Minority Awards At Graduation
By Margaret Snyder (05/29/03)
Graduation season will soon be upon us and happy graduates will be marching across stages all across the country accepting their diplomas and many awards. Imagine being the person who has to decide who gets which award! A daunting task, I’m sure.
The following scenario or something like it must get played out between school administrators in many places:
“Well, who should get the award for Best Widgeter?”
“Oh, definitely José.”
“Yes, I supppose so, but what about Joe? He’s terrific too, don’t you think?”
“Well, they are both terrific, but you’d have to agree that José is the real standout.”
“Wait, I have an idea. There’s an award for Best Hispanic Widgeter. We can give that one to José and the other one to Joe.”
“Great idea, problem solved!”
Problem solved, except that José gets the award that represents competition among a much smaller pool and is thus, by definition, less prestigious. He’ll always wonder if he could have gotten the more prestigious award, the one that would have proclaimed him the best of his whole class, not just of his ethnic group. Or worse, he’ll know he should have gotten it and be forever resentful that he didn’t.
Minority awards are patronizing and demeaning and do not serve their intended beneficiaries well.
There is nothing wrong with the Sons of Italy or the NAACP or the Puerto Rican Beneficial Society or the Daughters of Penelope celebrating their ethnic heritage by giving awards to the outstanding young people from their midst.
But when it is the school that categorizes students by race or ethnicity and then gives awards by those categories, what kind of message are they sending?
They are telling the “minority” students that they are not good enough to compete with everyone. Such students are not well served by a policy that says, “We’ll have special awards because we don’t expect you to be able to compete with everyone.” These students need to be encouraged to do their best, just like everybody else.
But the damage doesn’t stop there. The non-minority students and their families hear the same message: that some students just couldn’t be expected to compete for awards, and so they have to have “special” awards, otherwise these students wouldn’t be able to get any. And so the negative stereotypes are perpetuated.
Our young people deserve better.
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