(Note: I'm being slightly brief because I've got a class coming up, so excuse me if I miss something)
smartalco wrote:Of the 8 professors I have had so far at KU, only 4 have been caucasian (3 male, 1 female if you are curious). KU's school of engineering human relations head is an African American woman. This isn't a university where everything is run by white males, I already stated that.
On top of this, I'd say well over half of the need-based scholarships/grants aren't given by the university, they are given by the government, and applied for through the FAFSA, which, hopefully, the government will be pretty neutral in regards to race.
Mmm, I think it's a little different where I come from, then. It's hard to say exactly how many scholarships are controlled by whom, because there are a
lot of scholarships, half of which have esoteric requirements ("Female students from a rural area studying civil engineering with an 80%+ average") and many of which are funded through donations from individuals or companies. The university isn't in charge of all the scholarships, but they've got enough control that they could screw things up. Of course, my government is also composed almost entirely of white people.
Anyway, even if the university isn't in direct control of handing out scholarships, having an all-white staff can be a problem. There are a few studies showing that people tend to perform better in classes where the teacher is like them (so men perform better with male lecturers, and women with female lecturers). It can also be kind of discouraging if people of your race don't seem to be able to get positions of authority. This is one reason Obama's election made a lot of African-Americans happy - it was proof that, hey, the old prejudice is fading and a black man really
can become president!
Also, from a more pragmatic perspective... Checking people's income and suchlike actually requires a non-trivial amount of clerical work, which costs money. There's also the fact that people are lying bastards - I personally know several people who fudged their income figures to pick up study benefits, and I also know many people cheat on their taxes with no remorse. Basing scholarships on what people claim their income is might not be quite as accurate as you might like, and may also be inefficient if you have to keep checking up on people.
So minorities can't lie about their income as well?
Of course they can! My point was that while race is an imperfect was of distributing scholarships, since there will sometimes be white people who need the scholarship more, going by what people claim their income is isn't entirely foolproof either, and has other costs associated with it. Although racial minorities are statistically more likely to actually be poor, so it might be more likely that the money will go in the right general direction even if everyone lies...
And yet you, as a white male, still got a scholarship.
This statement makes me think that you think I would have got less if I had not been a white male but still in the same academic standing. As the 'I can't even apply for half of them' statement might suggest, I probably would have got even more. There are no 'white' scholarships, or 'male' scholarships, or the combination thereof, every scholarship I received had an equal chance of being given to absolutely anyone.
Not quite what I meant. I was pointing out that, for all your complaints that it was difficult to get a scholarship because they were all for women and racial minorities, you still seem to have got one. Clearly, the restricted scholarships don't make it impossible for white people to get help, though obviously I don't know your circumstances or how many other white people got scholarships. Presumably if non-white people are being looked after by the restricted scholarships, they don't need the unrestricted ones as much, and there would be less competition for them? I'm just saying that restricted scholarships might not be hurting your chances as much as you think (though, again, without specific information I can't really confirm this.)
Just curious, where do you live that you see this much potential for racism? I obviously can't speak for everyone in what I'm saying, but my experience has seen far from it.
Melbourne. And for the most part people are pretty nice. In fact, I might have agreed with you last year. Earlier this year, though, I was on the train when an Asian schoolgirl walked on and went to sit down, when a woman a few seats away started yelling at her to get away, that she was a "filthy Asian", and so on. The idiot women spent the whole trip ranting about how the dirty Asians were spreading their foul diseases and destroying society and so on and on and on. The poor girl looked terrified and I don't blame her. After that, I started paying a bit more attention to what people said... and suddenly it's not so easy to laugh off the jokes about abos and wogs, or the times when someone complains that the Sudanese or Lebanese are ruining the neighbourhood, or calls a girl a terrorist because she's wearing a hijab. There's also been a spate of bashings of Indian students recently, and before that there were the Cronulla race riots... then there's the fact that racism isn't all the overt variety. If I can draw a parallel to sexism, you might recall the discussion here recently about "nice guys" who are creepy and misogynistic, while believing they're being nice and helpful. If you look at history, there are also many instances of black people being forcibly removed from their homes and put in a camp or institution, ostensibly to help them. I think it's easy for us, as white people, to be ignorant of racism because we don't really have to deal with it. If someone makes a derogatory joke or complains about the damn niggers, we can just think "what a jerk" and move on with our lives. I don't think it's quite so easy when you're the subject of the abuse. I'm pretty sure that schoolgirl was much more traumatised than I was, even though I found the woman's words horrifying. And we don't, generally, have to deal with the subtle racism, the people who look slightly afraid when they talk to us because of our race, the people who sneer slightly at your hijab as they walk past. It's difficult for me to judge the extent to which things like this occur because as part of the privileged race I don't experience them. Though I do sometimes notice women looking at me with some suspicion at night, which I assume is because of my sex, but that's a different issue...
