I do not doubt, nor belittle the struggle minorities face not only here in America but around the world. The problem of racism has been a loathsome aspect of civilization, deeply rooted in not only the history of the ?white race?, but of the ?human race?.
Despite this, great strides have been taken in the past hundred years that have ?equalized? the playing field. During the reconstruction era of the deep south, many laws were passed and enforced, in an effort to not only make racism legally unacceptable, but culturally shunned as well.
Forced integration was necessary to ensure the equal treatment of minorities in a predominantly white society, and so the ?affirmative action? laws made a lot of sense. But these were originally designed to be temporary measures, not a permanent and lasting statute. In fact, these laws are short changing minorities in a number of ways.
Minorities prior to the affirmative action era were grossly undereducated (in the Western sense at least), and as such were at a great disadvantage when attempting to further their own social status. Originally enforcing quotas was not only a means to force biased enrollment officers to allow minorities into exclusively white colleges, but also to give those who were not as well educated as upper-middle class whites a chance at admittance. As the years pass however, what we have done is handicapped those we hoped to help.
Because colleges need to admit a predetermined number of particular minorities, this set of minorities only has to compete with itself. Instead of cultivating a competitiveness for all being admitted, you are now only competing the different ethnic groups against themselves.
As an effect, each ethnic group now only has to score higher then the others of his or her race. You can see the clearly defined division between races when looking a SAT scores. Asians scoring the highest on average, while African Americans and Hispanics tend to score the lowest. Many claim this shows a bias of the tests, however, because ?competition cultivates excellence?, African Americans and Hispanics aren?t expected to score as high.
They are no?t challenged against the higher scoring ethnicities and so they end up at the bottom of the bell curve. It?s not to say they aren?t capable, or aren?t as intelligent, but merely the fact that they don?t have to. Because colleges only accept x number of any particular ethnicity an African American or Hispanic doesn?t have to worry what the Asian American is scoring, only what the other members of his ethnic group are scoring. So why bother getting a 1600, when all you have to score is an 1100 to be in the top tier of your admitting group? By saying ?you only have to be half as good?, they will only be half as good.
We must challenge our children to excel by forcing them to challenge each other. We should only accept the best of the best to our Universities, disregarding color of skin or economic background. Test should be anonymous - admittance based on GPA, SAT, application essays, extra curricular activities, and other submitted forms of reference.
At first, yes, an overwhelming number of minorities will struggle, and struggle hard. For generations they haven?t been asked to work as hard because, understandably, they were coming from a difficult time. They had been oppressed, and they lacked the money and education to make it on their own. But it?s time we asked them to step away from these crutches that we?ve placed them on. We need to remove the manacle that is tying them down to mediocrity. We must first demand excellence before we can expect to see it happen.
It will not be easy, but the opportunity is there if we just seize the moment. We must, as brethren and countrymen, to come together and discard these politically correct comforts we?ve grown so attached to. It?s time we, as a people, stopped dividing ourselves for the sake of equality, and start coming together for the sake of brotherhood. There is no ?us? or ?them? mentality.
We must, as a nation, disregard the existence of any other races besides the one we all belong to. The day people respond to the question of race with the simple answer ?human? is the day racism will truly be abolished. This careful side stepping of the issue, the re-labeling, the quiet divisionalism and compartmentalization of our country ? it is merely sweeping the issue under the rug.
We must address it in all it?s ugliness before we can cure it. We must accept that there are difficulties associated with being in any ethnic group in any society, but that in the end we are all equal because we all think equally. We bleed equally, we sacrifice equally. We must remove these racial quotas before racism will ever be truly remedied.
