Monday, November 07, 2005
A COLUMN BY THE WINTHROP UNIVERSITY (S.C.) JOHNSONIAN is marred in controversy, a local TV station reports. The column is about a comparison of today's racial climate with that of the one blacks faced before the Civil Rights movement.
Read the column here. Two snippets:
Hurricane Katrina brought back to the public attention the ongoing issue of race relations in America. The tragedy quickly shifted from concern for the people affected by the hurricane to the judgment that the federal government did not like black people. Obviously, the federal government has a vendetta against the blacks and chose not to respond to them quickly, right?
I guess we're assuming that the many people of various ethnic backgrounds in the Bush administration don't care about black people, either.
Today in the daily student announcements I saw the "Black Fact of the Week." I did not have a problem with this in itself. Surely it is important for us to understand the contributions of black people in our lives. However, this is just one piece of an ever-complicating problem on campus.
In case you don't know, there are quite a few groups on Facebook devoted to black people. Two in particular caught my attention: "Winthrop Does Not Like Black People" and "I Should've Went to a Blacker College." (An alert to the ever-increasing trend on campus newspapers to use networking sites like Facebook to bolster an argument, but I digress.)
In fact, I think there has been a surge in specialized programs for people of various ethnic backgrounds. For example, I've been looking into summer research programs in psychology. I've noticed that most of the programs are limited to students of ill-represented groups (i.e., ethnic minorities). I am only half black and I don't want to use that as my way to get into a program.
Ultimately, I think we need to achieve more equality. To be truly equitable, for example, we should offer programs that are specifically for whites. Yes, I just said that. I'm sure a lot of people just slammed the paper down and spouted a few expletives. But don't you see the logic here? It can't be a problem in one instance and not in another. Kids, that's called a double standard.
This happens far too often, though. Some blacks are happy with the programs that benefit them. Once a similar program starts that is geared toward whites, all of a sudden the program becomes racist. Like a person I know once said, if an Association of Ivorites was established on campus, people would be up in arms.
8:37:00 AM
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