Double standards at Winthrop???

[Honeykiss1974]

Student observe double standards at Winthrop

by Christine Byington
November 05, 2005

Black people at Winthrop will probably be angry. And I’m sure they will proclaim that Christine Byington doesn’t care about black people. If you care, however, you will read this thoughtfully.

To begin, I think it’s important to state a fact obvious to those who know me well. I don’t mean to implicate all blacks in this. I just have a problem with the belligerent ones who think we aren’t doing enough for them.

Hurricane Katrina brought back to the public attention the ongoing issue of race relations in America. The tragedy quickly shifted from concern for the people affected by the hurricane to the judgment that the federal government did not like black people. Obviously, the federal government has a vendetta against the blacks and chose not to respond to them quickly, right?

I guess we’re assuming that the many people of various ethnic backgrounds in the Bush administration don’t care about black people, either.

Today in the daily student announcements I saw the “Black Fact of the Week.” I did not have a problem with this in itself. Surely it is important for us to understand the contributions of black people in our lives. However, this is just one piece of an ever-complicating problem on campus.

In case you don’t know, there are quite a few groups on Facebook devoted to black people. Two in particular caught my attention: “Winthrop Does Not Like Black People” and “I Should’ve Went to a Blacker College.”

The first group describes itself as, “a group for people that agree that Winthrop is not a university for black people. Winthrop really doesn't try to do anything for blacks and black people has to work so hard to get things here.”

My main point with that description, being the amateur grammarian that I purport to be, is that the first step to “get things here” is to use proper English. To get what you want, you have to work hard. I don’t think this is a problem unique to black people. Everyone has to work hard in college.


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