Group Offers Scholarships for White Males
 

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What say you, GC?

LOLZ, we are so discriminated against. $500 scholarships will solve all our problems.:rolleyes:

Meh, I don't find this to be as controversial as the media seems to want to make it. If someone is going to put up private money to give scholarships to whities, lefties, or people born with red hair let them. Now if they were diverting public/private money from a minority group to fund this, then I'd understand if people got tiffed.

I have no problem with it. If Mr. Bohannon wants to start a group to help white males go to college, then good for him. I don't see it being any different than the groups who offer scholarships for women and minorities.

Ditto.

Manufactured controversy.

You can give a scholarship to anyone for any reason. There are ethnicity (not just minority-based!) scholarships, sports, etc.

Thirding this.

First and foremost, I don't agree with any scholarships that aren't based in financial need FIRST.

Second, it IS different than scholarships for women and minorities because of institutional sexism and racism which we still have not "overcome" in this country, as evidenced by salary disparities among men and women, and among whites and minorities. Race-based scholarships and gender-based scholarships were established to level the playing field -- not to stick it to the man.

THIS scholarship was established in racism. You don't have to have a problem with it for it to still be problematic.

The more scholarships the better. It's money some kid doesn't have to pay back once they graduate. Less reliance on loans is alright by me.

On a completely semi-off topic side note: At Loyola, there is a scholarship ($500) for anyone who has the last name Zolp. It doesn't matter if you're related to whomever the benefactor is, it just matters you have Zolp for a last name. I was always mad I could never get that.

So the scholarship might (if it exists after this year) pay out a grand total of $2,500 per year?

This is a national news story?

I disagree with any scholarships that are based on something other than scholastic achievement first. While it is important to help those who cannot afford it to get through school, is it not necessary to support those individuals who are high achievers not matter what their background?

Take the National Merit Scholarship. You have to score in the top 1 percent of high school seniors in your state to get the scholarship. And yet the scholarship amounts given for two of the main public institutions in Georgia are $500 and $750 a year. On the scale of total tuition and housing costs, that is NOTHING. That is books for the year, maybe not even the entire cost of them. So students who have demonstrated potential for achievement, even though they may be able to afford the cost, get rewarded very little for it.

I'm not saying that need-based scholarships aren't important or necessary, but there are very few scholarships for those who JUST earn it and don't necessarily REQUIRE it to get through school. That's doesn't seem right to me.

This is a Texas news story, as it is being offered at Texas State University.

That doesn't mean I'm not interested in hearing others' thoughts.

I guess I don't get why it's so super necessary - there are a lot of scholarships out there that aren't based on gender or race. You just need to do your research.

ETA: I got over $30,000 in scholarships for my four years at undergrad (private school - I still walked out with almost $15K in loans), and I don't remember a single one of them being based on my gender.

I agree with this, and understand the reasoning behind it. However, I also believe that privately funded scholarships should be awarded to whomever is deemed deserving by the donor, regardless of motive or bias.

And FWIW, the scholarships I would really support, need or achievement based, are color and gender blind.

Not to mention the GI Bill.

Hell, you can get a scholarship for wearing a duct tape dress/tux to the prom.

If some kid wants to show up lookin' all gray and shiny for the biggest formal event of his/her young life for a few thousand dollars, I say go for it!

God bless America.

AGREED.

Also, I think it is patently untrue that there are "no scholarships for white people". There are scholarships for people of Polish origin, or Irish origin, or descendents of the Mayflower, or any other number of things that really mean "white".

Serious question...

Do most scholarships for minorities specify where exactly they (or their descendants) came from? (i.e. whether you're from Iran, or China, or Jamaica, etc.?) Or are they more general based on ethnicity or skin color? ... Middle-Eastern, Asian, Black, etc.?

There are scholarships for both (ex. You must be Jamaican and You must identify as African American).

Since Georgia already offers a full tuition scholarship to qualified students, why would they offer National Merit money to kids who already qualify for HOPE? :confused: Other states, which don't have lottery money or merit scholarship programs, offer much better deals for those who did really well on the PSAT/NMSQT.

I am conflicted about women/minority scholarships. I went to a college that awards financial aid based solely on need. It's a numbers thing and there's nothing unfair about that. I went to a tiny high school, however, and all of the kids of color applied for certain scholarships. Despite being in the top 1% of my class (and probably the top-ranked student of color), I didn't receive any of the scholarships...the kids who did, however, didn't finish college.

Would it have been better to just give the scholarship to the person who was the most qualified academically, or the person who needed it the most on a financial level just to GO to college (and not necessarily to graduate)?

I probably would have graduated from college anyway, Ladies of Essence/American Association of Business Women/Florida Architects Assembly scholarship or no. But, would those people who ended up getting those scholarships even ATTENDED college without them?

