The fact is, when you are a minority, you have to more determination, more hard work and more desire to reach that goal the majority of the time just to overcome the racial barriers to success that are sprinkled heavily throughout your life. Everyone does not have the opportunity to succeed in the same way. It's completely ignorant to think that is the case.
A famous psycho-sociologist used to travel the US in the 90s giving talks for businesses and schools about racial empathy and diversity tolerance. In one of her speaks at a university she had all her white students sit at the front of the class, and all the minorities at the very back. She gave them all a sheet of paper, and placed a waste basket on the floor in the front of the class near the blackboard. She asked them all to shoot it in.
That is what equal opportunity is, we all have the paper ball, and we all have the right to try to make it in the basket. What we all don't have, is the same access (sitting in the front), and ease in getting it in. That distance= difference in difficulty, the journey travelled, is completely different based on your race. Compound that with low socioeconomic status, your putting more blocks in front of that waste basket.
It's easy for the person sitting in the front to look to either side of them and say, hmm we all have the same opportunity, you can do it if I can. But that person rarely looks behind them. Rarely sees the person that could never get the vantage point they are accustomed to. That's the same person that says "we all have opportunities to succeed that doesn't depend on your race".
Now we ask is being disadvantaged or a minority an advantage. Well let's see, since we start all the way from the back, struggling just to get to the point of being able to take that shot. Whatever boost we get once we finally make it really doesn't make up for the struggles of getting to that point. For the premed that believes the world only exists so far as medical school admissions exist this may be all that matters to them. Soon they will learn, life goes far beyond that.
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