Minorities take our places! Sound Off!!!

PrincessND
Fri, 11 May 2007 02:10:52 +0000

Dear Irish,
I know you wanted a PM, but I’d like to post my last comment on this thread as well. I don’t think your five/six finger debate works well, unless of course, people with five fingers were forced into slavery, locked-out of opportunities, and tortured for a period of three hundred years because of their phenotypes. I think you should stick to race here. Would I, as a white doctor, feel offended if a minority with “less-stellar” reviews got the job over me because they were black/Latino/Asian? Yes, absolutely. But I would be upset if a white person were given that spot. Anytime someone else gets a place you feel you’ve earned, it’s rough. However, maybe the patient population benefits from having a person of color in that position; if it’s in a majority-minority community, it doesn’t matter how good of a technical doctor I am, it is important to understand the patients. Of course, having minority doctors on staff would help all of us to understand those issues.

I understand that you feel that certain whites have worked hard. But don’t you think it’s possible, just maybe, that someone of a different race has worked hard. I’ve been in South Bend for four years, and have worked with teenagers from inner-city schools here. They work hard and make excellent grades for their schools despite the violence and bad influences around them.
Should they not be accepted because of a 1200 on the SAT? What strength and perserverance it must require to thrive in an environment where failure is such a more predicted (and even admired) outcome. To say that one of these kids is any less hard working than you are is ludicrous.

To repeat a quote by one of my science professors: “We’re not collecting buckets of sweat”, we’re trying to create the best learning environment for our students. If you feel cheated…Sorry.

In terms white entitlement not being about race, I can’t buy this. Maybe you really feel that this is not the case for you, but I think this is evidenced in how many kids feel cheated by minorities but not by legacies. Yes, the size of the SAT score gap between admitted legacies and admitted minorities is big, but what do you expect? You’re taking the children of NOTRE DAME GRADUATES, and comparing them to minority kids, most of whom grew up in lower/lower middle-class families and went to low-income schools. If anything, the privileged are benefitting twice in ND admissions. In most of these cases, however, students don’t feel cheated. Now how does this paradox not relate to race?