Defined as “the tendency of whites not to think about whiteness or about norms, behaviors, experiences or perspectives that are white-specific,” the transparency phenomenon of white privilege has negatively impacted the conversations about race, minority and ethnicity issues on campus. This obliviousness to white privilege, and the ignorance towards the role that race plays in the daily lives of minorities, has created the belief that a significant amount of the minorities on campus were admitted solely to reach racial goals.
Plan 2008 programs such as the PEOPLE (Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence) program have been incorrectly labeled as a system of “handouts,” and its alumni on campus are unfairly judged as under-qualified. The PEOPLE program is a pre-college pipeline for students of color and low-income, but it does not guarantee admission into the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most PEOPLE students are the first in their families to potentially attend college and without the program would not have had the support and guidance most of their white classmates receive from birth. Priority for admission into the PEOPLE program is given to students eligible for the free and reduced hot lunch program.
Although PEOPLE scholars are often seen by other students as under-qualified, it can be argued they have put in more work to get here than almost any other student. Along with the many struggles the PEOPLE students on campus have had to overcome as minorities, they also gave up 20 weeks of their high school summer vacations to complete residential programs on campus in order to prepare themselves for a successful collegiate career.
Unfortunately, this hard work is overlooked by white students who believe negative stereotypes about their minority counterparts. These stereotypes are primed by the yearly opinion pieces published in campus newspapers that call for an end to programs like PEOPLE.
Due to a lack of factual evidence, these articles assume there are a significant number of minorities on campus who are not qualified, and that the authors are more qualified than these students. In order to improve the climate on campus this type of unfair discrimination and the association of pre-college enrichment programs to race-based admissions must end.
To those who believe most of the minorities on campus do not deserve to be here: if you ever sit next to me in a lecture hall, do not ask yourself whether or not I deserve to be there, but instead, ask yourself if you deserve to sit next to me. Then ask me, and I will be more than happy to provide you with a list of high school and collegiate accomplishments that will make you reconsider what minorities on the UW campus are capable of, and where you stand amongst them. Once we stop judging each other based on unfair assumptions we will finally be able to move toward a truly inclusive campus. It is not just a matter of numbers. What our campus really needs is an increase in the acceptance and interaction between the many different types of talented students that are proud to call themselves Badgers.
Jay D. Flores
Junior, BS mechanical engineering & Spanish
