Reverse-Racism Analysis

For me, there is a connection between classism and racism. Perhaps I am perpetuating an “-ism” with this assumption. However, I feel as if I have been perceived to be of a certain socio-economic class due to my ethnicity. I come from a Caucasian family that has been in the United States for several generations and we do not have many ties to our European ancestry. Because I am white, people have assumed that I grew up wealthy or at least middle-class. I did not.

Nevertheless, I will admit that I find myself struggling with educational elitism. I went directly from high school to a four-year university, and I believed that those who did not go directly to college or went to a community college instead were beneath those of us who did. All

my high school peers, which were comprised of AP and honor students, went directly to a four-year university. I was expected to go to a four-year university, although neither of my parents were college educated, and I did, attending one of the most well-known universities in the country. I will admit that the only reason I went there was for the name recognition, nothing more. I went on to get my master’s degree after my Bachelors, and, again, I was surrounded by peers who went directly to bachelor’s programs and who were now pursuing higher education. I was immersed in a very competitive and academic field for years, meanwhile being a teacher’s assistant at a very low-academic four-year university. My worldview on education has been limited and I never thought to look beyond what I knew.
Being out of academic for about a year now, my opinion has changed. I am now tens of thousands of dollars in debt and yet the diploma I have from UCLA is the same as someone who transferred there from a community college. In fact, over half my graduating class from UCLA were transfers. Initially, I was livid because, while I worked, at what I then believed to be, a higher level of education for four years, transfer students only did two years, but in the end received the same diploma. Even more, they had better GPAs than I because their GPA transferred with them. To put it over the top, they are not as in debt as I am. Additionally, I spent my freshmen year of college studying something completely different than what I got my degree in. I will not say I wasted that time because I did carve a path for myself at UCLA that no other school would have given me, but looking back, I would not have made the same decision. Going to a two year or a four-year university, whether going straight out of high school or waiting a year, is not a reflection of one’s intelligence. Not going to college and instead pursuing a career right after high school is not a reflection of intelligence. I will admit that I still struggle to put my academic elitism behind me. I currently work at a charter high school, where the majority of students enroll in a two-year college, if college is their path at all.
My Experience with Racism
Racism has always been a sensitive subject for me.

More specifically, the term “reverse-racism” as a term for racism against whites is a sensitive subject for me. Sensoy and DiAngelo (2017) discussed this in chapter 5 of their book. I do not believe there should be separate terms. I grew up in two different communities, both very different from one another, and my race was not the predominant population. I was, in fact, a minority at the elementary school, middle schools (I attended two), and high school I attended. People look at me with my blonde hair and blue eyes, and they make assumptions and stereotypes. During high school I was frequently called an oxymoron, because I was a “smart

blonde.”
Associated with racism is the privilege that has come with my status as part of the dominant race in the United States. Often times, it has been said, white privilege is often unacknowledged or unnoticed by the people who have it. The more I think about it, the more unsure I am about why I have received certain things in my past. For example, I have always been categorized as “gifted.” I was part of the GATE program in elementary school, which turned into honors classes in middle school, and AP classes in high school. At the same time, I was also one of the only white people at my school. However, I was the only white GATE student in my elementary school, one of two white honors students in middle school, and one of two white AP students in my high school, which was representative of the demographics at my school. Now that I am analyzing my past, was I placed there because that is where I belonged or because my cultural privilege warranted that placement?
I have also had the privilege of attending a well-known four-year university right out of high school. I graduated with my Bachelor of Arts from UCLA in 2014. This was the most prestigious college I was admitted to, with it being one of the lowest ranked school I applied to. I applied to Ivy League colleges and universities that were considered on par with Ivy Leagues, but not labelled as such, but not admitted to any of them. In fact, of the top 10-15 students in my school, the only students admitted to Ivy Leagues or the equivalent were minorities. The 2 white students who took all AP classes, who graduated at the top of our class, and who engaged in various extracurricular activities, were not admitted to any Ivy League universities or liberal arts college to which we applied. I ended up at UCLA; she ended up at UC Berkeley. Meanwhile, our peers ended up at MIT, Princeton, Brown, Vassar, Wesleyan. I have to wonder what role race played in admission decisions. Even if I had not checked a box with my race, my name exudes my whiteness: Amber Ward.
Nevertheless, although I was dissatisfied with my admission decisions, it was not something I could talk about because I, and my only other white friend, were privileged in every other way due to our race.

If our race did indeed affect our admission decisions, then how could we complain when race interfered with every aspect of everyone else’s lives? Even more, how could we say someone got into a university because of their race (not being white), without seeming like we are being racist? Or should I say without discriminating, as Sensoy and DiAngelo (2017)described racism to be part of the system, while discrimination is acting on

prejudices?
My point is: white people are discriminated again too. Whether or not my ethnicity had something to do with my university admission decisions, I will never know. All I know is, never have I been allowed to be dissatisfied publicly with my admission decisions because I could not express what I believed to be the reason for it. White privilege: I am sure it is a real thing. I am sure I have experienced it and, in some cases, not seen it for what it was. However, it does not pervade every aspect of our lives. If it had, I think my college experience would have been very different.