When race is an advantage, it becomes a disadvantage for
others
By Marina Bogorad
Yes, Aisha Jones, your suspicions that my first name sounds
feminine proved right ("Affirmative action must right past wrongs,"
May 8). Guilty as charged  I am a woman.
But I, pardon my ignorance, cannot grasp how my gender is
significant in regard to the discussion of affirmative action. Sex
is hardly a part of the program that protects underprivileged
minorities, because now, with Janet Reno serving as attorney
general and two female justices on the Supreme Court, women hardly
qualify as an oppressed minority. After all, it would be simply
humiliating to me if I had been admitted to this fine institution
because I scored "extra points" for being a woman.
Am I not good enough by just being a hardworking human being?
I’d like to believe that I am capable of competing with men and
getting in without extra "indulgences" from the admissions
committee. Sex, just like race, is not earned by dedication and
academic excellence. So why would I get allowances from admissions
for something I was born with?
Gender does not seem like a major part of affirmative action,
for women were admitted to fine universities long before
affirmative action was implemented. But, considering Jones’
allegations that I see people of color as intellectually inferior,
she somehow missed one detail that was annoyingly consistent in my
argument. (Did you even read it at all, Ms. Jones? Or did the
"white-writing-against-affirmative-action" scheme prevent you from
paying attention to my argument?)
I argued that affirmative action is unfair, for it is my honest
conviction that people of color are as, and often more, intelligent
in comparison with whites. That is precisely why minorities should
not be given extra advantages in the admissions process: being
equally capable of getting into the university on the basis of
intellectual ability, they get preferential treatment on the basis
of race.
The only significant argument Jones came up with in support of
affirmative action, aside from attacking my intellect and doubting
my GPA, was that the "wrong" done in the past to minorities "must
be righted." How, by pushing these minorities through college
admissions, often in disregard of other applicants who are not any
less but sometimes more qualified?
Don’t you think that the process now being done to non-minority
students is also "wrong"? If the admissions continue in this
manner, you can be sure, Ms. Jones, that in about 50 years a white
UCLA junior will write a letter to the Daily Bruin saying, "We must
right the wrongs done by admissions. Give affirmative action to the
whites!"
Sorry for "messing" with you, as you put it, Ms. Jones. But you
just did not convince me that all the horrible oppressions and
inequality in the history of African Americans are relevant to the
admissions process of an academic institution.
The bloody history of segregation, lynching and unprotected
rights makes me, like you, stand for civil liberties and condemn
racism. Let’s preserve the heritage and remember the "wrong" of the
past in order to prevent it from being repeated in the future.
But let’s also not forget that all this has nothing to do with
one’s capability of being a worthy college student. It is highly
unlikely, Ms. Jones, that the inequality of the past made you less
competitive intellectually. After all, millions of Jews were
slaughtered in the Holocaust and have a long history of repression.
Why don’t you then follow the logic of your argument and demand
affirmative action for predominantly white Jews? But the UC
application has no space for religion, although there is a big
section devoted to ethnicity.
The "like cures like" philosophy upon which Jones bases her
argument is plain scary. It is precisely this motive that feeds
groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. It is
this argument that gives them slogans like "whites are oppressed,"
and makes them fear that African Americans are out to get them. It
is this "correct the past" scheme that promotes some sort of
vendetta against the former oppressors and, to many uneducated
people, makes the stupid claims of white racists seem
legitimate.
When race is used as an advantage, it becomes a disadvantage to
others; when race is constantly accented, it becomes an issue; when
you make race an issue, you create a seed for racism. Maybe if
people did not care so much about racial differences, if they
remembered but forgave the past, there would be less racism in this
country.
Bogorad is a first-year student majoring in political
science.