We must correct past injustice

When I was a senior in high school, I was shocked at the sheer variety of college scholarships for which I could apply.

There was a special scholarship for people who valued quality in their lives, another for students who resided in my county, yet another one for students who were interested in careers in government and, of course, a whole plethora of scholarships for minorities.

I greedily applied for all of them.

Of course, not being a real member of a minority group but merely a loophole applicant, I got rejected from all the scholarships designed for minorities.

This week, however, The New York Times reported that, under pressure from Washington, many colleges across the United States are beginning to open up thousands of dollars in minority-aid programs to white students.

So maybe now, if I applied again, I might have a fighting chance.

But I wouldn't want it.

Even if I won a scholarship originally intended for minorities, I'd turn it down because the move to eliminate financial aid targeted exclusively at underrepresented minority groups is a terrible mistake.

As a white student, it is understandable that one would not want to be turned away from a scholarship -- much less a graduate or undergraduate degree program -- simply because one is not of a certain race. The American education system is a meritocracy where everyone ought to be given an equal chance.

I agree.

But I also agree with Lyndon Johnson's justification for affirmative action: "You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe you have been completely fair."

So long as we're not all starting at the same distance from the finish line, a helping hand is needed to ensure that everyone has an equal chance at pursuing the American Dream.

Hence, I can't see the existence of scholarships and financial-aid packages designed exclusively for minorities as racist.

Yet, some argue that such scholarships are racist because they put minorities ahead of other students.

This is simply not the case. Minorities are not the only group with exclusive scholarships and programs designed for them. White students who do not qualify for minority scholarships have recourse to thousands of other university, alumni and privately endowed scholarships. Many of them are, in fact, exclusive to particular ethnic groups.

And such exclusivity is a good thing. It would make no more sense to send a Catholic like me on a free Birthright trip to Israel than it would to award me a stipend from the Penn Summer Undergraduate Minority Research Program. Exclusivity serves a purpose: Every ethnicity has a right to financially back its members and promote its cause.

It therefore seems unfair to isolate minority groups among all other ethnicities by forcing their scholarships to be open to all applicants.

Why, then are we doing this?

Proponents of opening minority aid to white students argue for a class-based approach: Our society's helping hand ought to extend to disadvantaged classes, regardless of race.

But this approach fails to appreciate the fact that America's disadvantaged class is disproportionately made up of minorities. In 1999, according to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, 25.9 percent of Native Americans lived below the poverty line, followed by 23.6 percent of blacks and 22.8 percent of Latinos. Compare this to the 7.7 percent of whites who live in poverty.

Given these figures, the class strategy is clearly flawed. Opening up minority aid to white students in an effort to create a more equitable society makes about as much sense as helping the turtle catch up to the hare by giving them both the same shortcut. The distance between the two will still remain.

But it shouldn't.

We can all agree that we'd like our society to be as equitable as possible. Hence, it is best to keep minority aid as a tool for helping minorities overcome the disadvantages created by past injustices. For doing otherwise would itself be an injustice.

Cezary Podkul is a junior philosophy major from Franklin Park, Ill. Return of the Salad appears on Tuesdays.

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