From the Detroit Free Press, Monday, February 16, 2004

Bristol, R.I.

Whites-only grant offered

A student group at Roger Williams University is offering a scholarship for which only white students are eligible, a move they say is designed to protest affirmative action.

The application, issued by the university's College Republicans, for the $250 award requires an essay on "Why you are proud of your white heritage" and a recent picture to "confirm whiteness."

"Handing out scholarships based on someone's color is absurd," Jason Mattera, president of the College Republicans, told the Providence Journal.

The stunt has angered some at the university.

The administration is trying to stay out of the fray and said the group's action is not endorsed by the university.

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I can scan the article if you want 'proof' that it's real. Anyway, I'd like to know what sort of person would find this thing offensive. I find affirmative action both racist and offensive. It promotes the idea that certain races or ethnicities require aid because they are otherwise thoroughly incapable of achieving the 'norm'. The fact that a white-only grant has angered people causes me to infer that people have the idea that whites are inherently well-off in comparison to other races, or that they are somehow exempted from being allowed to have help. Yes this is a protest. I support it. Just as I support 'straight pride parades'.

This type of 'anti racism' annoys me to no end. I'm not sure what the situation was like when slavery was active, but I'm pretty sure there were whites who lived at the poverty line as well. It is conceivable even to me that any person regardless of race (even if he was a white male, God forbid) can be in a state of affairs where s/he requires some help. So why shouldn't we give it to them? Because they are white? That's hardly an argument.

To me, affirmative action is just as wrong as being upset at a whites-only grant.