Is tolerance intolerant?

[bennyboy]

Unfortunately, discrimination is applied from the group on down, not from the individual on up..this is why group on down remedy is appropriate. Focusing on an individual is to ignore the problem for what it is.

Carry on.

Until there's an individual interaction, then there's nothing but an abstract idea in the ether.  It's when someone refuses an applicant, and it's found out that the accepted applicant had inferior qualities-- or when a student who's got a B+ average and has been working 5 hours a day gets rejected in favor of a rich kid who has nothing to do but study, that racism matters.

It IS a collection of individual acts and statements, because it's not possible to act on a group without interfacing it through the individual members in it.

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White privilege is when you think the problems black people face are more about lack of income and education than about black people being targets of systemic racism.

You have to find specific cases, and then seek to remedy them.

For example, white police sometimes shoot black civilians.  I'm not a police officer, and I do not need to be involved in any redress.  "White people" didn't shoot those black kids-- it was a small number of individuals-- and they need to be fired, jailed and sued for every penny they have, or ever will.

The same goes for schools. Just because a school doesn't have a lot of black students doesn't mean it's racist toward black students. At worst, it means that the criteria in place for acceptance are too narrow.

Let me ask you a simple question-- if a white student and black student apply for a spot, and the white student has better grades and better SAT scores, how would you determine whether a black student should be given the spot? What specific, quantifiable criteria would you put in place? +10 points if you identify as "black?" What about if you have one white parent? 3 white grandparents? What if you are Rachel Dolezal, and aren't black at all, but identify with black culture as you see it?

It's nice to want to help a group you think is disenfranchised or unjustly held back. But how, exactly, would you as a school administrator decide which students to accept or reject? How do you weight color against grades, or family income against hard work spent studying?