Meritocracy vs. Diversity....is there a right answer?

Gudmom
Fri, 10 May 2019 14:39:01 +0000

@sciencenerd “what about the advantages non-minorities usually have (i.e., legacy, connections, etc?)”
I think that the percentage of “non-minorities” (you mean white people? white men only?) that actually (you said “usually”) have legacy status at Elite universities is still a very small percent of “non-minorities “. Ditto for “connections”. The poverty RATE is higher for minorities, but the number of poor white people is greater than that of poor black people, for example.I have 25 first cousins who never went to college. Most have grand or even great-grandchildren by now, and I don’t know that many of them went either. My Dad was the ONLY one in his family that saw (not SENT, just passively observed) more than half of his underfed white children go to college. Some didn’t finish until their thirties. The last is a 43 yr old who has been taking one or two classes at a time for years while working 6 days a week.

So I think it is even a privilege to be in a position to feel sorry for other people based on the supposed lack of opportunity due solely to skin tone. Sometimes I think all the people who bring every difference in outcomes back to race really need to get out more. Legacies are NOT all non-minority, ditto privileged or connected. The world is slowly widening the colors of privilege, but it doesn’t mean much to people like my cousins, or their kids. They have no money, their connections are blue collar union, they don’t have a family structure that supports educational striving. I don’t know if they are smart - they don’t seem to think so.