It seems like there are always at least a dozen things to be angry about.
If it’s not gas prices, it’s food quality. If it’s not the environment, it’s whatever war we’re involved with.
Today, it’s racial equality.
The University of Texas at Austin is back in the news; a student’s case against the school went before the Supreme Court.
UT Austin uses affirmative action in its admissions process. They want to achieve a certain level of student diversity. That’s understandable for the school, as the “only other time that a case involving UT Austin came before the U.S. Supreme Court was in 1950, when the University was sued by Heman Sweatt, a black man who was denied admission to the School of Law because of his race,” according to a Huffington Post article.
Recently, “Abigail Fisher, a 22-year-old Texan, claims she was denied admission to the school’s flagship campus in Austin because she was white,” according to USA Today.
This can almost feel like two completely different sides of the race issue, but in reality, these two cases are fighting for the same thing: equality.
Nobody should be discriminated against based on race, gender or sexuality. Or what school you attend. Or what clothes you wear. It happens all the time, but it shouldn’t.
Maybe UT Austin should use this opportunity to take a closer look at its admitted students.
Police at the university are “investigating reports that four students have been assaulted with bleach-filled balloons while walking near campus” last week, according to the Los Angeles Times.
There have been “protests against racially themed fraternity parties and on-campus events on Cinco de Mayo during which fraternity members dressed like Border Patrol agents ran around the campus capturing other fraternity members wearing sarapes, sombreros, and T-shirts that read, ‘Illegal alien,’” wrote Gabriel Daniel Solis, author of the Huffington Post article and UT Austin alumnus.
It’s a problem. And you’re kidding yourself if you think it’s just at that university.
Is it naive to wish we could all just get along sometimes?
Affirmative action feels like a double-edged sword. Is it necessary? In some places, we’d argue it is. Should it be enforced everywhere? Hopefully not.
Why aren’t we at the point, as a country, at which we look beyond race? If we’re going to be judged, it should be on our merit, not by our skin color.
At places like UT Austin, maybe admissions should use an affirmative action-esque program — one that tests students on how racist they are before admitting them.
Stupid is as stupid does. So says Forrest Gump, and so say we.
We’re still dealing with a generation raised by scared conservatives who think every state is a border state — not OK.
If schools have shown an inability to positively represent the racial makeup of their surrounding areas, then they should have to adjust for that.
Diversity is important; discrimination is not.
