Thursday, March 28, 2024

Affirmative action wont solve education issues

A lot of blacks lived in my suburban Detroit area, and I interacted with them all the time. They were like everyone else - and they were part of my culture. Blacks and other minorities were well-represented in my public high school, at least as well as in the population at large.

My district had two high schools, about a mile apart from each other, and students had the option of attending either one. I was surprised when the other school had a minority population of two or three out of more than 1,000. I was so surprised, at the time, because each race had isolated itself.

And why wouldn’t they? Given the choice between the schools, which would you attend as a minority?

Imagine my shock when I got to college and learned I live in a white supremacist nation. The power (money) is centralized in the hands of the wealthy who fund our political leaders, the vast majority of whom are white males in their 50s.

But the supremacy is really manifested in the attitudes that idealize the white culture and way of life: Immigrants are viewed as little more than a cancer. They’re either guilty of stealing “real” (white) Americans’ jobs or collecting welfare checks because of their laziness - whichever happens to apply.

Incidences of racial bias in the American justice system are so numerous it’s difficult to know where to begin. The simplest examples take the form of racial profiling, which I have witnessed from police and retail store owners.

Other examples are truly frightening in all that they encompass. The U.S. Supreme Court surprisingly has one black member, Justice Clarence Thomas. He is such a tool of the Republican Party that he might as well have Black & Decker written on his forehead. He’s designed to pacify the black nation without having any real legal effect. He’s a token designed to distract people from the reality that while blacks comprise less than 13 percent of the population, they make up more than 46 percent of all U.S. prisoners.

What I’ve attempted to do thus far is point out ways in which my culture, white culture, has imposed segregation upon blacks. Most people accept this as given. The unfortunate reaction to these separatist attitudes has been the creation of a subculture that stresses and glorifies this separation within a certain section of the black population. And it’s self-destructive.

The goal of this culture is the same: moneycashhoes. The multitude of rap stars, shoving fistfuls of dollars in my face while skanky big-bootied women lie on big cars, is enough to convince me materialism still rules. But education and career success are certainly not viewed as the means to that end. This is hardly surprising, considering the educational opportunities available to minorities living in impoverished areas.

But the success stories of inner city students rising to the top, so celebrated in the culture as a whole, are completely ignored. Members of this culture are, and see themselves as, victims. They’re victims because they are not given equal opportunities from birth. Schools and careers are part of the machine that oppresses them, so to many they’re not even viewed as an option.

This feeling of victimization reached a boiling point when delegates at a recent Slave Reparations Convention determined all Americans of African descent should be paid the sum of $1 million. Each. In gold. No one actually takes these people seriously, mostly because of the shortage of available American slaveholders to foot the bill.

And it doesn’t make much sense to make someone like me, whose grandparents were born in Persia, Hungry and Canada, to pay either. But the point is a part of this culture has never escaped the feeling of being enslaved, and it wants someone to pay for it, even if it’s not exactly sure who should.

So because slavery is obviously not the issue at hand, the real and most difficult question becomes affirmative action. This, I believe, is another manifestation of the feeling that blacks are and should be separate from the rest of America.

Cultures embracing victimization are nothing new and are certainly not unique to blacks. But affirmative action is the first time these attitudes have become law. And the logic that supports it is circular. It’s an institutionalized system of racial preference designed to help eliminate racial preference. It’s an attack upon the very soul of everything American government claims to be founded upon. And there’s no way it will ever convince anyone that blacks shouldn’t be treated any differently than everyone else.

That doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. Universities - like the University of Michigan - should be able to admit whomever they want. A diverse student body, which I have encountered in every educational environment my parents have sent me to, has tremendous advantages.

But by far the most compelling reason is educational opportunities are not equal. Of course affirmative action is necessary in higher education and career settings as long as racial preferences still exist at the basic education level.

In my idealistic youth, I do not understand why educational funding is not determined solely by number of students. A leveling of the educational playing field, it seems to me, could be easily achieved by fixing our schools. Why on earth would our government institute a policy of providing inferior education to certain children based on their geographic location? To deprive children of basic education because of the social status of their parents is the most un-American idea of all.

The organization of the current American education system makes no sense whatsoever. Until the means to success in our culture - education - are uniformly administered to every race and class, the rage of the disenfranchised will continue unabated.

And with reason.

Andrew Banyai, a political science and pre-law junior, can be reached at banyaian@msu.edu.

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