Blog Post quarter 3 #5

What happens when there are threats about discrimination? People freak out. They would rather change their beliefs than be called a racist. This could be said about the entire college system of America. Colleges gave into protests. Some protests are OK as long as the vast majority agrees. For example, I won't complain about Darfour protests, there is a terrible thing going on. I would for example get annoyed with something like a protest about gay rights. Many people have the opinion that it is wrong, now frankly I couldn't care less. Protesters think that people who oppose it are wrong for their opinions and therefore lose their entitlement to it. When there are two sides to a story, one opinion can't be wrong. But colleges started allowing themselves to give into those protesters demands. Ford writes, "By he 1990's, multiculturalists went the way of so many radicals before them and melted into the institution they once attacked" (Ford 267). They went from, "we want it equal" to "we want it better" to "we must have it better or else its racist." Right now, as a white male, I would have a harder time getting into a good college with the same grades as a minority student, because colleges want to have a vast minority student population. Ford writes about how colleges handed over power slowly, "Rabble-rousers who once provoked administrators to call the sheriff's office now called the shots at the office of student affairs" (Ford 267). Colleges would not normally allow protesters to the front office, but due to protest demands, had to. In a way, it is unfair, in a way, it is playing the race card.
Protesters are annoying, there, I said it. They are complainers, nothing is ever good enough. The new dean of students that replaced an older one who allowed a "racist" (but not really) quote to be in the school paper. He attempted to integrate the college, but he didn't succeed. Ford writes, "Rawlings may have thought that minority students and civil rights activists would praise his determinations to exceed the minimal requirements... Instead, the proposal was met with student protests" (Ford 269). He tries to make the situation better, and is only receives complaints about how its not good enough, and Cornell now experiences protests once again. Ford describes, "Cornell couldn't be guilty of race discrimination both for establishing the programs houses and for trying to limit their segregative effects... How did the definition of racism become so malleable that passive acquiescence in the minority self-segregation and well meaning efforts at integration both qualified" (Ford 270). Not everybody wants it completely integrated, and that should be equally accepted as the minorities. Protesters molded racism to be whatever they want it to be so that nothing is ever good enough.