The real problem
As many of you are already aware, there is currently a legal battle raging on between the University of Michigan and three white students who were not accepted to the school. The three students have accused the University of Michigan of using a quota system with which the school has maintained the population of its minority students. Moreover, the three students have said that the University of Michigan has accepted under-qualified minority students as a means to maintaining these quotas.
The case gained particular importance last week when President Bush spoke publicly, stating that the admissions standards at the University of Michigan were “unconstitutional.”
At a very superficial level, Bush is right: students should not be accepted to or rejected from a university based solely on their ethnicity. Completing some sort of cultural pie chart of 60 percent white, 20 percent African-American, 10 percent Hispanic-American, 5 percent Asian-American and 5 percent “other,” should not be the standards implemented by a school’s admission council. Students should be accepted or rejected based on academic merit and not by the color of their skin or by how much money their parents can or cannot pay.
Yet if we were to regard this issue only at a superficial level, we would be doing just as Bush did last week: missing the point. The real issue here is the fact that America’s minority populations are not receiving the same opportunities as the white majority.
If, in fact, the University of Michigan has been forced to accept under-qualified minority students as a means to maintaining a quota system, then the real issue, the most important question that should be answered, is: why are there so few qualified minority students? Why are universities being forced to turn away an overpopulation of qualified white students and accept under-qualified minority students as a means to keeping some sort of diversity on their campuses?
Many people (and by people I mean upper-middle class white people) claim that the upper-middle class white population is “picked on” more than others and, therefore, “suffers” more than others.
This, of course, is the most ridiculous claim ever made. Those who truly suffer in America are, and have always been, our minority populations.
If we stay within the realm of education, those students who “suffer” are not those who attend the 98 percent white prep schools in North Dallas or the 99.9 percent white Highland Park public schools, they are the students who attend schools in the Dallas public school system. Those who suffer are the minority students who are crammed into dilapidated schools and taught by unqualified teachers.
Those who suffer are the African-American and Hispanic-American students who start out with nothing and end up with even less.
In the fields of social science, child development and the Human Genome roject, specialists continually argue over “nature versus nurture.” Are we who we are due to our genetic makeup or due to the culture that surrounds us? Nine times out of ten, “nurture” is the winner.
A child, no matter his IQ or genetic makeup, who grows up in an environment that educates him and gives him an opportunity to succeed has a much better chance than a child who is herded through one building to the next, forbidden to realize any sort of personal potential.
In America, a white kid with a prep school diploma has a much better chance at getting into the University of Michigan than an inner city black kid.
Therefore, if it is unconstitutional for universities to accept minority students with lower SAT scores, it should also be unconstitutional to maintain a society in which 30 to 40 percent of the population is, when you get down to the marrow of it all, raised to be ignorant. If the University of Michigan is being unconstitutional by giving a handful of minority students an opportunity to be educated, then by God let’s be unconstitutional.
