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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumColumbia Scholarship Scandal Shows How White People Are Still Helped By Institutional Racism
Columbia Scholarship Scandal Shows How White People Are Still Helped By Institutional RacismBy Elie Mystal
In 1920, Lydia C. Chamberlain, a woman from Des Moines who moved to Manhattan, donated her $500,000 estate to create a fellowship at Columbia University. The fellowship had a few restrictions. Notably, recipients were not allowed to study law, medicine, dentistry, veterinary surgery or theology. Ha. Seems reasonable. Oh, and the recipients had to be from Iowa and had to move back to Iowa after completing their studies.
This kind of dead-hand control should really not be allowed in our modern, global society, but thats not why the Lydia C. Roberts graduate and traveling fellowships is making news today. Its making news because the other restriction is that recipients of the fellowship have to be white. Of the Caucasian race is the exact formulation.
....I didnt even know there were requirements of race, said Douglass Gross, a Des Moines attorney who was awarded the fellowship in 1976 to study at the universitys School of International Affairs.
....
MEANWHILE Attorney Douglass Gross of Des Moines Iowa got free tuition and doesnt even know why. Douglass Gross the Iowa CHAIRMAN of Mitt Romneys presidential campaign got free tuition on a racist scholarship, yet has the luxury of never having to question how he got a leg up in this race. All I knew is that you had to be from Iowa. Id bet ALL THE MONEY IN MY POCKET that at some point this guy has derisively referred to takers and doesnt considered himself to have gotten handouts based on his race. Institutional racism isnt some guy in a hood burning crap on your lawn. Its guys like this who will look at you with a straight face and say Ive worked for every penny Ive gotten, oblivious to the fact that all the levers are pulled in their direction.
Some of his best friends were takers.
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Columbia Scholarship Scandal Shows How White People Are Still Helped By Institutional Racism (Original Post)
mahatmakanejeeves
May 2013
OP
We're dredging up restrictions on a scholarship created in the 1920s to find a scandal?
Buzz Clik
May 2013
#1
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)1. We're dredging up restrictions on a scholarship created in the 1920s to find a scandal?
brush
(53,475 posts)2. Created in 1920 but still enforced in 2013 . . . I'd say a good example of institutional racism
And you don't see that?
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)4. No, I don't see it, but I can see that you want to see it.
Look at it this way: if Columbia stops giving that scholarship, that's money out of the system, and somebody will not be getting scholarship money. Somebody who needs its.
ret5hd
(20,435 posts)5. white somebodys only.
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)6. If you say do.
brush
(53,475 posts)8. Who said anything about stopping giving the scholarship?
That's why they are trying to get the racist restriction changed so they can still give the scholarship. It's not rocket science.
BainsBane
(53,003 posts)10. Surely they can contact her estate
and renegotiate.
whistler162
(11,155 posts)7. yup... Set the precedent so
The African American, Asian, female, or Native American only scholarships/fellowships can be opened up to all!
BainsBane
(53,003 posts)11. Most already have been
dsc
(52,130 posts)9. I would think now, and likely anytime after 1964, this would be against public policy
and thus not enforceable. Literally millions of property deeds have restrictive covenants. No sale or rental to various groups (often Jews, non Whites, and others). Those are not enforceable.