White student returns scholarship intended for black students

[Kathryn]

For clarity: do the scholarships require a person to be 1/4 "white" or 1/4 Jewish (or Irish or Czech, etc.)?

The "white only" scholarships are what I was looking at.


I've already supplied the links so you can look up the specifics.

Does this really matter though? Each scholarship is different - because they are set up by individuals that don't have to abide by any federal regulations other than those imposed by the IRS.

 

[nnmartin]

anyone read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' - an old expression called 'quadroon' was used in that book (or something similar at least) - that meant 1/4 or more black, and you could be a slave!

so you could look more white than black in some cases but still be classed negro.

 

[Kathryn]

anyone read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' - an old expression called 'quadroon' was used in that book (or something similar at least) - that meant 1/4 or more black, and you could be a slave!

so you could look more white than black in some cases.

Or - in the case or at least one "white only" scholarship I looked up - you could be 3/4 black and still qualify.

 

[nnmartin]

how many of you white folks have ever tried getting a scholarship or welfare cheque out in the Congo or Cambodia?

not too many I imagine!

This PC race fantasy is a joke.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

The "white only" scholarships are what I was looking at.

This does not answer my question.

 

[blackout]

We will be coordinating with the Big Brother/Big Sister chapter here. Any child who qualifies to be in that program would meet the criteria for "being from a broken home."

I'm not out to derail the thread,
and I'm not quite curious enough to google it,
but apparently you're ok with the BB/BS criteria-
whatever that is.

You stated in an earlier thread how you would be ticked off
to find that your scholarship recipient was not of a broken home.
My first thought was, parents get divorced... remarried...
in varried time frames.
Anyway, whatever with all that.
My little side tracks sometimes have very little to do with the thread at hand.

I agree that people should give their money to whomever they want.

I hardly see what's to argue with there.

 

[gnomon]

It doesn't bother me what the criteria for scholarships are so much as in how those criteria are defined.

Namely racial definitions.

How in the world is somebody 1/x of anything? A genetic heritage is only of practical importance when a genetic disorder can be observed in that heritage. I understand when people are actually raised with a mixed cultural heritage but even applying a fraction of identification with that can be absurd.

I could tell people I'm 1/32 Jewish. But I'm not. Why? Because I'm not Jewish.

Maybe I'm a little bit country. Maybe I'm a little bit rock 'n roll.

 

[dust1n]

Yes, really. Before the Civil Rights Act, there is no question that being colored in and of itself was a serious disadvantage. But since then a lot has changed. Even the ThinkProgress article Kathryn posted about the 10% over-representation of whites being awarded college scholarships recognizes that racial inequality in this case is a symptom of the real cause, which is socioeconomic.
Being from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background is correlated with race. If we award scholarships based on a person's socioeconomic background, then that too will be correlated with race.

I think that would be the disadvantage no? Just by sheer virtue of being black, you have entered into a world of negatively shifted statistics, which affect people more personally, when say, one out of three men go to jail. The socioeconomic background that is the underlying cause is supposedly the leftovers from all the racism of the past, plus any racist residue that is still around. Why would the race distribution disparity be an effect of its underlying cause, being socioeconomic, when the underlying cause for the socioeconomic standing of darker-skinned people is a result of racism?

One year the prom king at my high school was a black guy. He was very popular, a great athlete and his parents owned a nice house. In my mind, if I hold every variable constant but change his skin color to white, very little changes. On the other hand, if I imagine him coming from a broken home (as some of my white friends did), I can see that being a big disadvantage.

I don't know how it is everywhere. Blacks are obviously disenfranchised in Pensacola. News story sometimes leak from the leftist writers around here, who interview the residents. They nearly always speak of lack of serious opportunity here. Black people I've known sometimes encounter racism, overtly applying for work in some places. Its hard to imagine how even those smaller incidences add up over time, especially when we never encounter them. In NoLa, I'm sure it isn't quite the same. I suspect the more rural the area or the more super urban the area the worst of the disadvantages would should.

 

[Kathryn]

This does not answer my question.

