Affirmative Action

I have a cousin (K) who’ll be going off to college next year. She’s been looking at colleges for a while now. K’s had her eyes set on Duke, but with the cost of out-of-state tuition, her mom and dad told her to look locally (California) or do what her brother and sister did and go to a predominately black college like Hampton University.

K’s been to UC Riverside and she said she likes it a lot. She’s also toured some other UC school, I believe it was Irvine, but she didn’t want to go there because there weren’t enough black students. And I thought going to college was about getting your education.

The discussion then turned to Affirmative Action and my alma mater UC Santa Barbara, which is ranked #4 out of the ten UC schools and UCLA. Apparently enrollment of black students at UC Santa Barbara has dropped since my days as an undergraduate and UCLA isn’t doing much better in recruiting black students.

I absolutely hate discussing Affirmative Action. It always brings back the memories of my undergrad years during the time Proposition 209 was on ballot. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my when my white counterparts looked at me, they saw someone that shouldn’t be there-like I hadn’t worked my ass off in a predominately white high school and graduated in the top ten percent of my class. The only reason I was at UCSB was because I was black.

The truth is, even if the reinstate Affirmative Action, blacks will still be 2 percent of the student population in the UC system. The only people that can change that are blacks themselves.

I say this because out of my black female friends from high school and myself, I was the only one that went to college. My friends went the chickenhead route and chose to stay home to become somebody’s baby’s momma. The males became somebody’s baby’s daddy and made many failed attempts to be the next Tupac Shakur. Did I mention that we went to predominately white schools and that my friends came from households where the annual incomes exceeded six figures?

I’m going to be very blunt because I’m losing interest in the subject. Affirmative Action, racial preferences, etc., aren’t going to make up for the fact that even middle class black folks can’t get their shit together and raise their children right-you know, instill an importance of a higher education, hold off on the baby making UNTIL MARRIAGE, set higher standards for themselves, work hard, mind your business, keep your nose clean…must I go on?