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Last week, Abigail Fisher’s case against The University of Texas at
Austin gained media attention when she announced that she would once
again be taking it before the Supreme Court. In 2008, Fisher filed a
discrimination suit against the school, making the claim that they had
denied her admission while accepting less qualified students of color
because affirmative action laws gave them an unfair advantage due to
their race.
Further inspection, however, revealed that Fisher simply wasn’t a competitive enough student to qualify for a spot. UT Austin’s Top Ten Percent Plan
accounts for 92 percent of its admissions, with the plan guaranteeing
Texas high school seniors within the top ten percent of their graduating
class admission to the university. Thus, spots for the remaining 8
percent are extremely competitive. And while race is a factor, it’s only
one part of a comprehensive scoring system. Race, along with
socioeconomic status and family background, create the Personal
Achievement Index (PAI); and grades, essays, and activities make up the
Academic Index (AI). So of the 841 students who made the 8 percent cut,
only 47 had PAI/AI scores that were lower than Fisher’s, and 42 of them
were white. On the other end of the spectrum, the University rejected
168 minority students with scores higher than hers, making her argument
entirely baseless. Nonetheless, when the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals
denied Fisher’s claim, she took the case to the Supreme Court in 2013
and will again this year. Given the shifts in the Supreme Court
Justices, some speculate that this appeal may actually work out in her
favor.
Black people can’t afford to just roll their eyes and otherwise ignore
this blatant expression of white privilege. We already know that white
women have benefitted the most from affirmative action laws for decades. And now that they’ve benefitted from these laws socioeconomically, Fisher v. The University of Texas
and cases made by other white women show us that they can now afford to
attack what propped them up in the first place at the expense of people
of color. White women—especially young ones like Fisher—seem to forget
that a mere 30 years ago
you could barely find a woman in a graduating class. In fact, a case
like Fisher’s would have been simply dismissed in the 1970s, when
discrimination was more or less an accepted practice against people of
color and women alike. The fact that these women feel they can challenge
affirmative action laws is a privilege unique to white women alone, as
they are the only demographic to have both faced the discrimination
necessary to qualify for affirmative action and have also benefitted
from certain privileges, so that they rarely even need it anymore
(which, of course, is the goal for everybody).
The entire situation illustrates just how dangerous white entitlement
can be. Abigail Fisher, of course, doesn’t see this sense of entitlement
in herself at all. She opens her campaign video
by telling us that she’s “dreamt about going to UT ever since the
second grade.” She continues, “My dad went there, my sister went there,
and tons of friends and family, and it was a tradition I wanted to
continue.” This is supposed to make us sympathize with her, of course,
but the implication is that because she had this dream, she
automatically should have been able to live it. Meanwhile, many
low-income Black and Latino students dream of simply going to college at
all, and even with affirmative action, have to face the reality that
their dreams may not be plausible. The core of Fisher’s argument assumes
that because she is white, she automatically deserves a spot at the
University of Texas, even though she did not present herself as a
competitive candidate for admissions. Fisher’s argument assumes that,
somehow, people of color with grades equal to hers are less qualified by
default. And white supremacy agrees with her.
This is what allows Fisher to get away with blaming her own shortcomings
on the supposed “advantages” that people of color have. It’s why many
minority students have probably heard the phrase, “You’re lucky you’re a
minority. It’s so easy for you to get into college.” In order to uphold
the notion that white is, by default, the superior race, white people
will continue to avoid facing their own shortcomings by masquerading
their inferiorities as oppressions and conflating their own agendas with
progress. It’s really easy to get away with this when the people in
power are also white and will claim “reverse racism” whenever
affirmative action is mentioned, even though it’s not just a racial
policy.
Truly, it’s no surprise that Fisher’s proposed solution is a
“colorblind” entry process. Colorblindness has always been a very
effective way for white people to pretend to be progressive and
“non-racist” while conveniently ignoring the voices and unique
challenges of people of color—black people especially. And the
educational system is an especially cogent example of systemic racial
prejudice in this country. Because while you could try using economic
status as a blanket, you can’t pretend that poor white people face the
same issues as poor blacks. Black people, in fact, are still trying to
recover from a number of oppressive and discriminatory practices,
including being legally barred from buying property in suburbs when they
were first developed. To this day, housing discrimination still exists
in the form of blacks being shown fewer houses and charged higher
interests rates—all in the interest of maintaining modern segregation.
This of course means that black children are less likely to live near
quality grade-school education, and we already know that minority
schools are underfunded. But add in how frequently black schools are
closed, often in favor of prisons,
and you have a literal school-to-prison pipeline that simply does not
occur for white children. Not to mention, some minority schools are
legitimately failing to offer
courses considered necessary for college admission, such as Chemistry
and Algebra II. This suppression of minority education is the sort of
systemic oppression that affirmative action policies try to account for,
and until we live in a country in which everyone truly starts on an
equal footing, we absolutely need race-based affirmative action to
survive.
