One of the many reasons Kate thinks I'm crazy...

please realize I am a very rambly person and i wrote this while being overly tired

I think I'll begin this plain, simple and clear: As it is in it's present state I am HIGHLY against affirmative action.

:o shocking? I know right.


So anyway today in gov we sat in class and we shared our views on affirmative action. Some people mentioned how there is still white privilege and another person thought that we should take not of the fact that there are only two black people in AP Gov and that most of the other AP classes are lacking in minorities.

Let's start with this thing that has to do with Masterman. There are no black kids in the top classes because it just so happens that most of the black people don't want to take these courses. It's not like they don't have the option to, they just don't sign up for them. And I mean I understand the whole thing about like "history and things that happened in the past cause minorities to tend to not reach as far as others do" but it's Masterman. That doesn't apply. Everyone in that highschool knows the benefits of taking AP classes and the benefits of taking the non-AP classes and so it just ends up with few black people in most of the AP classes.

The main reason that I oppose affirmative action is the reason people try to give about why there so few minorities in higher level courses. Though I do not agree with this idea when it is applied to Masterman, I do think that it can be applied other places. Throughout U.S. History minorities have been kept down and so many of them still feel stuck down today, like they cannot try to gain more in their lives because they will just be pushed aside as their ancestors were. But, there are some minorities (like myself) who know that they can have whatever they want in their life. If you want more qualified minorities in high places they key is not to help them after they've made it through high school or college, the key would be to help them from birth placing them in better schools and more productive environments.

Now, this is what I find uber salty and funny about Affirmative Action, many people think that it rights the wrongs of white privilege. The problem with this is that many people also fail to see the Black privilege that it creates. I have an edge over my white male friends because I'm a black female. I also have access to a lot more help than they do because people want to help the "sad minority." This puts me in a position where I can achieve more by doing less than white males. Doesn't seem right to me, but I know it's true.

Affirmative action as it is now helps the wrong group of people. It helps people like me who are already college bound and don't really need help. It gives me a little extra boost. When really, it should be helping the kid who has a lot of potential but was not able to reach his / her full potential because they ended up in a sucky neighborhood school where they were written off as another hood rat who was not going anywhere in life. It should help those kids that bomb the SAT not because they aren't smart but because of the fact that they had no clue what they were getting into. It sort of pisses me off that affirmative action helps me, who does not really need it, instead of my friends who I know who do. It's not really a help, once it kicks into place the person is pretty much past all the problems they had to face that would hold them back.

My other problem with affirmative action is that it always leaves people looking over their shoulder wondering if they got to where they are not because they were qualified but because they were black. It's somewhat of an insult when colleges that accept people based on a point scale add points because of an applicants minority status. That says that they generally expect minorities to come in being worse than everyone else. And, it does allow some under qualified people to be let in over qualified people which is a serious problem and gives people grounds to make statements questioning how a minority got into a school/job. It also leaves me feeling like somewhat of a hypocrite. I can sit here and speak about how I'm against affirmative action but sitting right next to me are two of the many scholarships that my mother has had me fill out that are for minorities. I have to take these advantages because I need the money, but I feel bad knowing that I have many more scholarship opportunities than non-minorities who I know also need money. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but I do know that I will have to keep doing these scholarships because my mom needs the money.

I wish it wasn't this way, but it is. I wish there were no such thing as the office of minority education at MIT which is devoted to making sure that the minorities achieve. Who is there to make sure that all of the non-minorities achieve? Maybe one day it won't be this way. Maybe one day we'll be able to give each child the same chances and so whatever position he or she is in by senior year of high school is due to their own good or bad decisions. But we would also have to make sure that they had proper counseling because a lack of a good family structure is one thing that leads to this gap that people are trying to fix with these stupid policies. Ugh. This is way too much to think about, and too big a problem for a 17 girl who is sleep as hell. So I guess this is where I'll end. It's just something to think about.