White Fear
For 160 years, black Americans were legally barred from attending white-majority colleges and universities. The “Separate but Equal” doctrine was the key factor in this cruel and crippling discrimination. But many racist reasons were offered: blacks and whites could not peacefully occupy the same space, and blacks were intellectually inferior or inherently given to violence.
Latinos, while technically classified as white, did not have the economic means to pay for a college education.
Feeble and often intellectually dishonest efforts like Affirmative Action and DEI policies purportedly were meant to address past and present discrimination. What has been the result?
As of 2020, 54 percent of college students were white, and just 18 percent were black.
And now Trump and his South African hitman are shredding DEI policies. That means we are returning to pre-Affirmative Action times.
I began college in 1968 when there was no pretense of equal opportunity. My education at one of L.A.’s worst high schools left me unprepared for higher education. It was sink or swim.
Armed with two university degrees and merit scholarships, American news organizations—supposedly bastions of liberalism—ignored my job inquiries.
Like many successful non-European Americans, I worked three times as hard as necessary and never stopped knocking on doors. Once, on the other side of the door, I faced institutional racism.
Countless times, European-American journalists told me I was fortunate to have benefited from affirmative action.
My reply was always the same. I have a job not because I am Mexican but despite being non-white.
The anti-DEI mania is a product of white fear. Too many whites think that if we have something like a level playing field, we will become unacceptably powerful.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 