A Particularly Cheap White Wine

"The National Merit Scholarship, which is awarded to 15,000 students each year, based on pre-SAT (or PSAT) score, is distributed proportionately to representatives of each state, so that each state has the same number of winners as they have a percentage of the nation's overall high school graduates (4). Because the quality of schools varies dramatically across states, average scores on the PSAT will also vary wildly, but students in Mississippi will always get their 'fair share' even though many of them wouldn't have qualified had they attended school in a state like Massachusetts" (2).
-Having a merit based scholarship gives me mixed feelings. Yes it is solely based on merit and not race but the standards are different everywhere. I understand lowering the standards in states that have a lower graduation rate allows students there to receive aid, but it also takes away aid from people in other states with higher scores.  For instance there could be a student in Connecticut who scored the same with a person in Missippi but the person in Mississipi would probably receive the aid and not the student from Connecticut. This could happen because the standards are in Connecticut are higher than Mississippi so eventhough they both had the same score the Mississippi ones are lower allowing that student to win the scholarship eventhough they both might have needed it and had the same scores. This reminds me of the qualifications to become a teacher. When I was taking the Praxis a man was talking about how in Connecticut it is much harder to become a teacher because their are more tests one has to take that are much harder than ones for Rhode Island. Similarily, he mentioned that Connecticut and other states are modeling after Colorado because they supposedly have the hardest qualifications. This reminds me of this quote because eventhough I might pass all the test according to Rhode Island I might not have passes according to Connecicut or somewhere else. However, having merit based scholarships is also good because they do this evenly because it allows everyone to get a chance to receive aid instead of just one state with high standards receiving all the aid; leading to the idea that, "to ignore this background context, and to award scholarships based solely on so-called merit, is to miss the ways in which the academic success and accomplishments of white students have been structured by unequal and preferential opportunity, and the ways in which students of color have been systematically denied the same opportunity to achieve" (3).

Overall, I want to say that having scholarships based on race is a double standard. I understand it is done because they try to get rid of racisim and segregation and spread equally, giving other races chances to receive aid. However, in doing this we are seperated by races; so as much as it is trying to eliminate segregation we are very much seperated. I think it actually does the opposite of its purpose, it seperates us more giving people scholarships based on their color.