balderdash111

I think there are a few general points of agreement here:

1) Society should endeavor to make college available for as many as it can.

2) Scholarships should be available based on economic need. (poor kids should be able to go college, regardless of ethnicity)

3) Absent a countervailing need, scholarships based on race are not the preferred method.

Before you jump all over me on point 3, hear me out.

The question is whether there is a countervailing need to justify ethnic-based scholarships.

There are a couple of arguments for, and a couple against.

For:
Where certain ethnicities are under-represented among a student body, it makes sense for a college to try to encourage applicants of that ethnicity. This is (part of) the diversity argument. A very big part, I think.

For:
Where a society has historically discriminated against a certain ethnicity, some argue that society has an obligation to try to make up for that historical discrimination. One way to do this is to give preferential treatment to that ethnicity for some period of time until it is possible to conclude, in some fashion, that the "status" of that ethinicity in society is what it would have been had no such historical discrimination taken place.

*EDIT* a more subtle version of this is argument is to say that you need to establish an upper middle class among an ethinicity, in order to acclimate society to the idea that these ethnicities can be just as productive as everyone else, which will help reduce future discrimination against members of that ethnicity

Against:
White high school students didn't have anything to do with historical discrimination, so it's not fair to penalize them for past racial misdeeds.

Against:
Discrimination based on race is just plain wrong, regardless of the race involved.

Against:
Will there ever be a point where, in terms of present status, historically disadvantaged ethnicities will be in the same position they would have been in had there been no past discrimination? To put it another way, at what point do you say that certain people are poor because society requires some people to be poor? Or because they don't work hard enough?

Just my 65 cents.


FWIW, I support affirmative action, but recognize it's a thorny problem. And who knows, my attitude might change if a lose a job to a less qualified person - or even to an equally qualified person if the only reason he/she beat me was b/c of his/her ethnicity

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