(submitted in response to the Plain Dealer's
Letters to the Editor
The Plain Dealer
Dear Editor,
Three sections in the Forum section of the
I have heard many people express dismay over Sen. Lott’s praise of Thurmond’s presidential campaign because they thought we were beyond racial tensions. Others have admitted surprise, shock, and even anger that other countries do not share our government’s enthusiasm to remove Saddam Hussein from power “especially,” they say, “after all we have done for them. How can they hate us?”
Perhaps it is because I am Black and I teach world languages
at
The college admissions process is more art than science. There is and never has been a single yardstick by which all students are measured. Our school systems are locally run. We do not have a uniform state or national system of schools. Courses, books, curricula, standards, and grading scales vary not only from state to state, but from school to school and even teacher to teacher. Applicants with such diverse educational formations must nonetheless be compared and these comparisons will by definition be subjective. After all, the goal is to predict how well each applicant will perform in a particular institution over a four year period. Lacking the aid of “Minority Report” Pre-Cog clairvoyants, this process will be imperfect. Ironically, the process’s fairness rests in this imperfection.
Why do those who denounce affirmative action programs for accepting “unqualified” minority students fall silent over the far more common admissions preferences given to legacies or applicants who are not applying for financial aid? Why is it less discriminatory to consider applicants to be “qualified” simply because their parents attended the same institution or can afford to pay full tuition? Ultimately, these arguments are not complaints against an unfair advantage, but selfish attempts to preserve existing advantages, our own “edge.” In spite of it all, colleges do a very good job of predicting which applicants will flourish on their campuses. So good a job in fact, that those most “unqualified” affirmative action candidates outperform their “qualified” counterparts by earning better grades and by getting graduate degrees at a higher rate. Colleges must remain free to “see” something others may miss.
The myth of a color-blind, faith-blind, or culture-blind
society is simplistic, dangerous, and insulting. Our insistence on this myth leads us to talk
about “tolerance” instead of “respect” which is the cause of so much distrust
and anger towards US policies and citizens throughout the world. Discomfort, delays, inclement weather, and
other unpleasantries should be “tolerated,” but never people. People all over the world by necessity learn
about the
The fact that I am Black is as important a part of who I am as
where I was born, educated, and where I have traveled and worked. Attempts to negate its relevance are attempts
to negate my very being. Few in the
“majority” seem to understand that real equality can only be achieved when
those of us in the “minority” are no longer considered successes in spite of who we are, but rather because
of who we are—just like “everyone
else.” A society that strives for this
sight must be our true goal.
Milton Alan Turner