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[spork]

[. . .]

I know I should probably just count my blessings, but I was wondering if anyone here has had similar anxieties after being accepted to a highly competitive grad program or TT position.  I guess I'm soliciting a constructive way to think about this.

The best thing you can do is step aside to make room for a black paraplegic transsexual who wants to study Balinese shadow puppetry.

[contemporary_]

However, there's this little voice in the back of my head that wonders, "did they take you because you are a minority?" 

 I guess I'm soliciting a constructive way to think about this.

Well, just this week I was discussing the new crop of admits with one of my mentors, apparently when I was admitted everybody wanted me.  I was stunned.  Top choice, sans AA, sans insider mentor (not the aforementioned) on the committee, sans prior contact with Famous Advisor. 

Get in good and someone will tell you the dirt, otherwise, forget it. Move on.

It doesn't really matter, it's the quality of your work that matters.

The best thing you can do is step aside to make room for a black paraplegic transsexual who wants to study Balinese shadow puppetry.

Stop talking about me.

[sheinthespirit]

Dear Pamplemoose:

Your paranoia is real.  You will be forever plagued with it.  You have been conditioned in a society where these dual messages are ever present.

W.E.B. DuBois calls it Double Consciousness.  This syndrome makes 'some' of those who might (in theory) benefit from AA debate whether they are even worthy of such merit or was it that the employer needed performance funding?

Your first respondent said it right. Life is too short to worry about such things. BUT, the next time you wonder are you good enough or were you an AA hire,  think about DuBois affirm that you are and move forward!

[virmundi]

And just to add on to what sheinthespirit said:

AA is not intended to give advantages to unqualified people, but to give a qualified person an opportunity to prove it who might not otherwise have that chance.

I believe that the fact that you have been accepted into a program is an indication that you are qualified to be in that program.

[smart_e_pantz]

I'm pretty sure I was an AA admit to the Ivy where I received a MA.  But you know what, when ill-meaning folks bring it up to me, I tell them it's my forty-acres and a mule (look it up I don't have time to explain).

You see OP.  I grew up in the deep South.  My maternal grandmother cleaned white folks houses because that was one of the only jobs available to most black women who were unlucky enough to have been born to former slaves.  My father worked all his adult life in the warehouses on the docks of New Orleans after picking cotton in Mississippi in is youth.  My mother worked in a sewing factory until I was 8; at that point she went to a votech school on the government's dime and became a LPN.

For the first 15 years of my life, I was educated in all-black Catholic schools.  When I finally ventured out, it was to a public high school that was 50% black, 25% white, and 25% Asian--where they were still spray painting f*ck n*ggers on the walls by the time I graduated in 1986. 

When I went to the public school, my parents had to threaten to sue them because they were refusing to allow me to take the admissions exam for the honors program despite my grades and test scores which put me at the 12th grade level by the time I finished 6th grade.  My white guidance counselor told me I wasn't smart enough to attend the local major private white university from which I now hold a second master's.

I ended up attending one of those much maligned HBCU's for undergrad largely because as the child of parents who didn't know or understand the process, I didn't know how to apply for the outside scholarships that would have allowed me to attend one of the top-25 schools I to which I was admitted--and my white guidance counselor was no help since she decided I wasn't smart enough to have gotten in those schools anyway.

So, when someone questions my qualifications and pulls out that AA card, they can go f*ck themselves with a rusty HIV covered nail!

BTW...  George W. Bush was an affirmative action admit to Yale and Harvard--affirmative action for rich white folks!  I think I've done a whole lot more positive things with my AA admit than that weasel will ever do with his (no insult to weasel's intended).

[bewildered]

So, when someone questions my qualifications and pulls out that AA card, they can go f*ck themselves with a rusty HIV covered nail!

And here I was under the impression that HIV couldn't actually survive on a nail.

[allbutfoundajob]

I'm pretty sure I was an AA admit to the Ivy where I received a MA.  But you know what, when ill-meaning folks bring it up to me, I tell them it's my forty-acres and a mule (look it up I don't have time to explain).

...

So, when someone questions my qualifications and pulls out that AA card, they can go f*ck themselves with a rusty HIV covered nail!

Just because a general (who had no power or authority to actually follow through) thought that it would be good policy for former slaves to be given 40 acres and a mule, does not mean that it can be used as a justification now for a racially discriminating policy.  General Grant thought that states had the right to secede.  I do not see that justification used much now other than as a historical example of states rights were not just a southern phenomenon. 

