I am the root of all minority problems
By Daily Bruin Staff
Oct. 6, 1997 9:00 p.m.
Tuesday, October 7, 1997
I am the root of all minority problems
RACISM: Does support of affirmative action ban make someone a
bigot?
I recently read an article in the Daily Bruin maintaining that
racial equality is possible when a mixture of views are present. I
found it funny that the views presented in the article certainly
were not any of mine, and that got me thinking: Am I not placing
myself often enough in other people’s shoes?
Therefore, this is my exercise in empathy. Here goes
nothing.
Okay, I admit it: I am a bigoted racist. I am an impatient,
prejudicial white male, and I have consciously planned to oppress
minorities from sea to shining sea. Many Viewpoint columnists, past
and present, have known all along, and now I am beginning to see
the light: It is absolutely and unequivocally true that all of the
problems of the black and Hispanic communities are my fault. Oops,
I forgot – I should have said African American and Latino.
I admit that I am the root of all misery in those communities.
Am I not, after all, the conventional, run-of-the-mill, scapegoat
white man? Consider the low number of minority students accepted to
UCLA, the even lower numbers of minority students in professional
and graduate schools and the absence of minority workers in higher,
executive positions. This is all my doing.
"But," exclaim my former political peers, "what about the fact
that some of them have significantly lower scores and get accepted
due to slackened standards, all in the name of forced
diversity?"
"Hogwash," I respond.
I feel like such a monster having wished for the demise of
programs like affirmative action. It scares me to think that I
supported the idea that universities should accept only the
brightest students. What was I thinking?
Universities accepting students only on the basis of high scores
and achievements? We certainly can’t have that now, can we? Seeing
the situation from this new point of view, I feel it is imperative
for us to deny admission to many of those smart, racist white kids,
and replace them instead with minority students. Although they may
be less qualified, we can still get a good color scheme for our
campus publicity shots.
Now I should move on to the details regarding which students to
reject. Hmmm, let’s see … These students have to be white. But
what does white entail? What if the students are only half-white?
Those half-white students, whose plight of not being accepted as
fully white is campaigned endlessly by minority activists – should
they be rejected? Of course not! They can just jump back over the
fence they’ve been straddling and be considered minorities again.
No sir-ee, we should just concentrate on those kids that have no
minority blood in them.
Let’s start with the Northern European students. We can reject
Teutonic, Celtic and Scandinavian backgrounds right off the bat. We
can exclude the French, Italians, Russians, Czechs, Poles and other
Eastern Europeans, but we shouldn’t touch the Spanish (they speak
Espanol, you know).
But what about the areas between Eastern Europe and Asia?
Persians, Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Indians and Pakistanis aren’t
exactly as white as white bread, but who cares? We’ll
hypocritically lump them into the same unfair ethnicity and race
groups as the other Europeans. If they’re not African American or
Latino, they’re just as bad as the others are. Let’s let them know
that they shouldn’t be able to get their straight-A asses on this
campus, no senor. It’s reassuring to know that I can accept the
racist views of the minority frame of mind after leaving those of
the white frame of mind behind.
I almost forgot about the last batch of white people. What are
we supposed to do about South Africans and the Northern Africans
along the Barbary Coast? F. W. de Klerk and all of his white
countrymen, in addition to the Arabs in Egypt, Morocco and Algeria,
would surely be considered African American if they emigrated here,
wouldn’t they?
What am I saying? Of course they wouldn’t be African American. I
forgot that you have to be black to be African American. Assuming
the average American to be a white person is a blatantly racist
statement, but assuming the entire African continent to be black
should be a socially acceptable declaration.
As long as I am receiving atonement for my sins, as long as I am
in another person’s shoes, looking at myself, I feel that I should
open my soul completely and confess all of my wrong deeds. It is I
who keeps the minority people in their low-income neighborhoods.
Every night, I conspire within the confines of my dark,
smoke-filled room and hatch a diabolical plan to hold the minority
people down.
Why do I do this? As many Viewpoint columnists hypothesize, I
know in my heart that the minority races are far superior to the
lowly Caucasian race. The only way I can ensure my survival is to
oppress my superior counterparts.
How do I achieve this oppression? I commit cultural espionage
with other whites, invading the low-income neighborhoods by the
light of the moon and leaving semiautomatic weapons on everyone’s
doorstep. If we can’t kill them off, we reason, maybe we can incite
some violence and have them kill each other.
But I must also make good use of the illegal immigrants that I
let pass through the border. Carefully monitoring each one, I make
sure all newcomers smuggle in a suitable amount of illicit drugs
for systematic introduction into the inner cities. I will make
their youth dependent on my drugs, and I will let them vent their
frustrations with their doorstep surprises.
