Young Convinceables

Thanks to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the socialist running for president, we are learning that one of the latest examples of victim groups is students, who freely decide to go to college and in many cases take on student debt to pay for it.

Of this victim group, black and Hispanic college students are suffering tremendously, according to a story appearing last Wednesday in The Washington Post. It claimed that blacks and Hispanics are “at a higher risk of financial instability based on their college majors…” Inside, the paper trumpeted the news in a headline, “Racial disparity in degree selection.” The news was this: “African American and Hispanic students disproportionately earn more bachelor’s degrees in low-paying majors, putting them at higher risk for financial instability after graduation, according to a new study from Young Invincibles, an advocacy group.”

This “advocacy group” has decided that representatives of certain minority groups are somehow entitled to be awarded certain jobs with certain pay grades. In the Post story touting this so-called study, blacks and Hispanics are considered victims of racism, creating wealth “inequality,” because of the college degrees and majors they have freely decided to pursue.

But wait: didn’t these blacks and Hispanics freely choose those majors and fields of study? Wasn’t freedom of choice involved?

In the eyes of the liberal media, such freedom does not exist. People are being forced into their choices in life by the forces of capitalism and white supremacy.

Here’s what the paper said: “There is no singular reason for the racial disparities within majors, but centuries of racial discrimination, uneven budgetary support for K-12 education and poor academic advising and student support contribute to the problem, said Tom Allison, deputy director of policy and research at Young Invincibles, and one of the authors of the study.”

In other words, the heavy hand of racism and the capitalist system somehow forced these students to choose these majors, in order to put them at a disadvantage.

Still, the story by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel left me in the dark about how these factors may determine the selection of majors. The explanation was offered in the next paragraph: “At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, chemistry professor William LaCourse has seen his share of students of color with a lot of potential lose interest in science fields when they struggle in a course.”

Those science fields paid better than the majors and careers they ended up pursuing. The students gave up their “potential,” a subjective measurement, to go for the easier courses of study.

The phrase “when they struggle in a course” could mean they were goofing off, not smart enough, or just not interested. In any case, it seems hard to argue that this is because of some racist plot or budget axe. But that is indeed what the Post was implying.

The purpose is to depict minority groups as somehow victims of their own choices.

Could it be that blacks and Hispanics are giving up on the harder fields of study because they either require more work or because they have decided to pick a different major for some other reason? This fact of life has been transformed from a “study” into a Washington Post story attempting to blame everything and everyone else for this “problem” except the students themselves.

The whole point of the story is that the students can’t be blamed for their own decisions. They are victims of the system, by virtue of the fact that they are black or Hispanic. That’s why “centuries of racial discrimination, uneven budgetary support for K-12 education and poor academic advising and student support” have to be blamed.

This is socialist “journalism,” if you can call it journalism, based on the idea that people are members of groups victimized by the capitalist system, trapped into lower incomes and denied their right to make more money. This evil system forced them to “struggle” for higher grades.

It is this kind of “journalism” that also depicts students taking out college loans and going into debt as somehow being victims of capitalism. They are given an opportunity to go to college but they have to pay for it. What an injustice! The Young Invincibles says student debt has “exploded,” as if it has been inflicted on these young people through no choice of their own.

Since these students have been brainwashed into believing that taking on debt is not their fault, it is no wonder they are suckers for the Bernie Sanders brand of socialism which says that their burden must be lifted and a college education should be made available for “free.”

It is a sad commentary on what colleges are teaching that such a scheme is attracting thousands of students to the Sanders campaign.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. This column is excerpted from an article which appears on the AIM site.

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