I am writing in response to the recent opinions expressing opposition to minority scholarships.

Before I came to East Lansing for graduate school, the conventional wisdom of my white friends was that past discrimination against minorities had been replaced in recent years by “reverse discrimination” against white males. Without any real experience to judge this idea, I generally accepted that being a white male was a political and economic disadvantage.

However, in my time at MSU, I’ve seen very little evidence for what I would call “reverse discrimination.” Most of the professors and high-level staff members I see are white men, and I certainly don’t see white male students - including myself - being barred from academic achievement. I really don’t believe that the high proportion of white men in important positions reflects deliberate racial bias by anyone at the university, but to then make the opposite case, that white males are being discriminated against, seems to me to be a real stretch of the imagination.

It is, of course, true that there are many scholarships reserved for only minorities or women, and no scholarships reserved specifically for white males. However, there are also many scholarships reserved for people whose parents work for a particular company, or for people who major in a particular field.

Scholarships should not be given based on equality but on equity. It would be perfect just for there to be more scholarships given to music majors than business majors because the nature of the field of music is that it is culturally valuable but not particularly profitable most of the time - that would be equitable. Likewise, minorities, particularly African Americans, have social disadvantages directly due to race, such as unequal funding of schools and unequal treatment by the law. By the standard of equity, I think having some scholarships reserved for people of particular races or for women is just.

Mike Sanregret
doctoral student