Georgetown Begins Giving Preferential Admissions to Descendants of Slavery
by Nadia Blanton
Summary: Georgetown University played a significantly negative role in slavery by selling off slaves in order to pay off their debt. To right this wrong-doing they are now giving preferential admissions to descendants of slavery. Thanks to record keeping, starting from 1838, of the 272 slaves Georgetown sold they are able to make up for this mistake and apply it to those who rightfully deserve it. Many feel that this step into expressing their regret is not even close enough to amending the past, while others feel it is a good start.Analysis: It is very possible that there are people out there who feel that what happened in the past, happened in the past and therefore allowing preferential admissions would be unfair. However, what many people do not understand is because the racism and inequality minority groups encountered they had to and still have to strive harder than others. Congressman Steven King touched this subject in a very inaccurate and insensitive way. According to King, Western civilization has contributed "more than any other subgroup of people" to civilization. Of course this is not true, but the reason he many other people believe it to be is because the false information recorded by people of the past and often written in bias about how the U.S. never did any wrong and if it did it was to "protect our way of life." Americans often celebrate patriotism too extremely and forget that we are all people and we all are aiming to move forward. What Georgetown is doing is far from unfair because it is allowing these descendants to catch up from the oppression and lower privileges generations before them had to face in order to move forward.
Sources:
http://www.npr.org/2016/09/01/492288821/georgetown-university-takes-steps-to-atone-for-slave-ownership
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/19/us/politics/steve-king-nonwhite-subgroups.html?_r=0
This seems to be a good thing there doing but it doesn't make what they did right. Reading about the horrible inhumanity of slavery in history is really hard and doesn't make since.
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