From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Sun Jul 29 2001 - 12:14:05 MDT
On 7/28/01 9:30 PM, "Barbara Lamar" <altamiratexas@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> When you turn down a young woman whose dream was to go
> to medical school because she's a white, so that you can admit a black with
> fewer qualifications, you're making that one young white person pay a
> greatly disproportionate price. For all we know, maybe the white woman was
> the daughter of poor parents; maybe she worked nights to pay her way through
> college.
Being poor and white is probably the worst socioeconomic position in the US
university system today. In the eyes of the university system, there is no
such thing as a poor white person, which generally makes life very difficult
economically if you are poor and white and going to college. This naturally
creates some bitterness when they see the government bending over backwards
to help minorities pay for school, many who are better off financially than
the poor white student who receives little or no financial help. I don't
see how race preferences in universities reduce racism, but I certainly see
how it can create negative feelings towards minorities where there were none
before.
> In some cases, rich whites were the
> ultimate beneficiaries, such as when whites set up businesses with black
> "owners" so the businesses would be have special status for getting
> government contracts and so forth. I know this from personal observation.
> And if I observed this sort of thing happening as often as I did, I'm sure
> it must have been extremely common.
I know of several such cases of minority ownership stacking to gain the
favored "minority owned" status for government contracts. It is, as you
guessed, very common. The government can't change the rules of the game and
just assume that everyone else won't change the way they play the game to
compensate.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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