I supplied the links to the specifics of each scholarship. I guess you can refer to those.

 

[blackout]

It doesn't bother me what the criteria for scholarships are so much as in how those criteria are defined.

Namely racial definitions.

How in the world is somebody 1/x of anything? A genetic heritage is only of practical importance when a genetic disorder can be observed in that heritage. I understand when people are actually raised with a mixed cultural heritage but even applying a fraction of identification with that can be absurd.

I could tell people I'm 1/32 Jewish. But I'm not. Why? Because I'm not Jewish.

Maybe I'm a little bit country. Maybe I'm a little bit rock 'n roll.

People are absurd it's true.

But it's a free country.
Well, besides college. and health care. and most other stuff.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

I agree that people should give their money to whomever they want.

I hardly see what's to argue with there.

Again I ask: what if people give their money to a scholarship for white people only? Is there nothing unseemly about that?

 

[Mr Spinkles]

I supplied the links to the specifics of each scholarship. I guess you can refer to those.

You supplied the links and then made unsupported claims about their contents. It's your job to back up what you claimed, namely that the scholarships are for "whites only" and not "Jews only" or "Italians only", etc.

 

[blackout]

People are absurd it's true.

But it's a free country.
Well, besides college. and health care. and most other stuff.

*Thinks of starting up a scholarship for people who are at least 7/8ths absurd.*

*Thinks there will be a lot of competition*

 

[Alceste]

Is skin color a valid "interest group"? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for integration and even affirmative action to a reasonable extent .... I thought I was rather liberal, and yet I'm really having trouble wrapping my head around why it's okay, in the year 2012, to make skin color an eligibility requirement for a scholarship. Do they use color swatches during the interview?

I would have no problem if the scholarship was based on need and merit, or if the student must demonstrate an interest in black history or Martin Luther King, etc., and the candidates just happen to be mostly black as a result .... but some of the scholarship benefactors actually wanted to ask the student to give back the money! Even after a phone interview! That seems like "racism" but one is so unaccustomed to this sort of "racism" that it just comes off as bizarre and awkward.

So, let's say your ship came in and you wanted to set up your own scholarship fund. Should you be free to decide what kind of student you would like to benefit from your generosity based on your own sociological and political ideals, or would you prefer that all scholarship money be dumped into a homogenous melting pot with no specific guidelines?

Hypothetically speaking, if there were a law requiring that every company or individual who wants to set up a scholarship fund dump their donation into a big, generic free-for-all, who would administer it, and according to what political or sociological agenda?

I would assume that any scholarship fund for African Americans was intended by the creator to benefit people in that demographic, for reasons that made perfect sense to them, given their political and sociological ideals. I think the fund screwed up by the ambiguous wording in their application form, but that the student was right to return it. He was respecting the spirit of the gift, rather than seizing on an administrative flub-up for his own self interest.

FYI, African Americans are still disproportionately represented in the lower income brackets, which makes it substantially more difficult for their kids to access higher education in a capitalist system. That seems like a pretty understandable reason to establish a scholarship fund. That said, who says I have to understand or agree with the reasons?

 

[Kathryn]

I'm not out to derail the thread,
and I'm not quite curious enough to google it,
but apparently you're ok with the BB/BS criteria-
whatever that is.

You stated in an earlier thread how you would be ticked off
to find that your scholarship recipient was not of a broken home.
My first thought was, parents get divorced... remarried...
in varried time frames.
Anyway, whatever with all that.
My little side tracks sometimes have very little to do with the thread at hand.

I agree that people should give their money to whomever they want.

I hardly see what's to argue with there.

People fund scholarship funds often with great emotional investment.

In our case, my husband's father died when my husband was 6 years old and he was raised without a father figure. He died when he was only 32 years old and left two small boys, and basically no estate, no savings, nothing but a desk and a pair of cufflinks for his boys.

The money that we are funding the scholarship fund with is from the sale of a family estate - the only inheritance that my husband will ever receive from his father - the sale of his father's childhood home.

The scholarship fund will be named after my husband's young father.

