Economic advantages more significant than race

Kennedy is a first-year engineering student.

By Matt Kennedy

In her column, “Society sees white
as right, even if you don’t,” (Daily Bruin,
Viewpoint, Nov. 9), Megan Roush claims to have some
“understanding of the power that “˜whiteness’
brings in our country” and feels it necessary to explain this
understanding to everyone. Although I agree that racial problems
exist, Roush has a misunderstanding of this situation.

She muses and wonders “if my life and the opportunities
that I have had are the result of my privileges as a white
person.” She goes on to say that she comes from a fairly
wealthy, predominately white neighborhood. Growing up in a
community like this, I am willing to bet that Roush had a nice room
of her own with a nice desk, a clean bed, a computer and pretty
good schooling. What she needs to understand is that she grew up so
well and became intelligent enough to get into UCLA not because of
her white skin, but because she is well-off.

She continues by saying that she is “ashamed that the
community where (she) grew up constantly fights to keep affordable
housing and apartment development in the outskirts of the
city” and that “suburbs enforce a kind of modem-day
segregation because housing is purposely too expensive for
non-white families to live in.” I’d like to state here
that the prices of housing are dictated not by an underground
society of racist white people but by simple economic policy
““ money talks.

Regardless of race, people with money will get to live in
desirable housing in desirable communities, and people without
money will get to live in the leftover areas. The fact that there
are more wealthy white people than minorities gives the illusion of
some kind of real-estate segregation.

Later, she states that “white people … claim that
because their family established themselves in America such a long
time ago … they have earned their piece of the American Dream,
and that…”˜people of color’ will just have to do the
same.” As much as this bothers her, it is a cold fact of
life. This may not be the middle ages, but the class system is
still in effect.

Children of wealthy parents will probably grow up to be wealthy,
while those of poor parents will probably grow up to be poor. But
this is still the land of opportunity, so if you work hard enough
and are ambitious, you can move up in social class. People of color
have to earn their way, but so do white people. Privileges are
inherited through money and hard work, not through race.

Roush spoke about where she came from, but what about me? I come
from a desert community about 100 miles from here where the land is
ridiculously cheap, but the population is concentrated so that
there are 50,000 people in my town, with a large percentage of
underrepresented minorities.

Many of my classmates, both white and non-white, had single
mothers on welfare and lived in fairly lousy houses. I worked for
Child Protective Services during high school tutoring children who
lived in broken homes. Some of these kids never saw either of their
parents but lived with a poor dying grandmother living on Social
Security. I would always have to bring pencils and paper and
reading material to these children’s houses because they did
not have them. All that they had were rodents and insects crawling
in and on the walls and along the crevices.

Roush needs to realize that these poor children from broken
homes don’t have much of a chance when it comes to acquiring
an education. In her hometown almost everyone has grown up using
computers; some of the children in my hometown have never used
calculators.

Why did I get into UCLA? Neither of my parents went to college,
but they worked hard and they stayed together, and they helped me
whenever they could. It is a combination of community support,
family values, hard work and hard earned money that got me here. I
am not here because I was born white.

While Roush justified saying that being white gives you
privileges by pointing out that there aren’t many people of
color at UCLA and that many people of color have trouble moving up
in society, she forgot to to talk about the Asian American
population.

Asian kids are not having too much trouble getting into nice
schools like UCLA. Why do Asians grow up to get accepted into fine
universities and move up in society? Why are Asians earning their
way? Going by Roush’s article I might be tempted to say that
racist wealthy white people are holding people of color back but
allowing Asians to move up. But more reasonably, we could look to
other things, like family values, and entertain the possibility
that Asian families in general have strong family values and that
Asian parents work very hard to make sure that their children
succeed in school.

Once again in Roush’s words, there is a “horrible
situation we face today at our university and in the United
States.” But instead of blindly complaining about the
remnants of slavery and censuring whites who say that minorities
need to “earn their way” just like everyone else, we
need to take a more practical cause-and-effect approach.

If we isolate the problems we can come up with solutions. For
example, we are spending billions of tax dollars each year to put
computers in every classroom, but how much money would it take to
put paper and pencils and calculators in every classroom? Also,
what can we do about all of the single parent families?

Believe me when I say that an African American kid with a single
mother on welfare is not much worse off than a white kid with a
single mother on welfare.

Moreover, the sanctity of marriage must be protected, and men
must know what the consequences for their child will be when they
leave a woman pregnant. Regardless of race, a baby can really
hinder a young woman’s chances of getting through
college.

While I don’t know the solutions, what I can tell you is
that there will always be rich people and there will always be poor
people. The well-off will make sure that there children are
well-off, and as time passes, it will slowly become harder and
harder to move up in society. But people will do it.

There are economic barriers that make it hard to move up in
class, but these barriers do not make it impossible. Any hard
worker can make a class shift.

We can only help to encourage strong family values and improve
our public school system so as to make a more level playing
field.

If Roush wants to do something to break down racial barriers,
she must stop professing that racism is still rampant and write her
congressman. If action is not taken, then our country will no
longer be the land of opportunity, but the land of opportunistic
economic barriers.