Let me just establish this from the beginning. I am a white male and therefore I do not identify with the issues of race affecting me in any way where I feel persecuted or discriminated against in anyway. I have never had an issue where I feel like race plays any deciding factor when I’ve applied for a job, organization, or school but I have learned that it is for many. After talking with a few classmates I’ve learned a grim aspect of educational policy that needs attention, and that is race being an unofficial factor in standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT.
My peers informed me that for them, they were strongly advised not to put race on their college entrance tests. Now many study show that standardized tests overall favor students in higher income areas because of the absurd ways questions and the SAT has faced criticism for requiring out of school test prep which can only be afforded by a aloof few. However, I was not aware the fact that many students are told to not to fill out the race question because minority students may see lower scores to non-minority students just because of their race. This problem has no relation to their ability to answer the questions or knowledge of the material it is simply blatant discrimination based on a student’s race. We have known the dark truth of institutional racism occurring in many professional situations, which is process that is being fought and maybe one day we can find equality will be found. But what I find so drastic about this situation with the SAT is that we are essentially setting up our youth for failure.
How is that we can possibly say we are working to end big systems of institutional racism when we face situations where young individuals must make the active to not put race on their tests because it may affect their scores for the worse. These are young individuals who are taking a test because they are making the active decision to pursue a college education, to continue education beyond the legal requirements; yet, we are setting them up for failure before they enter the adult world.
We already know that racism is still a large ongoing plague in today’s society but it is something that I thought was actively being addressed. Yet, here I am writing an article about something is occurring in schools all across the U.S. and is determining the lives of many students, even the ones I attend school with. Even if this is an issue that may not effect you, you have a right to fight an unjust system that hurts the lives of people around you.
