* Update: yesterday, I found out that the group responsible for the fliers is Stanford's Queer Liberation group whose purpose  for putting up the posters was to point "out that there are certain advantages that white and heterosexual people have that they might not even notice until they read about it on a bollard".   

This blog post was written by Jiesi Zhao, Sarah T. Hermann Intern Scholar 

A few weeks ago, a host of “white privilege” and “heterosexual privilege” posters appeared on campus at Stanford University, on no other than White Plaza, with messages like:

• WHITE PRIVILEGE: every month is white history month.
• WHITE PRIVILEGE: I got into Stanford without having my peers suspect that I only got in because of my race.
• HETEROSEXUAL PRIVILEGE: I don’t have to come out as straight.

So far, no one or group has come forward to claim responsibility for the fliers, but regardless of who put them up or what the intent behind the act is, the posters blatantly call attention to an important issue that affects all college-bound students in our country – the issue of racial and gender preferences (or what the Left defines as affirmative action).

Guised under the goal of helping underrepresented minorities, liberals will try to have you believe that racial and gender preferences in admissions policies is fair because minority groups do not have access to the same opportunities or resources as do white heterosexual applicants. Pointing to racism and homophobia as the reason why preferencing is needed, the Left is actually routinely creating programs that divide society based on race, gender, and sexual orientation rather than assessing applicants for their own individual merit.

Even though the use of quotas for admissions policies is illegal across the nation, racial preferencing is still used in most states. And in the few states where racial preferences are illegal (only California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Connecticut have passed measures that ban the use of racial preferences), race and gender do still factor into consideration on admissions committees. Take California, for example; when the state disallowed racial preferences by passing Proposition 209, UC Berkeley fought back and implemented the first “comprehensive review” process for undergraduate admissions, thereby allowing race and other such factors to still come into play. Schools in other states that ban racial preferences, like the University of Michigan and the University of Washington, have since looked to UC Berkeley’s model for their admissions criterion.

Essentially, such preferences create a system that forces each applicant to compete against others in his or her own racial and gender group for the same “spots”, instead of applicants getting in on individual merit as compared to all applicants. If that’s not highlighting race and gender in an unfair way, I don’t know what is. In fact, universities seem to have an ongoing obsession with racial and other preferences. A study by the New York Civil Rights Coalition found that “race and ethnicity considerations permeate every facet of campus life” and “both public and private colleges… have fostered this kind of racial and ethnic separation”, facilitating an atmosphere on campuses nationwide based on racial and other divides that has gotten worse, not better.

Moreover, have you ever noticed that when the Left refers to “minority” groups, Asian Americans are always left out? Is this because they don’t think Asians constitute as a minority group? Maybe. But, more likely, it’s because this minority group has proven that special preferences are not the answer. And let me make something very clear: Asian Americans have faced the same set backs and racial discrimination in our country’s past as the other minority groups that the Left refers to (just look up “Chinese laborers railroad” or “Japanese Internment Camps” on Google). In fact, it was only until the 1980’s when Asian Americans started entering universities and professions usually deemed “suitable” for white men. Yet today, and for several decades now, Asian American students have no problem scoring well on the SAT or being able to compete with straight white males in academic or professional settings.

So does this mean that Asian Americans miraculously gained access to the same opportunities and resources as white Americans? Hardly anymore true than thinking Asians are not a minority group. Most Asian immigrants come to the United States as working class or poor citizens, many of whom do not even speak English and who live in city slums where rent is cheap. Yet by the second generation, the kids attend college, and go on to have successful careers.

A Chinese man who was selling small knick-knacks in San Francisco’s Chinatown once approached me after seeing my Berkeley sweatshirt to proudly tell me how both of his sons attended Berkeley. The secret to his sons’ and other Asian American students’ achievements – hard work, determination, and (gasp!) a Conservative economic outlook – the real colorblind keys to success for minorities and everyone else for that matter.

Special preferences may give “minority” groups an extra boost for now, but only the endorsement and pursuit of hard work and individual responsibility in a society without racial or gender considerations will allow for each minority group’s success in the long term. As the famous Chinese proverb goes, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.

This blog post was written by Jiesi Zhao, Sarah T. Hermann Intern Scholar