The college admission bribery scandal is just another reminder of this broken system is aimed against black folk.
In what is being called the largest college admissions scam to ever be prosecuted, wealthy parents, including Hollywood actresses, CEO's, Lawyers, coaches, and college prep executives have been accused of carrying out a nationwide fraud to get piss poor, and mediocre-at-best spoiled rich kids into the prestigious universities that decades of top schooling, tutoring, and other resources that their parents could have absolutely afforded, weren't good enough to get them into on their own... according to a federal indictment.
Apparently, this scheme had two major parts. The first part of the scheme had these wealthy parents pay a college prep organization to take the test on behalf of students or to correct their answers. This in itself blows my mind as I remember my SAT exam being threatened with invalidation if I so much as sneezed in the wrong direction. But rich students are able to take them separately than anyone else without that raising suspicion? Word? Second, the organization running this scheme allegedly bribed college coaches to help admit the students into college as recruited athletes, regardless of their abilities. So to clarify, a rich white kid can get admitted as a basketball recruit, having never played basketball, and no one would notice that the incoming freshman with amazing "fake" stats kept dribbling off this toe?
Well, last Tuesday, 50 wealthy people, including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman were indicted on charges after allegedly paying millions of dollars to get their children admitted to top universities, including Stanford, Yale and The University of Southern California, among others, and I can't help but think of the millions of black kids in colleges and universities around the U.S being made to feel as if they don't deserve to be there, while so many wealthy students literally had their mommies and daddies buy their way into these schools.
I can remember a moment from my own college days where another student in one of my film classes asked me if I were "here on affirmative action" as if it were some sort of academic visa for black students. No, I didn't kick her in the eye-ball, but I have always felt as though that was a missed opportunity.
Just imagine. All of the black kids and their parents fighting over charter school lotteries, and the black parents in county jail right now facing charges for sending their children to better public schools outside of their district all of the sake of making sure that at the very least, their children can have a decent public education. And now we know about the dozens (probably thousands, in actuality) of rich white asshole parents buying their way into the schools their privileged offspring couldn't manage to get into on their own. For every student admitted on a bribe, a damn-near genius student who worked their ass off for years received a "We are sorry to inform you letter." And the black students admitted ON THEIR OWN will always be stereotyped as being there by way of an athletic scholarship of affirmative action.
The fuckery!