See how much emotional investment is in many of these sorts of programs? There are scholarships for children who have lost their mother to breast cancer, scholarships to descendants of those who have been victims of terrorism, scholarships for the descendants of slaves, and children whose parents have died of AIDS, transgender kids, you name it.

 

[Kathryn]

You supplied the links and then made unsupported claims about their contents. It's your job to back up what you claimed, namely that the scholarships are for "whites only" and not "Jews only" or "Italians only", etc.

I supplied links that give details to various scholarship programs. If that's not sufficient information, well, I'm sorry. I'm not going to go back and sort thru the links I provided and cut and paste info for you.

 

[blackout]

Again I ask: what if people give their money to a scholarship for white people only? Is there nothing unseemly about that?

I cannot explain the cogs and gears (and cobwebs) that turn and spin in many people's minds.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

I think that would be the disadvantage no? Just by sheer virtue of being black, you have entered into a world of negatively shifted statistics, which affect people more personally, when say, one out of three men go to jail. The socioeconomic background that is the underlying cause is supposedly the leftovers from all the racism of the past, plus any racist residue that is still around. Why would the race distribution disparity be an effect of its underlying cause, being socioeconomic, when the underlying cause for the socioeconomic standing of darker-skinned people is a result of racism?

I'm saying -- and I may be totally wrong -- that the racial disparity in socioeconomic began as a result of historical racism, and it continues not because of racism but because anyone from a low-income, high-crime or high-unemployment area is at a disadvantage. I can't see that today, middle-class or rich black kids face significant difficulties that their white peers don't, or that low-income white kids have a significant advantage their black peers are missing.

Correlation does not imply causation. We certainly need affirmative action to rectify historical racism, no doubt. But shouldn't that kind of thing be phased out eventually? Why use racist eligibility criteria for scholarships, when non-racist criteria will solve the problem just as well if not better? If minorities are statistically from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, then minorities will benefit more from scholarships based on socioeconomic status. How does giving a scholarship to a well-off kid (of any race) help anyone (of any race) rise out of poverty?

I don't know how it is everywhere. Blacks are obviously disenfranchised in Pensacola. News story sometimes leak from the leftist writers around here, who interview the residents. They nearly always speak of lack of serious opportunity here. Black people I've known sometimes encounter racism, overtly applying for work in some places. Its hard to imagine how even those smaller incidences add up over time, especially when we never encounter them. In NoLa, I'm sure it isn't quite the same. I suspect the more rural the area or the more super urban the area the worst of the disadvantages would should.

So, do we solve this problem by providing scholarships for black kids and job search assistance to black people, or by providing those things for disadvantaged people (with perhaps race being a contributing factor, but not the only factor)?

There are predominantly white towns that are struggling. Should there be a scholarship for white high school seniors in those towns, or just a scholarship for high school seniors (most of whom happen to be white)?

 

[blackout]

People fund scholarship funds often with great emotional investment.

In our case, my husband's father died when my husband was 6 years old and he was raised without a father figure. He died when he was only 32 years old and left two small boys, and basically no estate, no savings, nothing but a desk and a pair of cufflinks for his boys.

The money that we are funding the scholarship fund with is from the sale of a family estate - the only inheritance that my husband will ever receive from his father - the sale of his father's childhood home.

The scholarship fund will be named after my husband's young father.

See how much emotional investment is in many of these sorts of programs? There are scholarships for children who have lost their mother to breast cancer, scholarships to descendants of those who have been victims of terrorism, scholarships for the descendants of slaves, and children whose parents have died of AIDS, transgender kids, you name it.

The best way to ensure that your recipient is fitting of your husband's vision,
is for your husband to choose the recipient himself.
I personally, would not leave the decision in the hands of an organization.
But that's just me.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

I supplied links that give details to various scholarship programs. If that's not sufficient information, well, I'm sorry. I'm not going to go back and sort thru the links I provided and cut and paste info for you.

Your links provide few details. None of the scholarships cited in your links are for "whites only", as you inaccurately characterized them.