Poll: Are scholarships designated for African-Americans racist?

[Danny Ocean]

So, basically you're saying that these scholarships are beneficial because, statistically, there are more poor or financially burdened black students and families.

If that's the case, then have the scholarship be dedicated to any students in bad financial situations and who show academic valor. To give any student, or human being in general, an advantage or a resource that another doesn't have access to due to the color of their skin is racism. There are poor black people, and there are also poor white people, Hispanics, Indians, Inuits, and Asians. Helping out hard-working students who need the help is a great thing to do, but if you start allowing such help to be color-coded then our mindset is no better than it was 60 years ago.

People always complain that it's the intention of racist jokes that matters, not the mere fact that they are racist. Why can people have such insight when it comes to comedy but not to bigger issues like this?

I acknowledge that it's racist, but I base my approval of it not on the assumption that there are more poor black people, but that poor black people make up a greater proportion of black people in total due to the vicissitudes of the poverty trap.

There are indeed poor elements in other groups, and they should and do (afaik) get their own scholarships. I don't see a problem with that.

a problem with is the fact that the scholarships were designated for African-American students, meaning that no others would have been considered.

Those others are considered for other scholarships, instead. Allow me to explain:


Say we only had one scholarship for everyone. That scholarship would be competed for by everyone. White and black, rich and poor. The rich have an obvious advantage, so let's rule them out...

We now have a scholarship for the poor. This would be competed for by the poor, white and black. This appears reasonable, but then one must consider that there are more poor blacks/blacks than there are poor whites/whites. However, there are physically more poor whites than poor blacks...

This means that for each scholarship for the poor, there will be more white applications than black applications. This means it is more likely that a white will get the scholarship. This will do little to lift the status of whites as a whole. The same scholarship in the hands of a black would make a bigger dent on that overall poverty percentage, and so will do more good to blacks as a whole...

As the scholarship would do more proportional good going to blacks than to whites, I think it's fine to remove the massive competition of whites, and offer it solely to blacks.

 

[Tsaba]

Snip

The problem is that there is this feeling that because, someones great grand parents suffered through slavery that those of a certain skin color have to pay for the misgivings our there forefathers. In reality we need to move past this feeling and realize as a group of people, as the human race we need to move on and ensure that our children's children never have to suffer the hardships that we face now, instead there is this constant bickering and pointing of fingers on both sides of the ball court. But, meh, this is just my observation and I can't do anything about those who are standing in the way of progress, and to this I say kill them all.

 

[clipse15]

How can this be wrong in anyway? Becayse these people are choosing to give there money to a certain group? Does that make breast cancer societies discriminitory because they chose to give there money to breast cancer research instead of testicular research?

There are scholarsips for Black people, Women, Itallians, Natives, Polish, Ukranians, Germans. But no Escapsit please just get upset about Black scholarships thats real progressive of you.

 

[hotacidbath]

Get out of such absolutist thinking and you'll understand why. Try thinking about it for a few minutes. Think about the relative likely social capital inherent in each class. Think about what could happen in the long term without affirmative action.

I'm thinking that there are more poor white people in America than there are poor any other race.

Not necessarily true. Just going by the numbers, there are 19,648,419 white people below the poverty line vs. 9,738,247 black people and 16,831,634 Hispanics. Yes, there are more white people below the poverty line than there are each of these other races individually, but Hispanic and black populations together make up a little over 13% of the population while white people make up nearly 80% and if you look at minorities vs. white than there are more minorities below the poverty line. Though these numbers are going to be a little off of current statistics since I used 2009 population data vs 2007 poverty percentages.

Here is where I got my population information and here is where I got my poverty percents from if anyone wants to double check my math on this since I'm tired and it's entirely possible that I flubbed somewhere.

As for the rest of this topic, I'm staying far away. I just hate when people assume false statistics.

 

[Trent Kama]

I'd say it's definitely discriminatory. However, it's rather commonplace.

Churches gives bursaries based on faith, and woman's rights groups give bursaries to females. There's also instances of giving bursaries or scholarships based on citizen status.

 

[raven_glory]

Ok, if we define racism as discriminating between 2 people by race, the affirmative action is by definition racist. However this means that racism is not always a bad thing, not that affirmative action is therefore bad. Surely everyone can agree that colleges entrances should be almost exactly proportional to the population of the country. If, for example, there 1 in 5 black in america then 1 in 5 college entrants should be black (a made up statistic but you get my point).

