IU must fight social injustice

If we lived in a truly post-racial society, it would be easy to declare that all admissions decisions should be made on pure merit and that concerns about racial distribution at IU are therefore unmerited.

However, we don’t.

The uncomfortable truth about America, and one that I’ve unwittingly written multiple columns in a row about, is that, while outright racism is perhaps not as common as it once was, the structural violence of racism still persists.

As IU is a public institution, and one that promotes advancement in life and society through the empowerment of education, I see it as our duty to do our part in fighting societal injustices.

A recent Indiana Daily Student investigation revealed that IU will not meet its goal of doubling minority enrollment by next school year.

This is unacceptable.

Let me give you an example of why recruiting purely based on academic merit is, in many cases, unfair.

In Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Public Schools System has been dogged with problems over the years. It covers a concentration of low-income neighborhoods in urban Indianapolis that are home to higher concentrations of minorities than almost anywhere in the state.  

Because the district has less money, it has more trouble providing the same talented teachers and wealth of resources for its students that a school system like Carmel, which is mostly white and wealthy, does.

Because of this, children in IPS are at a direct disadvantage to the children in Carmel.

Take IPS’s Arlington High School, one of 12 in the district. Ninety-four percent of Arlington’s students are minorities. Eighty-two percent are considered economically disadvantaged. The US News and World Report shows that they are only 33 percent proficient in English and 18 percent proficient in algebra.

Contrastingly, Carmel High School has 14 percent minority enrollment and only 7 percent of students considered economically disadvantaged. They’re 93 percent proficient in English and 96 percent proficient in Algebra.

I don’t think anyone would argue that minorities in America are less intelligent, less motivated or less worthy of a college education than white children. Sadly, because many minorities tend to be from lower-income families and live in lower-income neighborhoods, their children get less help and a lower-quality education than their more privileged white peers may get.

The numbers speak for themselves.

We must remember that the only way we can start to change our society is by giving one another a leg up. Minorities in Indiana deserve a college education just as much as their white peers.

While they’re definitely not victims in need of a white man’s crusade to save them, it would be unfair to not consider that many minority students face many more obstacles in the pursuit of an education than their often more privileged white peers.

IU should serve every student in Indiana who is willing to work hard enough to get a degree. That’s the duty of a public education institution.

Frankly, not recruiting at certain schools and not bothering with certain districts is, perhaps without even meaning to be, quite racist, especially given the promises to increase student diversity that IU has failed to keep.

­— kelfritz@indiana.edu