Issue date: 3/13/08 Section: Editorial/Opinion

In my quieter moments, I often find myself daydreaming about fairly important topics. In recent days I have been pondering something that has been on my mind for a while. That is, of course, when are white people going to catch a break in this country?

This question of mine was prompted by a recent discussion in one of my classes concerning the ethics of affirmative action. The argument that it's unfair to white students due to favoring lesser-qualified minority students in the admissions process was brought up as it always is. Well-qualified white students could be shut out of college if schools select students based on race, was an argument made by more than one person. Of course, the irony that about 33 of the 35 people in the class were white was not lost on me, but that's beside the point.

Woe is the middle- to upper-class white high school graduate who wants to attend college! Never mind that according to the UW System's 2007-08 fact book, UW-Eau Claire had only 475 multicultural students out of 10,766 in fall 2006, putting us second to last out of the 13 four-year colleges in the UW System in terms of minority enrollment makeup with 4.44 percent. How are we supposed to overcome the obstacles affirmative action lays before white people? When are whites going to finally get their due in society?

Of course, there are some old standby arguments supporting affirmative action. Increasing the range of perspectives in the classroom or giving students a chance at attending college who only decades before could never have dreamed of getting a higher education because of widespread racism are just some examples. Another argument is it acts as a means of ensuring there is no bias toward whites in college admissions as there was until recent decades.

Unfortunately, these points are well-intentioned but ultimately very silly. Since we all live in the same country, we should all have the same exact experiences as one another and thus formulate opinions that are roughly the same, regardless of race. How foolish is it to assume that a black or Asian person growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood would have a different perspective on life! And how could a minority student coming out of a poor area of Milwaukee have any variation in opinion on life than a white student raised in the suburbs around Wausau?

Why would minority students have a differing opinion on various topics, even if the average white family in the United States earned $46,697 compared to the average black family earning $30,134, Asian families with $57,518 and Hispanic families earning $34,241 according to the 2004 U.S. Census Bureau report? Obviously this won't change their perspectives on something discussed in political science or economic courses, that would be outlandish to assume.

Lyndon B. Johnson ended racism back in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act, remember? We no longer have to worry about people, white and minority, being shaped by biases they face in everyday life. Race can't possibly be a factor in trying to make a more varied public discourse.

Addressing the argument of paying back minorities that the ruling white majority has marginalized over the history of this country, I can only ask - when is it going to be enough, minorities? I mean yeah, Jim Crow Laws, the internment of the Japanese in World War II and slavery were all pretty bad and set you back a few years, but come on! This affirmative action deal is maybe slightly inconveniencing some white students, a monumental crime indeed. I'm sure there are thousands of 4.0 GPA, Harvard-level white students out there who are forced to work at Wendy's because minority students who recently passed the General Education Development exam took their place in college thanks to affirmative action. Can't you just be the bigger persons in this ordeal and forgive us for preventing you from properly integrating into American society and government for decades and let us remove the one thing that's making sure that doesn't happen again?

Letting underqualified minority students into college instead of qualified white students is a crime, no doubt. Of course, it's a bit of a problem that there's no set definition to what "qualified" means; do we mean the student with the high GPA from a school that historically grades soft, the one who scored high on the notoriously biased standardized tests or the one who's shown a commitment to volunteering in his or her community? Do we take the white student who went to a private school and got straight As or the minority student who went to a poorer quality high school but volunteered constantly in his or her hometown?

These are small, quibbling points to be made, though. The fact is, once we get rid of these affirmative action policies, we will truly be a colorblind society. Making decisions based on race will only lead to more tensions between people. Obviously, the only thing keeping Neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan groups together is affirmative action policies; once they are done away with, all bigots and racists in society will have nothing to complain about concerning minorities and be forced to accept people of all colors. I mean, that's what Ron Paul believes, it clearly must be based in well-reasoned thought.

I look forward to the next time a white student complains in a college class about how difficult it is for white students to get into college; all this thinking I have done recently will help me aid them in their argument. If enough of us see the light, perhaps we can lead to real, substantial change in our nation, a nation that doesn't need affirmative action even though all evidence suggests otherwise. I want every white student in America to have a fair chance at attending college so they too can complain about how unfair society is to white people.

A man can dream, can't he?

Langton is a senior print journalism major and editorial editor of The Spectator. "What a Scoop!" appears every Thursday.

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