RACIALISM'S THE ANSWER AT TOP UNIVERSITY

Dear Would-be Students,

         Do you know the story of the vulture that went round in ever decreasing circles until it eventually disappeared….

         That’s the censored version I’m using for decorum’s sake and so as not to corrupt the youth.

         Anyway what I’m getting at is that South African universities have a bad case of the vulture syndrome epitomised by the University of Cape Town (UCT).

         There the race track is far from level for everyone. And what’s more disturbing is that its Vice-chancellor Dr Max Price is so proud of it.

         Periodically he hits the headlines with up dates on this latest brand of social engineering.

         When I first wrote about this subject it was Funny Ha! Ha! unless you happened to be a White, Indian or a not Black enough student trying to get into this renowned establishment of higher learning.

         Now it has graduated to Funny Absurd but not many people are laughing especially young Whites and their parents.

DR PRICE TRYING TO EXPLAIN HOW
RACIALISM WORKS

         The idea of the policy was to give Blacks an artificial leg up because they had been discriminated against in all walks of life by the previous White apartheid Government.

         At the time of my first post the Black African National Congress had been in power running down the country for 17 years. It pretended that it stood for a non racial society when it was lying through its sparkling white teeth by doing its utmost to promote Blacks at every opportunity, at the expense of other races, particularly Whites.

         Priceless Max was reveling in it. At the University’s Medical School for instance Whites and Indians were expected to get at least 80% in their university entrance exams to stand a remote chance of even being considered for admission.

         Blacks only needed a mere 60% to walk in.

        Being the right COLOUR gets you the highest marks of all.

         Now 20 years since White rule ceased Price is in the news again with an even more baffling version of the policy he claims has now been changed so it is no longer based on race.

Will this be any help to the Whites who have been discriminated against as a reprisal for what the Whites only Government did when they weren’t even born then?

         However the gobbledygook Price told Chris Barron in an interview for the Sunday Times showed how difficult he is finding it to justify the indefensible. The longer the interview went on the more Priceless Max looked like that vulture I mentioned in the beginning.

         I hope Chris won’t mind if I lift a few quotes from his excellent report just to show you what I meant when I said that policy had reached the Funny Absurd stage. Actually it’s a lot worse but as I never went to university I can’t think of any more suitable words to describe it.

         Here’s part of the interview with my comments in brackets.

Barron: Why are you going to such pains to pretend that you will no longer be selecting on a race basis?

Price: We’re saying that race remains important, but that we don’t have to use race classification to achieve demographic targets.

Barron: So the bottom line is that race will remain as much of a factor as it is under the existing policy.

Price: Race will, race classification will not. (It’s hard to imagine how a person who speaks this kind of Double Dutch can become a vice-chancellor at a university).

Barron: In effect you’ll be selecting on the basis of race rather than merit?

Price: No. If we have two students who have 70% and one of them, whether black or white comes from a disadvantaged background, then that student will get in (The odds of a White being more disadvantaged than a Black are remote so this changes nothing).

Barron: What about the case of a black student who is accepted for medical school with 70% whereas the white student with 90% is rejected?

Price: Let’s bring it closer to reality. Probably 77% would get in above a white student with 90% (That sounds so much fairer and you can’t get more Priceless than that).

Barron: Whose interests are served by that?

Price: If you had a white student with the same background (in other words poor) with 77%, that white student would also get in above a white student (well off) with 90%. The idea is to give disadvantaged students the same opportunity as advantaged students (How can opportunities be equalised by excluding someone with 90%? In any case Price wandered off the point by compared White with White instead of White with Black).

         Max concluded by saying If we were to take all our applicants in this year 2014 for medical and judge them only on the marks they’ve achieved, there would only be about five or 10 African students in a class of 200 (Yet he’s still waffling away trying to make us believe that the policy has changed when it’s still as Black as ever). 

         It’s a very poor reflection on South Africa that after 20 years of Black rule being Black is the most important qualification to enable anyone to become a doctor through UCT’s Medical School.

         This might be okay for somebody learning to throw the bones to become a witch doctor, but it’s scary when the qualified could be transplanting hearts and doing other major operations.

All the University is doing is perpetuating apartheid that was so abhorred by the entire world when the previous White Government was in power. Only now it’s the other way round and that makes it – perfectly alright.

So Black is still the most beautiful colour and the policy vulture will remain flying around in ever decreasing circles with the difference being it will – NEVER DISAPPEAR
        Harmonious mixing of people of all colours doesn't have much of a future when universities teach How to play the race card to win as part of their curriculum.

Regards,

Jon, a Consumer Watchdog and if you ask me I would say that Dr Price’s master race plan badly needs a transfusion of mixed blood.

P.S. Will any of us live to see the day when South Africa has matured sufficiently to treat us all on merit rather than on COLOUR?

P.P.S. Chris congratulations on your no holds barred interview and the many other admirable ones you have done over the years reminiscent of the BBC’s Hard Talk.