I've been wondering about this for a long time, and came across in print the encapsulation of what's been knocking around in my head:
All such institutional self-accusations by college presidents leave out the specifics. Which faculty members do not treat black students fairly? If that unjust treatment is so obvious, why weren’t those professors already removed? What is wrong with an admissions process that lets in thousands of student bigots? In other moments, college presidents brag about the quality of their student body and faculty. Are they lying? Shouldn’t they have disclosed to black applicants that they will face “racist acts” and “systems of inequality” should they attend?
Of course, the college presidents were not lying the first time around. American campuses today are the most tolerant organizations in human history (at least toward official victim groups). The claim that colleges are hotbeds of discrimination is a fantasy. Every university twists itself into knots to admit, hire, and promote as many black students and faculty as it possibly can, in light of the fierce bidding war among colleges for underrepresented minorities.
It has been taboo to hint at the reason that the millions of dollars already expended on campus diversity initiatives have yet to engineer exact proportional representation of blacks in the student body and on the faculty: the vast academic skills gap. Now this truth will be even more professionally lethal to anyone who dares mention it. The highest reaches of the university have declared as a matter of self-evident fact that systemic racism is the defining feature of American society, one that explains every inequality. Fighting against that racism has now officially become colleges’ reason for being.
All these college presidents--and corporate CEO's, too, and even my own district superintendent--what do they think they're accomplishing by saying this crap? Are they even thinking?
Systemic racism is a lie, unless you want to look at affirmative action.
"Systemic racism is a lie, unless you want to look at affirmative action."
ReplyDeleteTeacher's unions? Who else insists on keeping children in crappy schools?
I have always wondered the same -- these people can't see that they are actually indicting themselves and their prize institutions.
ReplyDeleteThey keep trying to root racism out of the universities...which are leftist hives, so clearly they are racist, right? The mind boggles.
ObieJuan, I see that as self-interest; the result may harm some minorities more, but I don't see that as "racism"--although by their own definition, perhaps it is!
ReplyDeleteDarren, I'm not saying that the people are racist, but I am saying that the system (educational monopoly) is. I also think this is a system that is fixable. Imagine giving every Calif. student 13 grand and free school choice. We would probably have to subsidize the busing necessary to allow kids to flee the inner-city schools.
ReplyDeleteIf the answer to fixing entrenched racism in police departments is defunding them, shouldn't that same approach also apply to "systemically racist" educational institutions?
ReplyDeleteExcellent point, Peggy.
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