Why I’m Not Angry at Bill Gates
An interesting item came up for various opinions on some of the blogs that I read not long ago. The subject matter was the Millennium scholarships being offered by the Gates Foundation. Most of the blogs that I read, being conservative in nature, were none too pleased at the eligibility requirements listed. One of the bloggers stated it most succinctly: Whites need not apply.
I got the impression that some of the writers might be a bit miffed at Bill. I’m not. Oh, I admit that my nose was a little out of joint at first. My oldest daughter will be looking for scholarships beginning in the next few months. I think she’ll do okay, but the idea that a business that I have supported for over a decade has arbitrarily chosen to eliminate my daughter from consideration of a scholastic award based on her skin color is a little hard to take. And if any out there reading are thinking along the lines of “Good. Now you know how it feels,” I would state that I was around in the late seventies when racial preferences first start to be felt. It limited my ability to go to college right out of high school. Having it come back on my children is a bit hard to take. I would have thought (hoped? prayed?) that the idiocy would have run its course by now. It hasn’t. So be it.
Despite all of that, I still have no quarrel with the Gates Foundation. After I calmed down and examined it logically, I could see there was nothing wrong. The Gates family is using their own money, and contributions of like minded individuals I imagine, to further goals which they have clearly spelled out. Since this is a private operation, not a government venture which does and should have an obligation to avoid discrimination, I feel they should have the right to spend their money any way they see fit.
The Gates Foundation isn’t taking anything away from my daughter, or any other white person as far as I know. They are providing extra funds to advance the academic future of minorities. It’s not a decision that I would have made, but since it’s their money and they are doing good works with it, who am I to complain? God bless them, I say. I hope they provide a lot of great opportunities to people who would otherwise never have the chance.
In the same way, I hope that we soon reach a point in our society where we stop paying attention to the color of an applicant’s skin, where we stop defending one set of wrongs on the basis of another. While I am a big fan of competition as a way to bring out the best in people, I recognize that there are practical limits. By convincing America’s diverse communities that they must not only compete individually but as races, genders, and religious groups, we only perpetuate the division which causes grief to so many.
