Instead of sending this message, instead of telling one person that they can't make it on their own without big brother's help and instead of telling another person that even though they did everything they were supposed to do but it doesn't matter because of their skin color....why not focus on making sure colleges are using fair admission standards? Why not focus on understanding and changing the problems facing urban education which so disproportionately affects black students? Why not encourage black students to take education seriously by promoting education within the black community? I feel that these alternatives would ALL be far more beneficial than telling a young black student that he isn't good enough to go to a school - but that we'll let him take the spot of a more qualified student (of ANY race) because he's black and needs all the help he can get.
Uhmm...actually, this is what is currently going on now. This is why you have brothers like Al Sharpton speaking out against injustices and racial inequalities, and why organizations such as the NAACP exist, to straiten out these issues.
Yet many whites say they are not needed and/or are "race baiters/hustlers."
Can't win for trying I tell you.
but they only speak out against white people
They speak out against structured and institutionalized bias in admissions, hiring practices, and the overall disparity of public goods and services between wealthy neighborhoods and poorer ones.
Education rewards for white men are much higher than they are for minorities and women. Men with an undergraduate degree earn much more on average than women who attain graduate education. Consequently, even those with the exact same levels of attainment face hugely disparate income levels.
Bradley R. Schiller, The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination Tenth Ed. Pearson Prentice Hall, NJ, US, 2008, 175-176
There are significant short-term benefits in discrimination for individual and groups of white people. Benefits to the ego of those who enjoy privilege and place, maintenance of comfort zones, and economic advantages are of highest importance. However, there is no benefit from discrimination for society as a whole, only costs:
Where discrimination against minorities is pervasive, society as a whole loses potential human capital. The abilities and creativity of the minority communities remain underdeveloped and underemployed. Hence, total output of goods and services is less than it would be in the absence of discrimination. [Â…] In addition, much of the output we do produce is directed to relatively unattractive uses such as the surveillance of homes, streets, jails, and welfare caseloads. Thus, whatever direct gains or losses individual whites incur are overwhelmed by the very large indirect losses to the economy as a whole.
Bradley R. Schiller, The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination Tenth Ed. Pearson Prentice Hall, NJ, US, 2008, 190-191
Offensively noticeable discrimination is easier to identify than more subtle and pervasive forms more often practiced today. Discrimination in education, housing, and employment as practiced in the US used to be both, and legitimized by US law. Citizens now enter the education system equally, but upon exiting, there still remains vast inequality. What happens between kindergarten and 12 grade, or college? Segregation is illegal, and supposedly nonexistent, but Schiller points out that one black student in a population of 2,000, or one white student added to a population of 1,999 black students does not add up to integration except on paper, and “racial isolation in the schools is still the hallmark of the American education system.”
Moreover, the separateness is still coupled with inequality of building construction and maintenance, supplies, quality and number of teachers, and technology, and integration within the school systems does not always translate to integration within the schools or classrooms. Past segregation restricted opportunity to develop abilities, and tracking systems and IQ testing traps students in remedial education while schools invest more time and offer greater opportunity for “gifted” students to excel. Studies undertaken to try to gauge the scope of effective segregation have been exhaustive in detail, yet the findings have been inconclusive as a measure, and all we still know is that school segregation continues to be “major determinants of black achievement and status.”
RacismÂ’s ugly stepbrother is classism, and racial discrimination in the schools is coupled with economic segregation. Housing and the ability to afford it make neighborhoods more stratified by economic class then racial makeup, and t disparities in public goods and services apply here as well. The way school budgets are allocated, students attending schools in poor communities receive lower shares of funding, and like those students discriminated against based on race, work with poorer supplies, uncertified and fewer teachers, outdated technologies, and low expectations of reward for hard work.
Bradley R. Schiller, The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination Tenth Ed. Pearson Prentice Hall, NJ, US, 2008, 192-198