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Whites Only Scholarship Controversy
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There is a guy I knew in college who's parents were from Chile (but were of Irish and Scottish descent so he basically looks white) who was very well off, but because his last named sounded Spanish and he spoke the language was able to "pass" as someone who could apply for these race-based scholarships. When I think of these Hispanic scholarships and how they are supposed to solve the problems they are supposed to be fixing I think of them letting a disadvantaged (probably immigrant from Mexico) student have the opportunity to go to a school that they wouldn't have been able to afford to go to if not for the scholarship, but every year this money wound up being used for beer and gas money for his boat when he stayed at his parents lake house in the summer. To make it worse, the guy was a borderline racist against most Hispanics, and his attitude about it was "hey, if those Mexicans are stupid enough to give me the money then it is their fault." :?
On the converse, I had a friend from South Africa who was of British descent, definitely not black (like one of the bad guys in Lethal Weapon 2), and as a joke applied to a bunch of African-American scholarships, and pretty much got the "get out of here kid" every time he actually dealt with the people in charge of those things.
I guess when you start handing out things based on ethnic origins and "free money" is involved people tend to muddy the waters on their heritage to take advantage, which circumvents the spirit of the law, and imo renders the whole thing kinda ludicrous in this day and age of mixed backgrounds. I've seen too many examples of the scholarships being taken advantage of to believe that they actually work.
Yeah - given any system, there are always people who will try to take advantage of it or otherwise subvert it. You see this a lot in laws or scholarships attempting to give preferences to native Americans as well, since a lot of fully-assimilated, pass-as-white suburban quadroons end up trying to weasel their ways into some of these preferences, while kids sitting in a puddle on a reservation often miss out.
The Hispanic scholarship would be well-served to add a clause about financial need, assuming its intent is what we think it is.
Still, given that any system will have a number of mistakes, inefficiencies or freeloaders, it doesn't convince me that the system is either unneeded or unworkable. They should really just tighten up their focus is all.