It’s
clear that Fisher has been out of her lane for too long, but it’s time
she started working her way back. Because she has repeatedly shown that
she is a woman of privilege who neither knows a thing about
discrimination, nor has the inclination to listen and learn. She’s
continued to speak of an injustice that she never faced. But, Ms.
Fisher, if you ever do feel like having a grown-up conversation about
racial discrimination and unfair advantage in America, we’ll be happy to
offer you a seat at our table, just as soon as you turn in your
five-page essay on the historical disadvantages white people have had in
the educational system built on the backs of those who have been forced
to attend “separate but equal” schools since their conception. We’ll
wait.
In the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the researchers describe three experiments that provide evidence backing up this assertion. The first two featured 94 and 91 white Americans, respectively, who were recruited online via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
“Participants completed two ostensibly unrelated surveys, the first regarding beliefs about inequality in America, and the second about childhood memories,” the researchers write. In the first, they were asked the degree to which they believe white people have “certain advantages minorities do not have in this society.”
Half addressed this touchy question cold, while the others did so after reading a paragraph describing the reality of white privilege in such realms as academics, housing, and health care.
The “personal memory” questionnaire included five items addressing hardships, including the assertion “I have had many difficulties in life that I could not overcome.” Participants expressed their level of agreement with each on a one-to-seven scale.
“In both experiments, we found that whites exposed to evidence of white privilege claimed more hardships than those not exposed to evidence of privilege,” the researchers report. In other words, evidence that their race was an advantage prompted white people to move toward a victimhood mindset.
The final experiment, featuring 234 white Americans from a national online pool, found “people claim more life hardships in response to evidence of in-group privilege because such information is threatening to their sense of self.” What’s more, “these denials of personal privilege were in turn associated with diminished support for affirmative action policies—policies that could help alleviate racial inequity.”
Altogether, the results suggest “[white] people may accept that in-group privilege exists, but change their perceptions of their own lives in order to deny the role of systemic advantages in their success,” Phillips and Lowery conclude.
In other words, to deny the affects of white privilege in their lives, white people will immediately drum up stories of hardships they’ve gone through as if to say that they themselves made it through hard work NOT because of any systematic advantages for whiteness or systematic disadvantages for non-whiteness. It’s the lie of meritocracy that America has been telling the world for centuries and whites have a personal stake in believing it because without it they would have to admit that the bulk of their entire person is based on lies. Again, truth is not really America’s (or white America’s) thing. The threat to their core belief (which is based on lies) is what white people feel when confronted with evidence of white privilege. It’s that cognitive dissonance that Frantz Fanon talked about in “White Masks”
Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.
What I find “humorous” is that white people always accuse Black people of “playing the victim” but yet they are the one who play victim the moment they can use it to deny the truth of white privilege. To deny truth, they quickly play the victim. Black people don’t play victim. We are being targeted and victimized for the benefit of whiteness and yet still we stand, fight, produce, live, love, laugh, smile, create, contribute and more. We simply speak the truth about how we are sinned against (to quote Ida B. Wells). Truth doesn’t create victims but for whites, they roll out that victim card to protect and perpetuate lies. That’s despicable but that’s white fragility for you tho.
What’s sad is when Black people (and other non-whites) join in with and back that bullshit. They’ve been so brainwashed into thinking “white is right” and they are so desparate for white approval that they can even see when bullshit is being fed to them and they just repeat it like trained dogs. That saddens me most of all.
So not only do white people think they are superior but they also think that they have suffered MORE throughout history and their lives. That sounds about right to me.
white people want to enjoy all the social, political, economical and territorial benefits of being an oppressor AND they want all the sympathy, support and encouragement that the oppressed get in their struggle against oppression. they want to live as victors but be seen as victims. they want it all ways always.
i cant believe the biggest hurdle straight cis white men face in their lives is having to think before they speak bc other people might call them “insensitive” and theyre so upset abt this that they write long thinkpieces in respected national magazines about it
Asian students are being put under the same restrictions as Jewish students were previously put under…
Asian student consistently outscore White students, so predominantly-White institutions (most of which are anti-Affirmative Action ironically) have been seeing a consistent rise in Asian students. In order to “balance the scales” and make it “more fair” for their precious White students, they reduce the number of Asian students being accepted.
Asian students are literally getting blackballed because they’re considered “too smart” and these institutions don’t want to become predominantly-Asian bc they’re supposed to be White.
It’s complete and utter bullshit.
masalamermaid
^^^^^
jackfrostapplesauce
WHOOP THERE IT IS
actualmenacebuckybarnes
lol, so funny when white people complain abt affirmative action because “unqualified people get admitted!!” but then are silent when the most qualified people are not white, but the scales get tipped in favor of their mediocrity anyway
