Yet another Comment of the Day on the recent post about elite colleges discriminating against white students for the offense of being white. The first is here.

I love when a commenters who hasn’t appeared here for a long time re-enters the fray with brio. Finaldi last commented almost exactly three years ago. Here is Finaldi’s Comment of the Day on ‘Good Discrimination’ At Northeastern, Boston College and the University of Chicago:

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In our public elementary schools, there there has been a long history of district-level programs that funneled money, staffing and resources toward discriminatory programs, including funding positions for mentors, teachers and administrators explicitly reserved for, say black men to be paid to mentor black boys. Program might entail much fist-bumping and a trip to a ball game, plus bonus admonitions to be this way or that, or not to be this way or that, and some branded sports swag.

The stated goals of such programs are to raise performance, correct discriminatory practices or bring opportunity where none existed. In reality, they are siphons and typically of poor quality, or poorly run. And I have lost count of how many times I’ve been tapped to help “brainstorm some ideas” for content, or help design, recruit, or support in some other (unpaid and unrecognized) way.

The bloom is off the rose, and any rationalizing by way of some perceived benefit to some children is long gone. My decades in teaching has shown me the kids served got little to nothing in so many cases anyway, and over generations of this are arguably devolving.

In others, such as the old symphony Young Strings program, it was a zero-sum game, providing thousands of dollars in quality music education to kids of color while refusing to serve white children, regardless of need.

Just last month, my principal tried to enlist my support for a University Interscholastic League team (unpaid). She can and did funnel all of the paid tutoring and club sponsor roles into the, well, funnel, but was shameless enough to try bringing the help in through the back door to polish the silver and lend a veneer of credibility (quality, gentility) to what is typically heading for a crash-and-burn.