This letter is in response to Jamie Lynn Perna's (column) on affirmative action. From the way you have put your (column) together, is it obvious that you are (an) average white girl and you are definitely special.
Let me let you know that you have just committed a gross sin, for you know nothing about what you speak. Through those minuscule eyes of yours, you have only seen the tip of the iceberg about what is it to be black or to be a person of color. Affirmative action will continue to be a "crutch" as you say, as long as every white man has two legs and every person of color has one.
Your (column) has not a single form of intelligence in it, because you(r) sources and your reasoning are just plain unjustifiable and in better words dumb. In this day and age you have the courage to believe that racism is dead? It is obvious that you are blind to what goes on around you. You complain about not being picked at your top choice, while a black colleague of yours did at another school you did not apply to? Now, I know you are a growing lady. Now, you use that brain of yours and think how does this prove affirmative action got this colleague into that school, and did not get you into yours? You then go on to complain about packing your stuff and coming to UB. If you are not happy about being here you should have stayed home; there is also a simple thing called transferring. Most students of color are happy we just even got here because there are still so many of us whom cannot afford to come to state universities.
You then commit another gross sin, babbling about reserve (sic) racism; a white man in the United States has not, and cannot even begin to understand what racism is. You think not getting into a school of choice is racism? Let's talk about not having a job for 11 months after graduating from college. What is the reason for not hiring a black woman who just graduated out of Baruch College (one of the most prestigious city colleges) with a bachelor's in business management? The answer is that the economy is doing bad and we are not hiring. Is the economy doing that bad that after countless interviews she is just getting a job? While her less intellectual colleagues got jobs in less than two months after graduating. There is not a young white man on this campus who would trade places with me or a young man like Allan Houston of the New York Knickerbockers, and he's rich.
I wish that was enough, but it is not, because there you go again and make another dumb or the most un-intellectual comparison known to man. How could you have possibly come to the conclusion that because only white students applied to the Student Association's romance series that this proves affirmative action is being used as a crutch? (Edit Note: Perna referenced The Spectrum's Experiment in Romance Series, which had no involvement with the SA.) There is no correlation between the two variables. Ask yourself this question: if only white people applied to this series, are you catering to the needs of everybody on this campus? Blacks are not the only minority on this campus; there are Indians, Asians, Hispanics, and so on. Were they catered to?
You feel affirmative action has overstayed its welcome? I wish for a day you could trade places with a young black woman and then we'll see whether you still feel the same way.
Again I ask you: do you seriously feel affirmative action has overstayed its welcome? Did you know that 75 percent of all who are helped by affirmative action are white women? Did you even know that the civil rights movements paved the way for the "White Women Right(s) Movement?" I obviously do not think you do.
Now to redeem yourself from all these gross sins, I challenge you and all the people of your thinking to come in any of the following weeks to a(n) NAACP meeting in room 145A of the Student Union. I want us to have a real conversation, human being to human being.
(Edit Note: This letter was addressed specifically to Ms. Perna.)
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