Just as some whites who benefited from racially discriminatory policies by the government fought to keep those benefits, so do some non-white people today who benefit from racially discriminatory policies by the government.  It is not really surprising that you would so vehemently defend government policies that judge people based on skin color as long as you benefit from these policies.

[sheinthespirit]

Just a historical note...

The 40 acres and a mule was not just a general's idea,  It was part of a much larger compromise/plan of the Freedmen's Bureau.   Promises were made, acted on,  and then reneged without any vindication for the freed southern blacks.  AND the real general in charge of enacting this move would be General Howard. Digressing...

The promises of a governmental bureau, however, should be honored and plans for an enslaved, colonized, or marginalized population should have a recourse once the tyranny upon their lives ends (or is shifted in other tricky patterns like Jim Crow).

Although I believe that AA missed its mark for those who should have benefited the most from its policies, there definitely should be some sort of American apology, recourse, restitution, or reparations (yeah I said it) for its crimes against enslaved Africans.

Hence, I understand where smart_e_pantz is coming from with his/her perspectives on being owed something for the past genocide of African slaves.

AND just in case anyone wants to find out who one should be paid reparations for crimes of the past, just ask the Native Americans, American and German Jewish populations who received reparations for their deceased ancestors.

[smart_e_pantz]

Just a historical note...

The 40 acres and a mule was not just a general's idea,  It was part of a much larger compromise/plan of the Freedmen's Bureau.   Promises were made, acted on,  and then reneged without any vindication for the freed southern blacks.  AND the real general in charge of enacting this move would be General Howard. Digressing...

The promises of a governmental bureau, however, should be honored and plans for an enslaved, colonized, or marginalized population should have a recourse once the tyranny upon their lives ends (or is shifted in other tricky patterns like Jim Crow).

Although I believe that AA missed its mark for those who should have benefited the most from its policies, there definitely should be some sort of American apology, recourse, restitution, or reparations (yeah I said it) for its crimes against enslaved Africans.

Hence, I understand where smart_e_pantz is coming from with his/her perspectives on being owed something for the past genocide of African slaves.

AND just in case anyone wants to find out who one should be paid reparations for crimes of the past, just ask the Native Americans, American and German Jewish populations who received reparations for their deceased ancestors.

But, my perspective is not really a matter of reparations for what my ancestors suffered.  My argument is that my generation is still feeling the effects of the lack of opportunities our parents dealt with in terms of lack of access to quality educational opportunities, continuing racial residential segregation, etc.  My father was gifted in mathematics (he's where I got my math brain), but his upbringing in rural Mississippi never allowed him to benefit from his gifts.  This effective his job/financial prospects and his subsequent ability to provide opportunities for his family.  And, it's not a simple matter of all poor people being disadvantaged: (a) poor whites still have access to better schools and neighborhoods than poor blacks and (b) the poverty and inequality that led to this snowball effect is directly tied to institutionalized racism.

[sheinthespirit]

No, Smart...

Don't get me wrong. Those aren't your words. They are mine.  I wasn't insinuating that you were looking for reparations.  I am suggesting that there SHOULD be some sort of reparations because of the plague of stratified discrimination that has existed in this country since the 1600's. AND while you find your 40 acres in ways that have promoted your success, others might need another recourse. 

I agree with you.  Many opportunities were and are not available in mass for the poorest of African American populations.  Although, I am a firm believer in boot strapping, I do believe that past and current wrong doing will disable a person's ability to know they even own a pair of boots to strap!

p.s.  I will use the rusty/HIV nail if I need to tell 'read' someone in the future!

[larryc]

I want the 1/8th part of me that is descended from the English colonists to pay reparations to the 1/32nd part of me that is Narragansett Indian.

In fact, I demand it. No justice no peace!

[daurousseau]

I want the 1/8th part of me that is descended from the English colonists to pay reparations to the 1/32nd part of me that is Narragansett Indian.

In fact, I demand it. No justice no peace!

Or, to make it snappier for a bumper strip, No piece no peace!

[bewildered]

I want the 1/8th part of me that is descended from the English colonists to pay reparations to the 1/32nd part of me that is Narragansett Indian.

In fact, I demand it. No justice no peace!

You'll come out better if the 1/32nd part of you will pay to the 1/8 part of you (I think).

[rodentmind]

Congrats on getting in. It doesn't even matter why you got in. George Bush got into Yale on the more traditional form of affirmative action (rich white dude whose family had a history with Yale). What matters is what you do with your opportunity; same for all of us. Go out there and be a kickbutt scholar and teacher and colleague.