Kid size braces

3of5:

talldarkbishoujo:

Do minority students get more than a fair share of college scholarships? That myth reared its head earlier this year after a Texas nonprofit, the Former Majority Association for Equality announced plans to give scholarships only to white males. The group claimed that white males are disadvantaged because they don’t “fit into certain categories or ethnic groups.” So Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Fastweb.com and FinAid.com, put that idea to the test, and found that white students actually “receive a disproportionately greater share of private scholarships and merit-based grants.”

Kantrowitz crunched data (PDF) from both the 2003-04 and 2007-08 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, which showed that white students are 40 percent more likely to win private scholarships than non-white students. And Kantrowitz finds several college-specific scholarships only for white students, like UCLA’s 66-year-old Werner Scott Scholarship, worth $4,000, which is “restricted to Caucasian students from Hawaii who are not of Polynesian blood.”

Even when a scholarship doesn’t explicitly note a racial preference, white students are still at an advantage since scholarship sponsors “select for characteristics, activities and talents of interest to them.” Black students, for example, are much less likely to participate in equestrian, water, and winter sports than their white peers, which makes them ineligible for scholarships related to those areas.

White students, even those who “have no demonstrated financial need,” are also at an advantage when it comes to receiving funding directly from universities. Kantrowitz found that they get more than 76 percent “of all institutional merit-based scholarship and grant funding, even though they represent” less than 62 percent of the student population.

This is exactly what I was talking about in that “bootstraps” post I wrote a while back. I worked in FA, I know how the game is played.

The myth that people of color receive a disproportionate amount of scholarship is such a crutch for privileged white people to rest on. It allows them to be so dismissive of other college students receiving the same level of education because a student of color receiving scholarship on the basis of his/her race is so much more palatable than the basic notion that he/she actually earned her spot in spite of institutionalized racism at work in the system. 

And do these people actually believe that academic/athletic merit is in no way involved with AA? I had to become a National Achievement Scholar and a varsity rower before I saw even a hint of race-based aid. 

(Source: downlo, via vexingly-verbose)

doyoubelong:

Shane Meadows’ film, This is England, deals with the burgeoning skinhead culture in 1980’s England, and explores topics such as racism, violence, politics, and identity.

In their essay, “Subcultures, Cultures, and Class”, John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts explain…