Finally, I complete my diabolical scheme by rigging the police,
the judges and the jurors in the white man’s favor to send their
youth to my jails. There, I subjugate them to harsh, inhumane
punishment by giving them the unthinkable: shelter, three square
meals a day, leisure time, free TV, complimentary gym equipment and
abundant educational materials on the house. I bring them to their
knees with my unyielding harshness. Every would-be criminal will
think twice about doing wrong when he ponders the adverse
conditions of a lax, unemployed life behind bars.
Boy, do these shoes hurt! It’s time to take these ridiculous
things off. Now answer me this: Am I the only student in this
school who sees the absurdity of this situation? Am I the only
person who is in disagreement with the portrayal of the Caucasian
race – not only the "whites," but the entire Caucasian race –
covering 4 continents, a few billion people, and 3 major world
religions – as the despicable root of all minority problems? Am I
to blame for all the ills of the dregs of our society? The obvious
answer would be no, but the words of countless columnists claim
otherwise.
"The white man holds us down; he oppresses us and does not let
us see the light of day until it is too late," they write. It seems
to me that they can’t see the light of day because they have their
heads so far up where the sun doesn’t shine.
I can point to specific articles of Roxane Marquez, the Daily
Bruin editor in chief of two years ago (and self-imposing Viewpoint
columnist), in which she refers to state and federal officials as
"those worthless pigs." It would not be a far stretch to say that,
to her, governing authorities personify the dominating, overbearing
rule of the white man.
Even now, I cannot bear to read some bleeding-heart, misguided
"humanitarian" talk about the plight of illegal immigrants
subjected to rough handling at the borders and poor treatment in
our cities. If immigrant treatment here is so horrible, if the
white man’s oppression is so appalling, if the everyday life of a
new arrival is so adverse, then why do so many of them insist on
illegally crossing the border in large numbers?
They do not pay income taxes, they are not subject to the laws
that American citizens are subject to, but they jump up in arms and
demand justice when their children are turned away from tax-funded
elementary schools.
African Americans, the other minority community, which Viewpoint
columnist Mark Tucker wrote about, have problems slightly more
difficult to debunk (but only slightly). Tucker states that whites
gauge themselves as opposites to African Americans. For example, he
writes, "The more dehumanized and savage-looking blacks are, the
more enlightened and powerful whites feel." I, for one, don’t need
to see myself next to another person to know my own self-worth.
Who is the one actually doing the constant comparison? More
often than not, as most issues of the Daily Bruin can attest to, it
is the likes of Tucker who are preoccupied with the difference in
skin tone or social status.
I do not deny that African Americans have endured endless
hardships throughout American history; the horrors they experienced
are woven tightly into our past. But how much guilt do I, a young
man born 203 years after the inception of this country, with no
appreciable ancestral roots outside of the Turkish peninsula, hold
for these horrors? Why do I, or any other "white" kids of my
generation, have to pay restitution for sins past by stepping aside
for affirmative action?
These columnists are essentially crying over spilled milk. They
run to and fro, like hens with their heads cut off, cackling
mindlessly for the continuation of such programs as affirmative
action. Just because we, the "white" students – the French,
Italians, Armenians, Turks, Persians, Jews, and all other European
and Middle Eastern students of this campus – were not unfortunate
enough to have the United States wish ill will on our people at
some point in time, should not make us any less qualified to go to
school here. Tucker, et al, are crying over this spilled milk, long
spoiled for more than 200 years. They are sponging up this putrid
liquid, wringing it back into its container and forcing us to drink
it over again in some unorthodox gesture they see as justice. Why
penalize hardworking, well-meaning students with the atonement for
sins past?
The real problem of this educational inequality starts in our
elementary schools. In the inner cities, where schools and students
are less equipped than their suburban counterparts, the large rift
begins to appear. Rather than strike at the students who have
reached the end of the public school path and shallowly relish in
this vindictive justice, we should concentrate on mending the rift
where it begins. It would be advantageous for educated students of
all backgrounds to help the disadvantaged youths in our cities
catch up with the others.
The principles of affirmative action in universities are
misplaced and misguided. We are "helping" underrepresented students
by giving them a good swift kick and putting them back into the
race too late. What good will higher education do if it is built
upon a weak grade-school educational base? We are pushing aside
ambitious, well-educated students for not being born into a
specific racial group.
Minority activists constantly whine about feeling ostracized for
being born a different color. Does this sort of "eye-for-an-eye"
justice serve any useful purpose in our universities?
As I put my own shoes back on, I think about the ramifications
of weakening affirmative action at the university level. The result
would be a student body consisting of the cream of the crop; the
best students from the country, bar none. Would I want to be
responsible for that? Sure, I’d take the blame for it.
Alex Balekian