Don't knock duct tape prom dresses - they get extremely elaborate and are really difficult to pull off. It's a good way to show creativity to a scholarship board.

Examples:
http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/20...pe_prom_01.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wPT9ZKdzmF...B1c/s400/6.JPG

http://blog.mlive.com/kalamazoo_gaze..._0186961_4.jpg

http://katy.grahn.org/images/miscell...teDuctTape.jpg

Just another person/group trying to make a statement. I liken this to things like "Affirmative Action Bake Sales" that some collegiate political groups do to make a statement.

But, when you (observe and) ignore these people/groups, their statements are less powerful and tend to go away with ease. Their white-only scholarship may or may not receive a shit load of applicants. Yay, either way.

There have been centuries of white-only scholarships that were called something other than "white-only." Some people criticized those scholarships but the structural dynamics that permitted those scholarships persisted. And those scholarships didn't go away...nor should they...but those who really were and are looking for white-only scholarships have a list to choose from and should know how to find them by now. :) Just don't use "white-only" as a keyword.

I must note that some private and public institutions did away with their minority-based scholarships. Even with those scholarships, it is still the case that most college students are on student loans rather than scholarships and grants; and that disproportionately impacts racial and ethnic minority students.

None of them are based on "skin color." They are based on race and ethnicity. :)

(Skin color is a mainstream phrase for physical racial and ethnic identifiability.)

Just wondering if a "white" scholarship was comparable to any other :D

Actually, I just went to look at the website for that scholarship after I posted, and I saw a bunch of dresses/tuxes like this.. quite impressive!

So I guess you can get a scholarship for being creative :)

The money you get from National Merit is based on which school you go to, not the state you qualified from. If a NM scholar from Alabama goes to the University of Georgia, they get the same $500 as someone from Georgia. Only students from Georgia who stay in Georgia and maintain the required GPA can get the full tuition scholarship.
Also, there is a good possibility that HOPE will no longer pay the full tuition for everyone in the future, and the amount supplemented for books will drop (it's not enough for some students as it is), so scholarships like this would be even more important.

Just so you understand, the requirement is 1/4th Caucasian. There are a whole lot of people that could qualify for both NAACP scholarships and this one at the same time.

But that's not particularly relevant. It's attention grabbing, nothing more significant.

Yes, the article states "After receiving scholarship requests from people who are of mixed race, Bohannon has qualified his requirements so that students are eligible if they're a quarter non-Hispanic white."

LOL @ both NAACP scholarships....

More importantly, Bohannon started this scholarship because non-Hispanic whites have become the minority in TX at 42% of the total population. The population minority means very little because whites are still, and probably always will be, the power majority in Texas and other states. So, a white scholarship isn't the worst idea in the world but it does make me laugh, considering the "we're a minority" angle. That doesn't even get into the fact that the white Hispanics will assimilate into "America whiteness" in about 10-20 years.

I'm laughing that he's reaching for the stars with that 3.0 gpa requirement, too!

42% makes them a plurality, not a minority. (Unless one other group is 43%, which I doubt.) Dude needs to give himself a scholarship so he can take a stats class. Or a sociology class. Or anything.

You're correct.

Then I don't really blame Brohannon for that. LOL. If he was incorrect that non-Hispanic whites are the minority at 42%, the article should have called him out. They should have the stats dammit.

ETA: Ummm...LOL...what was Brohannon talking about. Even this blog alludes to the fact that no group surpassed non-Hispanic whites. http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-p...ord-plurality/

Wikipedia's demographics of Texas has a really weird breakdown of the stats including contrasting non-Hispanic whites(32%) with Hispanics of any race (37%) and at the same time identifying over 70% of the population as "white."

While 'Hispanic' confounds the data because it's an ethnicity, it doesn't make sense to consider race in some and not other categories and ethnicity in some and not others. In short, I'm still going with "plurality" and this guy being fail.

Long story short, non-Hispanic whites aren't the minority. No group surpassed non-Hispanic whites.

The most I found was projection data: http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/chs/popdat/ST2010.shtm

Not to get bogged down with this detail, I'm really humored that I was questioning my intelligence when I read his claim and read your response. It's funny that he attempted the minority angle and it was inaccurate. People also confuse "Hispanic population is growing" with "non-Hispanic white population is smaller than every other population." Such confusion works very well for the Texas political and racial climate.

The first statement you have ever typed that hasn't made me want to grind my teeth and spew profanity.

This was on Yahoo this morning


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He is right, there are a lot of people who can't afford school. But he should be lobbying for political change if he really believes it is a problem.

Actually he's doing something to address the problem that he sees. Whether or not he lobbies for political change it seems silly to criticize him on those grounds.

This. Let's be honest, lobbying for change isn't for everyone. To make change actually happen it takes money, time, commitment, and connections. Maybe he thinks he is better suited to help this way instead.