a certain ethnicity.

After that conversation, she should stop being friends with such a racist douche.

5

Agreed. There are a ton of scholarships out there that are only available to African Americans, or Hispanics, or Native Americans, or what have you. If that’s what Bernadette wants to do, she should be open about it.

QFT

6

Yes, the principal of a school may foment a race riot and expect to keep her job.

In Bizarro World, of course.

I dunno. I don’t require my friends to be morally perfect. Thelma & Bernadette have been friends for at least a quarter century and probably longer; Thelma may be understandably reticent to end the friendship.

A few years ago I discovered that a certain ex of mine was quite bigoted against Mexicans. It had never come up while we were dating; I learned of her prejudice because she was furious at the Mexican who had had an affair with her lover. I was quite discomfited by this, but I didn’t end the friendship; it’s not as if she were going out and shooting people, or actively making their lives worse. (And of course I chose to believe that my friend was acting uncharacteristically because she was angry at being cheated on and dumped.) Should I have ended the friendship?

That said, I think it unwise for Thelma to be involved in the scholarship program at all. And while it’s legal for Bernadette to do as she chooses, what she’s doing is not comparable to a NAACP scholarship or whatnot. She is not saying, “I want only to help students of my own race”; she is saying “I refuse to help students of another, specific, race,” which is not quite the same thing.

7

she need not “foment” it. It can happen naturally if word leaks out.

I have heard of many race riots in California schools, but “principal gets fired, commits harakiri in shame” is not a common trope in these stories.

8

I’d go with the blind numbers on the essays solution. If Bernadette objected, then tell her to be up-front with her requirements so the kids know she’s a bigot.

9

Another vote for blind numbers, or at least for specifying the requirements for the scholarship so the Hispanic kids don’t waste their time applying and don’t get their hopes up.

Although, that said, I would be in favor of saying that the scholarship was open to African-American kids only, but not in favor of saying that it wasn’t open to hispanic/Mexican kids (or open to everybody *but *them). Even though it’s her money and she can choose who she does or doesn’t want to give it to, as the principal I couldn’t in good conscience allow a scholarship program with the second requirement to be run through my school if I had anything to say about it.

10

It’s not obvious that she’s a bigot. She used the term “wetback.” While she’s throwing out the papers with Hispanic names, it’s possible that she’s throwing out non-wetback essays. However without all of the facts, we don’t know that the Hispanics in the school aren’t all wetbacks, or that a large majority of them aren’t wetbacks and thus that throwing out all of the papers with Hispanic names is merely playing good odds.

11

That should be how it’s already done. I’ve been on a high school scholarship committee for four years, and I’ve recently been named its chairman. We always use code numbers and anonymize all names. It hasn’t stopped people on the committee from identifying some of the essay writers (in fact just last night we had our meeting, and I recognized one of the students applying), but it certainly cuts down on them.

Are you saying it’s unwise for the principal to be involved, or Thelma in particular?

12

Being the OP does not make my interpretation privileged, of course, but that is pretty much what I meant by writing it that way. That is, Bernadette’s objection is specifically to illegal aliens, not to Hispanics as such, and she is willing to remove all the Lopezes & Reyeses, etc, from consideration to avoid helping any illegals, though she’ll give the kids with non-Spanish names a pass.

That said: isn’t her use of the word wetback indicative of bigotry? I didn’t put that in the OP by accident.

13

This. It’s actually the only solution to your hypothetical.

14

Thelma is the principal, and I think I wrote that, not Oak. Anyway, yes, I think that, knowing what she knows, Thelma needs to get herself and the school uninvolved ASAP. It’s just asking for trouble, which Bernadette is probably aware of.

No it isn’t. The question is not What should Thelma do to make the process fair. It’s What should Thelma do with her knowledge of the unfair process, which is not quite the same thing.

And Thelma cannot, ultimately, prevent Bernadette from giving her money out in a prejudiced fashion. Bernadette’s loaded & idle; she could easily decide to do personal interviews and eliminate the Hispanics that way.

15

It’s unfortunate the situation got this far. Bernadette has reneged on her promise to award the top six.

Based upon her knowledge she should abandon the project completely and talk to the group about why this happened. She does not need to embarrass her former friend directly. All she needs to say is that the contest has been cancelled because she learned that the judging was not going to be done fairly. She must stand on principle and everybody must move forward.

If the concept changes to where anonymous codes can be used going in, the contest can be re-instituted.

16

What does “top six” mean? If it means the students with the six highest GPAs, Bernadette has promised no such thing. And if the scholarship contest was intended necessarily go to those students, there’d be no need for the essays.

How does Thelma do that? Bernadette has the essays, which include the students’ names and probably their contact information; even if they don’t, finding out that information is trivial. Bernadette doesn’t need any consent from Thelma at that point. Admittedly she probably never did but included her friend out of, well, friendship.

17

Of course it’s your choice who to have or keep as a friend, and most of us would be pretty lonely if we demanded perfection as a prerequisite. That said, I think bigotry tends to be corrosive, to seep unnoticed into all kinds of judgments and decisions and interactions. I’m not sure it’s possible to live as a bigot in a pluralistic society without making other peoples’ (and one’s own) lives worse.

18

code_grey, stop threadshitting.

No warning issued.

19

I’d keep quiet. Yes, Bernadette’s racism sucks. However, there’s still 75% of the student body who can benefit from these scholarships. This is a full scholarship for 6 kids. Having Bernadette’s scholarship offered doesn’t take away anything - they aren’t replacing another scholarship with hers.

20

This is more or less my opinion also. Racism is horrible, but letting promising students miss out an opportunity would be worse. Sometimes we have to choose the lesser evil. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t let people know what Bernadette was doing (i.e., let the word circulate informally that the Hispanic students shouldn’t waste their time)