We can look at statistics and decide whether its simply lower income people who are unable to attend college, and the average black family is poorer than the average white, therfore this is the cause of the disparity in college attendance by black students. Or if there is a statistically significant disparity between black and white lower income students. This should help us decide how best to dish out affermative action, but if i had to guess i would say that the second of those two cases is the true one.

Also to those who say that scholarships should be given out based on merit rather than race, as if those who recieve them would not be able to attend college for academic reasons otherwise. If the UNCF had enough money to send every academically capable black student to and still ahve money that will be a happy day.

 

[Worgen]

yeah but its one of those things that we need since we had to make allot of special rules to stop states from doing really horrible shit to people with dark skin

 

[Timbydude]

As long as affirmative action and racial scholarships exist, we essentially give credit to the idea that different races should be treated differently.

There are certainly racist Caucasians, no doubt about it. However, does anyone really think that treating blacks differently because of their skin color isn't reinforcing those attitudes?

Plus, I'm in college right now and you'd be surprised how much racism affirmative action actually generates. For example, if a white person gets a couple questions wrong in something, no one really cares. If a Hispanic girl starts getting questions wrong, a lot of people immediately begin to entertain the notion that she only got into our college because of her race (our college is notably devoid of Hispanics).

If there were no affirmative action and no racial scholarships, then we would start looking at minorities based on their merits, not the possibility that they're actually worse-qualified/not as smart as the white kid sitting next to them.

[/quote]

How can this be wrong in anyway? Becayse these people are choosing to give there money to a certain group? Does that make breast cancer societies discriminitory because they chose to give there money to breast cancer research instead of testicular research?

There are scholarsips for Black people, Women, Itallians, Natives, Polish, Ukranians, Germans. But no Escapsit please just get upset about Black scholarships thats real progressive of you.

Just because there are a lot of them doesn't mean that they aren't racist/sexist. I'm pretty sure that everyone here would agree that a Ukranian scholarship is just as racist as a Black scholarship.

It's just very discriminatory to say, "I have money, but I'm only going to give it to people of a certain skin color." How does someone even justify that?

 

[pretentiousname01]

If a white person applies for the scholarships would they be granted?

If no, then racist.

If yes, then poorly named/marketed.

 

[clipse15]

As long as affirmative action and racial scholarships exist, we essentially give credit to the idea that different races should be treated differently.

There are certainly racist Caucasians, no doubt about it. However, does anyone really think that treating blacks differently because of their skin color isn't reinforcing those attitudes?

Plus, I'm in college right now and you'd be surprised how much racism affirmative action actually generates. For example, if a white person gets a couple questions wrong in something, no one really cares. If a Hispanic girl starts getting questions wrong, a lot of people immediately begin to entertain the notion that she only got into our college because of her race (our college is notably devoid of Hispanics).

If there were no affirmative action and no racial scholarships, then we would start looking at minorities based on their merits, not the possibility that they're actually worse-qualified/not as smart as the white kid sitting next to them.

Ok you do understand that scholarships and college acceptance are given to QUALIFIED miniorites right? They aren't given to random street kids. Its not there fault that the people who beieve that affirmative action is evil think they got there only because of the colour of their skin.

 

[AK47Marine]

They discriminate on race and are therefor racist

they are also retarded, I know african americans who are some of the whitest individuals ever. So not are they racist their stupid

 

[wammnebu]

the scholarship is like a gift card, if you are paying for it, you can offer it to whoever you want for the purchase of a specific thing. start asserting your right to someone else's Christmas dinner, and watch the number of generous donations mysteriously plummet.

Is it racist, maybe, but so is assuming that you have the same right to a scholarship as a kid stuck in a DC shithole, working to get out

 

[Axeli]

As long as affirmative action and racial scholarships exist, we essentially give credit to the idea that different races should be treated differently.

There are certainly racist Caucasians, no doubt about it. However, does anyone really think that treating blacks differently because of their skin color isn't reinforcing those attitudes?

Plus, I'm in college right now and you'd be surprised how much racism affirmative action actually generates. For example, if a white person gets a couple questions wrong in something, no one really cares. If a Hispanic girl starts getting questions wrong, a lot of people immediately begin to entertain the notion that she only got into our college because of her race (our college is notably devoid of Hispanics).

