America needs to confront the fact that it’s discussing Affirmative Action as though we were in the middle of the 1950s: Jim Crow era. Segregation enforced by law. Largely discussed as an opposition between black and white Americans. And they’ve thrown in so many vague concepts like “white privilege”, “structural racism”, and several others as being specifically directed at black America.
But that’s not what we’re seeing here. What was the “white privilege” that saw the proportion of white Americans fairly consistent before and after the recent court decisions? When what we, in fact, did see was that the representation of black and hispanic students declined slightly while asian enrollment surged. While America is talking about oppression of minorities in all of this, and how white America has somehow benefited, what we were really seeing was Asian enrollment being hurt for years, even in the face of stronger applications, so that other minority racial groups could be admitted with less merit.
And all in the name of “tearing down structures of oppression”. I’m not even that old, but it kills me to think I’m considered old-fashioned for calling this out as being even more ridiculous than Jim Crow. At least Jim Crow laws weren’t trying to present themselves as some antidote to racial discrimination when racial discrimination was precisely what they were.
America needs to confront the fact that it’s discussing Affirmative Action as though we were in the middle of the 1950s: Jim Crow era. Segregation enforced by law. Largely discussed as an opposition between black and white Americans. And they’ve thrown in so many vague concepts like “white privilege”, “structural racism”, and several others as being specifically directed at black America.
But that’s not what we’re seeing here. What was the “white privilege” that saw the proportion of white Americans fairly consistent before and after the recent court decisions? When what we, in fact, did see was that the representation of black and hispanic students declined slightly while asian enrollment surged. While America is talking about oppression of minorities in all of this, and how white America has somehow benefited, what we were really seeing was Asian enrollment being hurt for years, even in the face of stronger applications, so that other minority racial groups could be admitted with less merit.
And all in the name of “tearing down structures of oppression”. I’m not even that old, but it kills me to think I’m considered old-fashioned for calling this out as being even more ridiculous than Jim Crow. At least Jim Crow laws weren’t trying to present themselves as some antidote to racial discrimination when racial discrimination was precisely what they were.