If there were no affirmative action and no racial scholarships, then we would start looking at minorities based on their merits, not the possibility that they're actually worse-qualified/not as smart as the white kid sitting next to them.

Ok you do understand that scholarships and college acceptance are given to QUALIFIED miniorites right? They aren't given to random street kids. Its not there fault that the people who beieve that affirmative action is evil think they got there only because of the colour of their skin.

Yet they still use race as a criteria, possibly bypassing a poor student of another ethnicity who would have been more qualified. It's still racist.

 

[clipse15]

As long as affirmative action and racial scholarships exist, we essentially give credit to the idea that different races should be treated differently.

There are certainly racist Caucasians, no doubt about it. However, does anyone really think that treating blacks differently because of their skin color isn't reinforcing those attitudes?

Plus, I'm in college right now and you'd be surprised how much racism affirmative action actually generates. For example, if a white person gets a couple questions wrong in something, no one really cares. If a Hispanic girl starts getting questions wrong, a lot of people immediately begin to entertain the notion that she only got into our college because of her race (our college is notably devoid of Hispanics).

If there were no affirmative action and no racial scholarships, then we would start looking at minorities based on their merits, not the possibility that they're actually worse-qualified/not as smart as the white kid sitting next to them.

Ok you do understand that scholarships and college acceptance are given to QUALIFIED miniorites right? They aren't given to random street kids. Its not there fault that the people who beieve that affirmative action is evil think they got there only because of the colour of their skin.

Yet they still use race as a criteria, possibly bypassing a poor student of another ethnicity who would have been more qualified. It's still racist.

So your in favor of a world where the qualified White Male dominates the colleges and all the qualified Blacks, Hispanics and Women just go fuck themselves?

 

[wammnebu]

As for the rest of this topic, I'm staying far away. I just hate when people assume false statistics.

well unfortunately this is the internet, but i agree. Besides statistics should be irrelevant in a post that is about a sociological concept (racism). Warm up your rhetoric people, you know you love to use it

 

[Slayer_2]

Yeah, there was all kinds of Native American favouritism going on in my high school. I think it has to do with the political outlook that it's only racist if it favours white people. Of course if there was a Caucasian-specific scholarship people would freak out, because most people are retards.

 

[magnuslion]

the scholarship is like a gift card, if you are paying for it, you can offer it to whoever you want for the purchase of a specific thing. start asserting your right to someone else's Christmas dinner, and watch the number of generous donations mysteriously plummet.

Is it racist, maybe, but so is assuming that you have the same right to a scholarship as a kid stuck in a DC shithole, working to get out

I think the main thing at issue here is that if someone were to creat the Caucasian American College Fund, It would get jumped all over for being racist, but other ethnicities can do things like this all they want.

 

[Blind Sight]

I wouldn't call affirmative action racist (because I'm one of those 'there's only one race, the human race' people) but I would call it favouritism that leads towards severe ethnocentrism. I personally think that scholarships should instead focus on helping lower class, hard-working individuals. And I'm not just saying that because I'm extremely poor and my GPA is 8.2.

To those people who are complaining about Caucasians discussing 'reverse racism', consider this: my university has Ask a Muslim Day, as well as other 'Ask a...' minority days. I went to the student council and asked if I could have an 'Ask a White Male' day, or an 'Ask an Atheist' day, I was told that what I was trying to do was either be racist or offensive to other people's religious beliefs (actually I was trying to illustrate the point that they probably wouldn't let me have those days, but their response was even worse then I expected). Double standards at their finest.

 

[clipse15]

the scholarship is like a gift card, if you are paying for it, you can offer it to whoever you want for the purchase of a specific thing. start asserting your right to someone else's Christmas dinner, and watch the number of generous donations mysteriously plummet.

Is it racist, maybe, but so is assuming that you have the same right to a scholarship as a kid stuck in a DC shithole, working to get out

I think the main thing at issue here is that if someone were to creat the Caucasian American College Fund, It would get jumped all over for being racist, but other ethnicities can do things like this all they want.

Well of course it's racially discriminatory, I can see what they're trying to do but if they're looking to help those who need help they ought to judge it on income rather than race.

Wrong and Wrong. Now if there was a White only School or institution then these would get jumped on